Treo 680 in the house
by Volker Weber
After having used the Nokia E61i for a couple of weeks, I was a bit shocked when I set up the Palm 680 that came in the mail today. What a fat mother. It's not heavier than the Nokia, and it is not bigger. It's just not as thin.
Essentially the 680 is like the 650 with the antenna stub removed. Same body material, same screen, more memory, new phone application. It is by no means a "must update" from a 650.
Having used the 750 for a while there are a few things I noticed immediately, apart from the better screen resolution on the 680:
- The keyboard layout is different. On the 680 the top row buttons make and break calls. On Windows they are reserved as soft keys and make/break go to the second row. The 680 layout is better for the phone application. The menu button however is in the lower right hand corner, which is the worst possible location for a right-handed person.
- The smooth surface of the 750 body feels at least 100 Euro more expensive. Well, actually it is. :-)
- Palm OS feels a lot more complicated than Windows Mobile. Want to hear that again? Palm OS feels a lot more complicated than Windows Mobile. There you have it. The Treo has far too many "home screens". There are five in the phone application, one in the calendar, and the launcher. Some of the application are slimmer than on Windows Mobile. Calendar and Contacts for instance. But the overall integration is worse.
- Pocket Outlook beats VersaMail when browsing messages. In Pocket Outlook you just hit left and right. In VersaMail you first have to move the cursor to the top bar and then hit the right or left arrow with the Navigator. Pocket Outlook does not let me mark all messages as read, while VersaMail can do that.
- The 680 has a standard SD slot, which is much better than the Mini SD (not MicroSD) in the 750.
VersaMail let me set up ActiveSync with the Exchange Server but so far new messages are not pushed down to the device. Need to install this update.
More as I test TomTom on the 680.
Comments
I am very happy with TomTom 6 on the Treo 680, it looks very good even on the small display (compared to TomTom 910 I used for a few days):
http://flickr.com/photos/jollyjake/497470628/
I found some minor bugs e.g. TomTom asks me if I'd like to switch on Bluetooth during startup if it is disabled but will not find the BT GPS receiver later, so I have to quit TomTom, disable/enable BT and then start it again. The keyboard support ist not perfectly implemented, too---you can enter the characters of your destination with the keyboard but are not able to navigate through a list using the scroll buttons or select an entry using the "middle" button.
However, the TomTom application seems to run much faster and smoother than on the Tungsten E2 I've been using before. Make sure you have the 12V car power adapter with you, otherwise the Treo will run out of battery after about 3 hours of navigation.
My TomTom version did not come with a US voice (I really like those on the TomTom 910) and I'm still sometimes confused listening to that nice female voice describing distances in "yards" (in the meantime I managed to think in miles, one thing at a time!) and telling me to "[...] take the motorway" in proper British English.
"A mile a minute" is a pretty good rule on highways.
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