Treo 680

When I saw the first pictures of the Treo 680 on Treo Central I was psyched. Finally, a hipper, cooler Treo that I could rough up a bit, like an old, college roommate. However, after looking at the spec sheets, I'm less than impressed; kind of like finding out your college roommate is a Young Republican.

First and foremost, this is a GSM phone, which means, at best, it could only be EDGE or UTMS based. That is no equivalent for the EVDO bliss that I'm currently getting with Sprint. But that's cool, I could have more than one handset and switch out the SIM when I feel like carrying an unlocked Samsung t809. I made sure that it was at least running Palm OS 5.4.9 (Garnet) and was a little dissapointed when I found out it wasn't going to be running Palms Cobalt OS. But when I found out that it only sported a VGA camera, that was the end of the discussion. Not that a camera should be or ever will be a deal breaker on a smartphone (BlackBerry has made a huge name for themselves without ever putting a lense on one of their devices), but something like a VGA is a tell-tale sign of what the phone is really made out of.

I was hoping to pick up two of the new 680s (white for me and red for my wife), but I don't think that will be happening soon. I'll stick with my Sprint PCS 700p with a gash in the screen for right now. Hopefully, I'll see the new form factor (which I think is really appealing) and the rubberized paint on some CDMA/EVDO Treos real soon.