Are you a fan of the Palm Treo? A great new model is about to land on Australian shores, and has just gone on sale in the US. It’s one of the best messaging mobiles we’ve seen and is a strong challenger to the Blackberry and competing devices.

   
  Palm’s Treo 680 coming in mid to late December in Australia

Mobile phones were designed to be used in one hand, usually with your thumb as the controlling digit, pressing buttons, dialling numbers, answering calls and making them.

Given that human beings handily have thumbs and can use a device singlehanded, it’s a surprise in one sense to realise that plenty of phones out there just aren’t optimised for one handed, one thumb use.

While most phones are quite easily used with one hand and thumb, there’s more than one Pocket PC phone that really needs two handed use for the best results. So whenever I pick up a Palm, I’m always reminded about just how good the Palm interface is for one handed use, whether it’s a Pocket PC based or Palm OS based version.

I’ve managed to get my hands (yes, both of them) on one of Palm’s new Treo 680’s, about three weeks from the official availability date in Australia. So far, I have to say that I’m impressed! But onto the new features in a moment.

For now, Americans are able to buy them now from Cingular in the US on a USD $199 plan (and a two year contract), with USD $399 being Palm’s official price, which when converted into Australian dollars is around AUD $520. While that’s quite a bit less than the expected Australian retail price of AUD $799, the actual street price for anything always seems to be lower – at least if you know what you are doing and aren’t buying on the day of release at 1 minute past opening time.

Available in a shiny dark grey colour from Cingular at that magical US $199 with plan pricepoint, Palm in the US also has a bright orange and even a ‘hello there iPod’ version in white, not that Palm is calling it that or anything. There’s no word on the availability of those colours in Australia either, with the model I’m testing that shiny dark grey colour.

It is interesting that Palm is bringing out a white version of the Treo. I’m sure it has nothing specifically to do with any upcoming iPod iPhone’s from Apple, but the possibility of Apple doing something has clearly been on Palm’s mind.

At an article from Brighthand, we learn that Palm’s CEO, Ed Colligan, is not too worried about Apple entering the mobile phone market. He told Brighthand that “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

That said, it seems that Apple just ‘walked in’ to the mp3 player market, after keenly observing the dismal success of mp3 players up until the introduction of the iPod. Of course even the iPod itself didn’t take off until a PC version of iTunes was released, but aside from a colour screen, more storage and the ability to play photos and video, the iPod’s basic design has effectively stayed the same. With Apple likely to have keenly looked at competing phones, if there’s anyone that can ‘just walk in’… it’s Apple.

But this is an article about the Palm Treo, so let’s get back to that. What is new about the Treo 680? Read on…

The new 680 is a GSM, GPRS and EDGE phone, with EDGE being a 2.75G technology that is supposed to deliver at least 100kbps speeds, at least double the speed of GPRS. EDGE should go even faster than that, with figures of around 150kbps quoted. Interestingly, EDGE is available in many places now, even Australia, and it’s been happening at a time when 3G and 3.5G networks have been rolled out.

Of course the Treo 680 remains a very easy to use smartphone with organizer, email, web browsing, calendar, contacts, mp3 player, video player and much more, with a built-in keyboard that seems streets ahead of anyone else’s.

While the Palm OS still only lets you do one task at a time, the Treo still offers one of the most user friendly mobile phone interfaces out there, with everything fully accessible by the keyboard and associated buttons, all with your thumb – you never need to take the stylus out if you don’t want to.

The design has been improved, with the stub of an antenna removed at last as it’s now internal. The unit is slightly smaller all round than the previous Treo 650, but only just. Still, without that stub it looks much more streamlined.

One incredibly important update has been the change of the position of the SD card. On the 650, the SD card was placed at the top of the phone. This proved to be a fantastic place to lose the card from, especially as there was no cover to keep in hidden and in place. Now the SD card slot is behind a very sturdy yet easily openable cover, and this has been placed on the right hand side of the phone. Stories of lost SD cards should be a thing of the past.

Importantly, the Treo 650 still uses an SD format. While Mini-SD and MicroSD cards are common on other phones, I’ve always thought this was a bit stupid. Of course it’s done to take up less space on the phone, but c’mon. It can’t be that hard to squeeze in everything else around it. Palm have kept the SD card on the Treo 680 to make life much, much easier for Treo 650 users who will decide to upgrade, of which there will likely be very many.

Calls you can’t answer can now be responded to with a pre-set text message. Other features include a new even faster Blazer browser, now at version 4.5, thanks to smarter caching capabilities and more. 64Mb of user-available storage is built into the 680, making that almost three times greater than the capacity of the Treo 650. The SD card slot can also handle SD cards up to 2Gb in size.

Enhanced email and messaging means that Exchange ActiveSync will now synchronise not only calendar and email, but contacts as well, with SMS and MMS capabilities improved for a better user experience. 

A new version of Documents To Go has been included, so you can view, edit and share Word and Excel documents, as well as read PDF files and view Powerpoint presentations.

The Treo 680 also has improved car-kit and headset support, and support for multiple simultaneous Bluetooth connections using the Bluetooth 1.2 standard. About the only thing the Palm doesn’t have is Wi-Fi, although a Wi-Fi SDIO card could be used if you really wanted Wi-Fi capabilities.

All in all, it’s an impressive new version of the Palm OS Treo, and a good alternative to all the Windows Pocket PC devices out there, even Palm’s own Treo 700W, which runs on Windows Moible 5.0.

Aimed at existing users who love the Treo 650, along with anyone looking for a great mobile email experience, or just a great mobile phone, existing fans will quickly snap this new model up and will tell others of their experiences, causing Palm to gain even more fans, whether they opt to buy the Palm OS or Windows Mobile version.

As for Blackberry, the next 12 months is crucial. Yes, they’ve launched the new Pearl, but they are facing competition from every corner – Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Palm, Samsung, HP, iMate, O2 and the rest.

Whichever way you look at it, the age of excellent mobile email is here, wrapped up in some fantastic little mobile devices that gives Apple’s sales figures for the musical iPod a run for its money.

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