palm Treo 680 Phone (AT&T, Phone Only, No Service)

by Palm

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.9 inches ; 6.2 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000KPY83K
• Item model number: 680
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,500 in Cell Phones & Accessories (See Top 100 in Cell Phones & Accessories)

Product Description

The Palm Treo 680 replaces the Palm Treo 650 as Cingular’s Palm OS offer. Treo 680 is a quad-band EDGE device with a Cingular-exclusive industrial design, expanded internal memory, Pocket Tunes™ music player. Treo 680 is expected to appeal to small/medium-sized business customers, mobile professionals and “smart communicators” – consumers who are curious about data devices and are looking to step up from traditional voice/feature handsets to integrated data & voice devices with more power and features.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From TX to 680; so far it's a great device, battery's fine, February 20, 2007

By 

D. Laurent "dda_store" (Lubbock, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: palm Treo 680 Phone (AT&T, Phone Only, No Service) (Wireless Phone Accessory)

I bought this even though I saw a lot of negative reviews, some about battery life, some about dropped signals. So far I have had neither.

I have owned many Palm devices over the years and I will be the first one to say that Palm can make lemons, and when that happens they usually deny it until they come up with a patch much later, if they ever do. Not the most customer-oriented, quality-oriented company out there. But their OS is still the easiest to use in my mind, and with the myriad of apps out there you can make it do whatever you want, pretty much.

The screen is on the smallish side compared to the TX, but it's not that bad, especially for a phone. It's pretty reliable, and I have put a lot of my old software on it. The battery is what surprised me the most; I was expecting something really bad, but so far I have never been under 50%, and I am a heavy Palm user. I don't use the phone part of it much, just a call here and there, and I turn the phone function off at night. I also bought KBLightsOff, which turns off the keyboard lights unless you are using it, which probably helps a lot. So with these two settings, battery life is close to the TX in my opinion.

I have one dead pixel, but that can happen to any electronics manufacturer. I don't like the 2.5mm jack at the bottom of the device, that's a terrible place to put it. But with an adapter I can use my good headphones and sound is good. Get pTunes Deluxe so you can use subsription music like Napster or Yahoo Music. I should receive my 8GB SDHC card tomorrow, which will turn my Treo into an iPhone killer, IMHO. And for way less than $599...

Sound level is OK, and you can get software that boosts it up if you're deaf. Speaker level is LOUD! The SMS program is great, the phone app is great and fast.

So, overall, it's a great device. I wish Palm wouldn't charge an arm and a leg for accessories, but you don't have to buy from them...

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Almost the perfect smartphone, December 19, 2006

By 

Todd Tannenbaum (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: palm Treo 680 Phone (AT&T, Phone Only, No Service) (Wireless Phone Accessory)

If you want a phone that can do practically everything a laptop can do, you have come to the right place. The Treo can do email, play music, videos (e.g. full length movies), games, browse the web, schedule your appointments, etc. Add a 4GB or 8GB sd memory card, and you essentially have an iPod nano inside your phone.

The good : Rock solid - spurious resets/reboots or pauses that plauge other smartphones (incl windows mobile phones and earlier treo models) are gone with this phone. Excellent voice quality on both sides. Unlike the Blackjack and the Moto Q, you can read PDF files sent to you via email, and you can both read **and edit** MS Office files (word, excel). TONS of software, much of it free. Web browser does a very good job. PIM apps are excellent, just like a palm pda - easy to use, syncs w/ your desktop incl Outlook. Works great w/ Windows, Linux, or Mac desktops. Can hot-swap the battery w/o loss of data. Can install less-expensive high-capacity SD cards -vs- the Blackjack which wants microSD. This phone even works with the new 8GB Transcend SD card! PalmOS generally requies less effort to do basic things like add an appointment. GREAT sms features. Excellent user interface features make it very easy to use one-handed, unlike Windows Mobile. Excellent, bright 320x320 touch screen (touch screen is great for games, can work like a mouse for cut-n-paste in office apps, faster navigation). Solid bluetooth stack that works clear across the room. Easy to use the phone to access the internet w/ a laptop (DUN) via USB or bluetooth - Cingular doesn't charge anything extra to do this.

The bad: not a "3G" phone, so data speed is MUCH slower than phones like the Treo 700p or Samsung Blackjack. It goes about 120Kbs (on EDGE network). This does not matter much for email, since this phone can send/receive email "in the background" -- but this is not enough bandwidth to reliably watch live streaming TV for example. Camera resolution is only 640x480 ! (although it does a better job than most phone cameras, even indoors in low light). No built-in WiFi. Although the battery can get you through the day, and the battery life gets much better after the first few weeks (not conditioned properly at the factory?), this phone definitely needs to be re-charged every night esp if you get a lot of email. If you need a phone that can go 2+ days w/o a recharge or battery swap, look elsewhere.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Upgraded From a 650, July 24, 2007

By 

JOHN (Monroe Township, NJ, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: palm Treo 680 Phone (AT&T, Phone Only, No Service) (Wireless Phone Accessory)

I purchased the 680 as an upgrade to my 2-year old Treo 650. I wanted to get a smaller, lighter phone, with more horsepower. I tested many Blackberry units in store and some of them are really slick. In fact, the only reason why I did not go with a Blackberry is the Palm OS. After using the Palm OS for many, many years, I just couldn't get myself to switch to the "other side".

Anyway, I'm happy to report the 680 is a smaller, lighter, faster version of my 650. The interface has improved, menus are easier to navigate, and email has improved also. In regards to email, Verizon (my last provider) does not use "versamail". The lag time between getting an email on your server, and getting it to your handheld was 15 minutes or more. Now, with versamail, you instantly get mail to your handheld. Again, this is a huge improvement as far as I'm concerned. Occasionally, the phone will reboot itself. More than my 650 did, but start up is quick, and it hasn't posed a problem for me.

Here's the only (and BIG one) negative for me. Yes, you guessed it, the battery. With normal use you will not get a full day of battery life. Luckily for me, I spend most of my time in the office, or in a car, so it's not a huge negative for me. Figure on this, the battery will last you half of what you are used to with a 650,

Overall, I definitely recommend this phone to all.

*** UPDATE 9/11/07 ***

It seemed like my battery life was getting worse and worse. I could not make it through a full day, with only moderate usage, before it went dead. This now became an issue for me.

So, I started searching for ways to improve battery life. If I wasn't successful I would have to possibly move on to another phone. After ciphering through a lot of wasteful reading, I found the needle in the haystack...here it is:

"If you encounter a poor battery life on your Treo 680 and you have to recharge very often even if not using the Phone function, the issue might have been caused by an incorrect first charging of the device.
Please follow the steps below to solve the issue:

1. Connect your Treo to a wall charger.

2. Remove the battery from the Treo and wait for at least one minute.

3. Remove the SIM card from the device and wait for another minute.

4. Put the battery back into the device (without the SIM card) then let your Treo charge for at least 4 to 6 hours and for this duration:
o Do NOT press any key after reinserting the battery.
o Do NOT switch your TREO On or Off either, it will do so automatically after a short time.
o Do NOT enter the SIM card PIN if prompted to do so, just wait!

After you have done the above, you now need to make some changes with your settings. This is the final piece of the puzzle. Here's how to do them:


Go to Prefs > Power and:
* Turn "Beam Receive" OFF
* Set "Auto-off after" a 15 seconds
* Set your "Screen Brightness" to a medium setting (3 or 4 clicks under MAX or even less)
* Set "Dim backlight after" to 30 seconds
Other settings:
* Turn Bluetooth OFF if/when you are not using a wireless headset or other BT device
* Go to Prefs > Date & Time > Set "Automatically set" to "Nothing" (this makes a very significant difference in power usage
* You can use a software utility called KB LightsOff to turn off the keyboard lights of your Treo when they are not needed
* Also Phone Technician which will completely turn off your screen during a call to save even more battery life.

I am happy to report that the battery life of my phone has improved by 100% !!!!!!!! If you do all of the above you should get the same results as me...good luck!