Upgraded to Treo 680

Since my old Treo 600 showed signs of truly giving up the ghost, I finally arranged for a friend who was flying in from Singapore to pick up a Treo 680 (unlocked, GSM) for me.

After using it for three days, I'm ready at last to post my initial impressions.

Things that I Liked
Especially in comparison to the Treo 600

• Physically
• Fantastic screen resolution (!!!)
  
• No antenna
• Lighter and slightly slimmer unit
  
• Removable battery
  
• Photos and Videos
• Can record video (new)
  
• Little portrait mirror next to camera lens (new)
  
• Photo viewer / slideshow is very friendly
• Can take photos at 2x zoom
• Contacts
• Can add photo or image for each contact (new)
  
• Can specify ringtone for each contact (new)
  
• Calendar
• Can now categorize calendar entries (new)
  
• Can now beam all calendar entries belonging to one category to another phone (instead of beaming per item, new)
  
• Today's Agenda view (new)
  
• Year view (new)
  
• Messaging
  
• Very clean integration of SMS and MMS features
  
• Can delete single message from within a chat thread (new)
  
• Can force messages to thread even if I haven't replied to a message (new)
  
• Can save messages to a Saved Folder (new)
  
• New sent folder provides easy access to my messages outside of chat threads
• Auto-select messages in a chat thread as you scroll down (new)
  
• MMSes with long subject names are delivered without errors
  
• Web and Email
  
• Blazer web browser lets me disable CSS and not display images
• Gmail configuration is pre-built in, no need to set up POP and SMTP
• New: Voice Recorder feature
• Fantastic sound quality and playback volume
  
• Great microphone sensitivity
• Network
• Bluetooth now available
  

What I Didn't Like:

• Physically
• Back cover has a slightly clunky feel, as does the side cover for the SD card
• Have to remove battery to get to the SIM card (not so with the Treo 600)
  
• Positions of buttons have been moved around and require some adjustment
  
• Photos and Videos
• No improvement in camera resolution. Still at VGA
• Camera battery drain problem requires the installation of a software patch
  
• Web and Email
  
• Command to disconnect from the GRPS network used to be available from within the browser. Now it's only available in Network settings; requires extra navigation
  
• Network
• Still no wi-fi

Also, in the course of playing around with this unit, I learned about a few Treo features that were available even with the Treo 600, but which I had not used before:

• You can beam your entire contact list from one Treo to another
• You can beam only contacts belonging to one particular category
• You can beam all your memos from one Treo to another
  
• You can beam only memos of a particular category
• You can use MMS to send an email

Overall, I'm incredibly happy with this upgrade, and in fact find myself wondering why I waited this long to switch!

Obviously, the Treo 680 is nowhere near as sexy as an iPhone, but since I'm very risk averse (i.e., I don't want to deal with a hacked phone) and I don't want to deal with the headaches of migrating data from one type of phone to another, the Treo 680 is just right for me.