Having been a PDA user for many years now, I decided to go for a smartphone on my next upgrade as carrying both a PDA & a phone around in places where I don't take my handbag ( like walking the dog in the park or going to the beach while on holiday) was begining to be a chore.
The Treo 680 is small, light and slim enough to go in your pocket and with the keyguard activated there is no fear of making an unscheduled phone call by mistake! I have a silver one but it has now been launched in a bright red colour in this country!
Phone calls can be made directly from the contacts pages and there are all the items like missed calls, dialled calls, and received calls lists to help keep track of your phone bill. Also one can programme different ringtones for each group of contacts so you can tell who is calling before you get to pick up the phone.
Text & picture messaging is also there to use, great for sending a picture postcard to the family!
The PDA side is brilliant, Word, Excell, Powerpoint presentations etc all seamlessly hot syncronised using Documents to Go, as are your calendar, contacts, tasks, notes etc and e-mail too.
Storage capacity is excellent, but if you need more then there is an SD card slot on the side, easily accessible under a little flip cover, so your limits are only governed by the size of the SD card memory.
My ordinary camera died on me recently just before a memorable extended trip to Australia, so the camera on the Treo 680 came into it's own. It can be automatically set to save pictures to the device or to the expansion card, so I thought I would fit a 2G card for my holiday so as to be able to save all my pictures. I found that on a 2G card I could have taken 27800 plus pictures ( no not a misprint I did say 27800!) So I was able to snap away here there and everywhere without a care in the world. I actually took over a thousand pictures, most of which came out really well, though the resolution was not quite good enough for big (postersize) enlargements, they were great for the photo album. There is no flash facility, but it seem not to matter whether it is light or dark, the pictures still come out OK. The one problem I found is that in bright sunlight the screen is diffucult to see clearly, so I overcame that by holding the unit close to my face in that situation. By looking just over the top of the unit the pictures came out lined up perfectly.
When I first got my Treo I found it a bit slippery to hold especially when typing, but I bought a pack of three silcone slip covers ( I can ring the changes between White Pink or Grey) and these are so thin that they add hardly anything to the bulk of the item, but my grip on the unit is enhanced beyond recognition, so typing is almost as quick as on my desktop keyboard and there is no chance of dropping the unit when taking photos one handed now.
In all a brilliant piece of kit, that I would recommend to anybody.