When the Palm Treo 680 first shipped, analysts were all bonkers about the ‘new UI’ of the built-in apps. And indeed, the applications look different – but how do they fare in everyday use?
Launcher
The first thing one notices about the Treo 680 are slight changes to the launcher – one can no longer assign it a background, and the card now appears on the top of the category pick list:
Phone app
Analysts put high expectations into Palm’s new phone application – and indeed, the five-tabbed program looks very nice at first glance. The tabs at the bottom stand for the various ‘modes’:
However, in daily use, the application shows a few weaknesses. For example, the list of last calls can be popped up only over the background, but not over the dial pad. When calling, the Treo no longer displays a end call button. Also, opening dial pad view makes disabling speaker phone,… difficult:
The favorites panel was overdone – good bye, beloved tabs and buttons. Instead, you get a list of items that are hard to tap with a finger.
The call list view is well-done and allows you to sort calls easily with the toggle at the top(answered, missed,..):
Palm stayed true to Handspring’s concept of integrating the Contacts application into the phone program. Searching for contacts works very well, although the screen layout wastes a lot of space:
PIM suite
The Treo 680 ships with Palm’s enhanced PIM suite. However, Note Pad is missing from my Treos ROM – a very annoying omission!
SMS/MMS
Palm unified the SMS and MMS services into one application. Threaded SMS display works well, although opening large conversations takes a bit of time. As for MMS…since I never use this feature(email for the win), I can’t really say anything about it…
Voice memo
Palm finally added a voice recorder program to the Treo 680. The program produces .asf files and can no longer record to a memory card…
Overall, Palm’s new core software works well, although getting used to it takes a bit of time for a Treo 600 user – after all, a few things did change. While the programs still have the one or the other quirk(recent call list, no Note Pad), I am happy overall.
Tune in soon for a look at the Treo’s web software(email/web browser)!
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