Palm announces the Treo 680

It was expected that Palm would make an announcement of its low cost Treo device today at Digital Life and indeed the Treo 680 was officially announced. The Treo 680 is a Palm OS based GSM quad-band device that follows as a successor to the Treo 650. The device has 64MB RAM, 320x320 high resolution display, a VGA camera, no external antenna (like the Treo 750v Windows Mobile model), integrated Bluetooth 1.2 radio, Secure Digital memory card slot on the side, and comes in four different colors, Graphite, Copper, Arctic, and Crimson. Palm also reported that there is a new phone application and user interface as they target the feature phone upgrade market with this device.

Software that will be included with the Treo 680 includes Docs To Go Professional v8.0 for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files and Pocket Tunes. Yahoo Music Unlimited support with 30 days free is also included. I just signed up for a year of Yahoo Music so I could use this new Treo with my service. I was pleased to read that contacts was added to calendar and email Exchange synchronization.

The Treo 680 looks like a very nice upgrade to the Treo 650 with double the RAM, which was always an issue for power users like me, and a nice form factor while updating the user functionality. I'll have to see what carrier releases the device and the price point, but this may be a device to check out a bit more seriously when it is available.