It’s been said previously here that in order to make the Palm appealing a third party launcher and phone shell are needed…unfortunate that Palm didnt spend a bit of time on the visual appeal issue lately.

I guess energies are being spent elsewhere at Palm – the next couple of new Palms are reportedly going to be winmob devices but lets hope they give us an idea of where the hardware end of things is going.

Random thought here…I don’t know if it’s been integrated into a phone yet, but wouldn’t it be cool for Palm to introduce something similar to Sandisk’s new Take TV into their next gen phones.

LoL- yes, dream and pray for no more Palm vaporware!

I’ll be first in line for that one! We can only dream…………

Yes, Palm was a Silicone Valley startup with very little capital and no connection to Apple. A good read on the history of Palm from a few yrs ago is Piloting Palm, worth the time to read if interested in the period.

The marketplace pretty much demanded the keyboard as it is quicker and more accurate for most people. You can still get versions of Graffiti on todays phones through places like inkmarksoftware, but no one is demanding it still be bundled; kind of sad in a way.

I envision a truly next generation Treo losing its edges, moving the home buttons off to the sides and expanding to a 480×320 screen while keeping a keyboard.

Ha! The Newton (1993-1998) was interesting page in Apple’s history but I don’t believe there was any connection with the PalmPilot (1996+) other than that one Palm founder was coincidentally an employee of Apple in the 1980’s. The Newton was a PDA before that term existed. I remember handling one the year they came out and thinking it was pretty neat but rather large and awfully expensive.

Palm took the basic idea of the Newton and other early PDA attempts and greatly improved the concept with the PalmPilot. Over a decade later the heritage of today’s Palm OS is clear and undoubtedly a reason some of us treat the Treo like an old friend even though it disappoints in some ways. Even brand new devices like the iPhone can’t help but have some similarities to the original Palm.

It’s interesting that handwriting recognition which was the basis of the Pilot (and the Newton before it) has never really caught on, so now we deal with laughably small physical keyboards or “soft” keyboards.

The Treo sure doesn’t seem complete sometimes with its lack of GPS and wi-fi among other things. I look at it as a versatile platform beyond its prime. We mostly get by well enough with the Treo but can’t help but watch the new kids on the block strut their stuff.

Familiarity is what it boils down to. The Palm OS is comfortable and it still works well enough for most uses. In another year it will be that much farther behind, though.

Not sure if I will clearly explain, since as you mention, much of the hardware is essentially equal. The differences in hardware are a more powerful original battery, a better camera (.3 vs 1.3), and mini SD slot. But there is more than just hardware.

Key in comparison is the connection of EvDO being about 6 times faster than Edge- not a factor for you, but huge if you are comparing devices and want to stream music and make use of all the software.The hardware differences there are tilt toward the 755p, but probably not so drastically that it would be worth the cost when you already own a 680.

Also important is included software. The 755p offers more, meaning you have to purchase less from third parties…off the top of my head, it includes a later version of p-tunes for streaming, docs to go 10, plus a free instant messaging program for YIM AIM and MS. It also addressed quality issues regarding memory lag.

The differences are clearly incremental. With the exception of EvDO and the camera, everything (including battery life) can be equal or better on the 680 with third party applications. It’s a small evolutionary gap to the newer 755p making it incrementally better than the 680…not so important when considering you can get the 680 for free with a contract right now.

If it could’ve been managed, the 755p (or Centro) was better suited for comparison in the Round Robin because of the speed advantage, and less necessity to tweak for optimum use, but that’s just my feeling.