Treo 680 testing phases

Day Four with my trusty sidekick the Treo 680. Its awesome coming back to such a familiar OS. I feel like I've been around the world and back, and there's definitely no other device out there that just does it for me. Since I sold my Treo 650 almost a year ago, I've tried a couple of Sony Ericsson's, I've tried Nokia Symbian's (few models), I've tried cheap low budget type phones (my reason: to use temporarily while waiting for new treo to be out) .... heck, I've even gone the Windows Mobile way with the 750V. But now, I'm back to where I truly belong. A friend just noted to me yesterday, I'm a Palm guy. I totally agree. Its been a mad journey this past year trying all these phones and their OS's. Maybe I shouldn't have sold my 650 in the first place right? But then if I did that, it would've been close to two years of using a mobile.

Now THAT would be h-i-s-t-o-r-i-c-a-l.

Anyways, four days with my 680. So far. Other than the fantastic things I love and other slight little niggles I have against the 680 (which I'll just save for my coming review), the reactions I've been receiving from my peers around me have been nothing short of my expectancies. They sure have shown mixed feelings. Some already expected it (gee, thanks guys, you understand me too well) while others have just gone plain speechless, definitely believing that I've lost all my logic.

Passion makes people do crazy things doesn't it?

So far, I know of four people (including myself) with the Treo 680. Two more 680's will be flown in from Singapore in a couple of days for another 2 friends. Then there'd be six of us. Behold, the beginning of a local 680 community. Five of us will own the standard available Graphite colour whilst one owns the rare Arctic version. Here's a picture of it up close and in hand.

You will notice that its quite a nice shade of white. The texture is not "glossy" like the graphite version, but almost similar to the soft touch of the 750v. Its nice. Clean and sophisticated. One can only imagine what the Copper and Crimson colours will look like. But anyways, my mate with this Arctic 680 has also just received his black vaja, like mine. It looks awesome. Black on white. There's just something so classic about that. I think if he chose white on white instead, it'd really rock, but really, a white leather case? Geez, you'd have to wash your own hands everytime you touch your treo!

These past few days, together with my mate Frogman, we've been testing out various apps (that used to work on our 650's) to check out the compatibility issues despite both the 650 and 680 having the same OS version. Our results have been surprising so far. Many apps that work on 650, won't on the 680. How odd.

I will mention about this further in my review. But for now, its back to the testing phases.

Updates in my regular websites of interest:
- Eseries has some good photo comparisons between the Nokia e61 and Treo 680 in one of their posts.
- Treocentral has posted a good review on the pen stylus for the treo 680 and 750V editions. I will definitely be on a lookout for this.