10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Palm Treo 680 Three of Three all have software issues
Date of Review: Mar 24, 2007
The Bottom Line: Avoid this until Palm works out the firmware issues.
Update 5/18/07
Cingular switched the phone for a new one about a month ago. They felt that I just got a bad phone. The new one worked fine for a while. Last night it would not hot sync again. Today the same giberish appeared in the phone window used to look up names an would not find the network. I had to pull the battery and soft start it twice today. I guess that this problem still exists.
The new model does have a 2 day battery life. It still appears to be to unreliable to recommend.
I have only one program on this phone, Epocrates. It is on the memory card and is a palm compatible program and should not be the cause of these problems.
This makes 4 of 4 bad phones for me all the same model. I will have to call my Cingular representative Monday and see if he has any suggestions.
Original review
I bought 3 for my family 3/07. All 3 have battery life issues. Palm's site says 300 hours of standby time. If I get 5 calls of 5-10 minutes per day and check my calender 5 times, it might last 36 to 48 hours, before going dead.Their site states 4 hours of talk time.
One has software issues and will not Hotsync nor will it alphabetize the phone book. I called Cingular and was on the phone for 1 hour and transferred 5 times before getting to Palm, on a 3 way call, trying to fix the first one. Each time if fail to Hotsync, the software has to be uninstalled. This requires you to go into the registry of your PC and delete some portions not removed by uninstall. I returned the first for a different phone all together.
The second one loses the network and has to be hard started every 3 days. This wipes out all your data and it has to be Hotsynced again and the data reloaded. I seems as it will have to be returned as well.
The third has a 12 hour battery life even with the Palm recommended camera upgrade patch.
I have talked to two other people with similar quality issues. It would seem that Palm has consistent problems with the software in this model and has been slow to fix it. I received an email after the call to Palm and they asked if I was satisfied with the phones and service. I responded no that I was not satisfied. I have yet to be contacted by them to inquire why I was not satisfied.
If new models of phones supposedly have a 20% rate of problems, then 3 of 3 is surely not random and indicates poor engineering and testing before release to the seller.
