There are 3 issues i want you to ask:
i compared the battery data of 650 and 680: Standby time seems to be equal (300 h or 12.5days) and the talk time is significant less on the 680. Have you experienced, that the battery of the 680 is significant earlier to be charged as the one of 650 ? The 680 has 1200 mAh, is this the same for the 650 ?
seems the 680 to be stable for you so far, or were there some crashes ?
The most important thing for me is the software compatibility:
on mytreo.net a lot of software is marked as "tested with 650", only a few programs are tested with 700p. Is this right, that a lot of software that runs on the 650, doesn't run on the 700p, or are them only not tested yet ? Have you experienced, that this could also be the same for the 680 (that a lot of 650 software doesn't run on the 680) ? Could you test minitones and pssh/tussh for me ?
First, thanks for the postive feedback on the review! It is defintely motivating when people find the information useful.
For your first question, I'm not sure if you are asking about the time it takes to charge the battery or how long it lasts so I'll try to answer both. I've been using the same charger that came with my 700p to charge my 650, 700p and the 680. Both the 650 and 700p have a 1700 mAh battery while the 680 is only 1200 mAh. I haven't timed how long it takes to charge the batteries from one level to the next, but I would strongly suspect that since the 680 battery is roughly two-thirds the capacity of the 650/700 it would charge from 0% to 100% in about two-thirds of the time it takes for the 650/700. But that's really just a guess at this point.
As far as how long the battery lasts, that's also another area I haven't dug into to deeply yet since the 680 is not my primary phone and it is hard to compare times between two phones without doing targeted tests that duplicate the same battery demands on both phones. However, given the lower battery capacity, I have to wonder about the quoted talk/standby times they mentioned compared to the 650. They say the standby time is the same while the talk time is only 30 minutes less (4.0 vs. 4.5 hours), yet the battery on the 680 has 30% less capacity. In order for that to be true, the 680 would need to have other internal changes that would reduce the demands on the battery compared to the 650.
But since the processor is the same, it would need to be something else. Maybe the screen? I guess that's possible. More likley might be the wireless chipset. But I still wonder if the how realistic the numbers from Palm are for the 680's battery life. Also, there are a few people that now have a 680 and are reporting shorter battery life compared to a 650. If you want to be a bit pessimistic, then you could assume that the power usage will be the same and so the battery life of the 680 will be two-thirds that of the 650 because the battery capacity is two-thirds of the 650. Always a good to have an extra battery, car charger and a charging cable/cradle at work.
As a reference point, the Sprint Treo 700p had noticably shorter battery life compared to the 650 for many people. One reason I found from my own experience was that having Bluetooth turned on seemed to consume more power on the 700p than on the 650. But on the other side, I found that answering a call on my Bluetooth headset was much faster on my 700p than on my 650, partly because (I think) the 700p maintains a more "active" connection to the headset than the 650, so when a call comes in it is immediately ready to switch over to the headset.
I mention the stuff about Bluetooth because it look like the 680 is using the same Bluetooth version as in the 700p. They are both on Bluetooth 1.2, but the Bluetooth program on the 680 has a different version # than on the 700p so it is hard to know for sure what the differences are.
As far as software compatibilty, I've found that most programs work but have run into some that don't. In particular, I've found that programs that can map to the hard buttons may have some issues (I mentioned some earlier in this thread). I'd expect that people will be findout out about more incompatibility issues in the coming weeks but I would also expect the developers of the most popular programs to come out with updates in the near future (just as they did when the 700p had some issues).
Stability with the 680 has been pretty good for me, but I haven't really put it under a heavy load since it isn't my primary Treo. To be honest, my 700p has more performance issues compared to my 650 but I've just been living with them because I can't go back to a device with less internal memory and the slower data speed.
It's definitely a tough call if you have to decide between a 650 and a 680, especially if you really use your Treo for a lot of things and run many different apps. The more frequenly you access the Internet to check email or do other things, the more likley I think you are to be impacted by the smaller battery. But on the other side, the more likely you are to appreciate the larger internal memory.
If you can send me links for those two programs you would like me to test I'll try to check them out in the next day or so.
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