Considering the Palm Treo 680 offers Quad band GSM, GPRS, Edge and Sim free support the lack of 3G/Wifi is annoying to say the least, especially as the product costs nearly £300 - it's certainly not helping to re-establish Palms flagging product range.

From a design point of view the phone does look better than the Treo 650, thanks to Palm removing the antenna at the top of the unit. Plus they have changed the keypad which certainly helps with one handed typing. The supplied stylus and memory cover have been replaced with what we feel are cheaper components to keep the weight down.

For budding photographers don't expect to take great photos either, as the VGA based camera is only useful for taking the odd shot to add pictures to your contacts.

On a positive note the screen quality of the 680 is excellent and images and videos play fine. We have to say the Palms software base is what makes the product desirable to own, especially with the inclusion of the brilliant Documents-To-Go suite, which beats the Pocket office programs hands down. There are also several 3rd party applications you can use to enhance the product further.

Battery performance is once again the Palms Achilles heel, after a few heavy hours of use it is waiting to be recharged, however - just like the Palm TX - the 680 can be charged from the supplied USB cable. On the subject of USB the latter is needed for HotSync operations, this allows you to backup your device to your PC and install 3rd party software.

You can also use it to Sync your documents such as Word, PDF from your PC to either your SD card or Phone and vice versa without file duplication.

The 680 is certainly know slouch either and handles most application including multimedia and general office use pretty well. Its lack of Wifi or 3G is a downside but a lot of people do not realise that the Treo 680 comes with Push email support, so instead of having to collect your email or contact information this can be sent straight to your Palm.

Memory wise you get about 67mb free which is not a great deal, but with 1GB cards costing as little as £7 these days you won't need to spend a lot to get additional storage.

As the product is Sim free you have freedom to add any contract you want, we used our Orange Sim and the reception was good and voice calls clear.