The latest Treo has a more-than-familiar feel about it, given that this model is once again is powered under the hood by the Palm OS rather than the Windows Mobile Operating System favoured by its direct predecssor, the 3G-equipped Treo 750v.

It is a good two years since the last Palm OS Treo handset arrived in the UK, and casual watchers could have been forgiven that we had seen the back of it on the Treo range. But the Treo 680 shows that reports of its demise have been exaggerated, and a recent licensing agreement for using and developing the Palm OS (signed in December 2006) means that there could be more to come.

As the Palm OS led the PDA revolution in the 90s (chalking up some 20 million sales), and the Treo was such a cult success in the early days of smartphones, it is a phone that we can't help but get excited about.

Fellow fans will be pleased that this is really an update of the popular Treo 650. It has taken the exterior styling of the more recent 750v with its internal patch aerial - making it much smaller proposition than before.

There are also white, red and orange versions being produced as alternatives to the more predictable grey business-suited standard issue. But the core offering is still much the same.

Features

Up front on the device there's a giant 320x320-pixel 65k-colour TFT touch-sensitive screen, which can when used with the supplied stylus (or any other blunt object), which allows you to access a wide range of options at speed.

But in addition to this there is also a reasonably sized Qwerty typewriter-style keyboard laid out underneath the display for pumping out messages or tapping in other notes or data. In addition to the letters, a regular phone numberpad is craftily inserted within the Qwerty layout, so that numbers prove to be as easy to enter as text.

The keyboard is not quite up to touch typing but using fingers and thumbs you can write your messages and emails much quicker than you can on most phones you can buy.

What's more, handwriting recognition can be added using a low-cost third-party application. Because of the keyboard, and its requirements for accommodating such a useful display, the phone is not particularly lightweight, weighing in at some 157 grams.

The Palm operating system and the user interface are, nonetheless, still a joy to use. The menu, home and joypad keys mean that it is easy to access options without the need to get the stylus out of its sheath. And you can even navigate web pages easily enough without needing to use the touchscreen option. To get the best out of the phone, and to navigate swiftly, you are recommended to use the two approaches in unison.

The onboard 312MHz Intel processor seems to be well up to the task of handling the device's many applications, despite having the same specification as the old Treo 650.

Web surfing using Palm's own updated Blazer browser is still a key attraction of the Treo. However, the lack of Wi-fiand 3G connectivity mean that it may not be the fastest option for the UK user. Pages download at a reasonable lick over GPRS using its improved caching algorithm - and there is support for EDGE - but it can not compete with the connection speeds we have got used on other recent smartphones.