Mike has finished his Round Robin week with the Treo 680 and has written up his final thoughts article, "Palm OS, The King is Dead". Mike is not new to the 680 because he used it for about six months as his primary phone. Mike said that the King is Dead, but he didn't mean that the 680 is a bad device. He likes the device and says that the 680 is pretty high up on his list.

It's still a good phone. If I thought Palm OS was dumb or not relevant, I wouldn't do the TreoCentral TreoCast. It boils down to two things with Palm OS: the hardware and the software. The hardware will see updates. There will probably be more Palm OS GSM phones to come out. Better cameras, 3G, smaller form factors, the whole shebang. When it comes out, it will probably be a compelling upgrade for Palm OS users. But I don't think we'll see a significant software update for Palm OS in the next two years. While some may accuse that it's unfair to say "the king is dead" alluding to Palm OS, it's not accurate to say the king is alive, either. But still, there are always these persistent rumors about faked deaths and random sightings...

Mike mentions the hardware of the 680 and how the 680 seems paltry in comparison to other phones in the Smartphone Round Robin as it lacks features such as 3G, WiFi, and GPS. And he says that we probably won't be seeing anything that'll replace the Treo 680 in the GSM arena for a few months, which leaves the 680 dated featurwise.

Mike talks about how the Palm OS doesn't allow more than 2 radios at the same time, which is why the Treo doesn't have built-in WiFi. Then he talks about some of the strengths of the Palm OS. He adds that even though the Palm OS has its strengths, it might miss some of the revolutions coming to the mobile phone world due to not being as well equiped as other smartphones.

Once Palm finishes their next-generation Linux operating system the situation will be different. At that point, Palm may leapfrog everybody out there. Palm has licensed their operating system before, they may again. However, the last time they did license, they spun off their software division so the hardware and software sides of Palm didn't have any inherent advantage in working with each other. That led to a lot of hassles for Palm in the long run and they're probably not likely to repeat the same mistakes.

Mike goes on to say that he thinks it's a shame that Palm is more constrained by their software than anyone else in the Smartphone Round Robin.

Read the full article here. It's a great read as always! And be sure to comment in this Round Robin thread to enter for the smartphone of your choice. And don't forget, you've got until December 7th to get your entries in!

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