Treo 680 is cheaper in the US than here in the Philippines. An unlocked unit costs $400 in the US, while the suggested retail price here is P30,000.

A member of Mapalad.org, the Philippine Palm User’s Group, posted this news release on the site’s forum this afternoon:

Microwarehouse, Inc. Releases the Treo 680, a Powerful Smartphone That’s Easy to Use

Metro Manila, Nov 25, 2006 – Microwarehouse, Inc., the exclusive distributor of many Palm products in the Philippines is pleased to announce the release of the Treo 680. The newest member of the Treo family continues the tradition of its award-winning predecessors, providing a complete yet easy-to-use mobile solution.

The Treo 680 boasts features smartphone users have come to expect, such as a built-in camera, Bluetooth, MP3 playback, Email, and even Internet access, all supported by the user-friendly Palm OS and a full QWERTY keyboard that makes entering text easy. On top of that, you can edit Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files, as well as view PDFs. It’s the business smartphone built for personal use.

Microwarehouse Inc. distributes Palm Treo 680 to more than 700 channels of resellers nationwide. Microwarehouse has branches in Pasig City, Metro Cebu and Davao.

The Palm® Treo™ 680 smart device joins the Treo family as its newest member. Running on GSM- EDGE (Enhanced Data for Global Evolution) networks with Palm’s renowned software and hardware innovations, this all-in-one smart device delivers usability, connectivity, multimedia and compatibility in a new, sleeker industrial design.

The Treo 680 smart device comes with an internal antenna, making the device look and feel smaller, slimmer and sleeker than other Treos. The full, easy-type keyboard and optimal screen size for viewing text, media and more, make the Treo 680 smart device more appealing and easy to use.

The Treo 680 smart device offers several new features including:

• Smaller, sleeker design with internal antenna makes the Treo 680 more comfortable to use as a phone

• 128MB ROM/64 MB RAM, with nearly three times the user-available memory (64MB) compared to the Treo 650 (23 MB available to user)

• SD-I/O expansion card slot allows the user to add up to 2GB of storage with SD cards (sold separately) or peripheral devices like barcode scanners

• Improved SMS and MMS capabilities for a better user experience, including chat-style threaded messages

• Blazer 4.5 browser is fast due to its smarter caching rules and includes alternate modes for viewing web pages optimized for the device

• Enhanced multimedia applications support streaming music from the Web, playing MP3s and managing and sharing photo albums;

• Documents To Go, allowing users to create, edit and review Microsoft Word and Excel files as well as view and manage Microsoft Power Point and Adobe PDF files

• Bluetooth 1.2 enables customers to connect wirelessly to other Bluetooth-enabled devices and improved car kit and headset support

• Built-in dial-up networking (DUN) capabilities to use the new Treo 680 as a wireless modem, via Bluetooth(R) wireless technology, to connect to a laptop;

• Treo 680 can be configured to work with MSFT Exchange ActiveSync, synchronizing not only calendar and email, but contacts as well

Suggested Retail Price: PhP 29,800. Available starting December 15