The Palm Treo 680 is not made for Asians. Palm does not want this market.

Different is good when it’s better.
Grab any cell phone from LG, Samsung or Motorola, you will most likely find a hole or ring to attach a small wrist strap or lanyard. This wrist strap makes it easy to grab the phone out of it’s hiding place and can also be used to prevent an inadvertent drop of your phone while using it. Palm, in their grandiose wisdom decided that wrist strap rings are not to be part of the Treo 680, when all other phones around the world have had these rings for years.

Palm hates Asians.
Palm must hate Asians by not including a wrist strap ring on the Treo 680. Palm is missing out on the complete lanyard/wrist strap accessory market for Treos in the Asian segment. When I show my Treo phone to my Asian friends, they always ask me what color is my wrist lanyard and which Helo Kitty noise charm I have at the end of it. I smack my head with my palm (my hand palm) every time. It makes me feel like an ass and left out every single time. It makes me feel very North-American.

The small guy get’s the protection.
Find the logic in this. Palm Centro is la less expensive device and can accommodate wrist straps. Treo 680 is more expensive and can not have wrist straps. Is Palm telling me that it’s OK to drop a 500$ Treo 680, but adds anti-drop lanyard capability to the less expensive Centro? Is this some kind of racket to extort more money out of people buying more expensive devices? Fuck, I paid 500$ for this phone. I can’t have a simple hole in the casing so I don’t drop my expensive phone with a 2$ wrist strap?

Sony wins.
My Sony TG-50 has a wrist strap ring, it is very handy when using it as a hand held voice recorder. My Sony UX-50 has the BIGGEST wrist strap ring ever seen in any hand held device. With a 1000$ device when it came out in 2003, it’d BETTER have a fucking wrist strap ring! In fact, this ring is reinforced metal that is part of the frame. FUCK!!! Now THAT’s a strap ring! 3 years later Palm gives me fuck all as far as strap rings on my Treo 680. Great. My 150$ digital camera has a lanyard ring. Why can’t my 500$ Treo have one?

I just bought a Treo 680 for my wife. Now she is asking where on her new Treo does she attach her wrist lanyard & Hello Kitty bell charm combo. Fuck.

Don’t worry, Palm, you’re getting off light on this one. I have more rants to rip you some big ones. Just wait for it. I love Palm OS, but Palm devices have bad implementations. Was I spoiled by Sony? No. Palm had plenty of time to implement all this stuff.