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More Problems for the Treo 650
koreth writes "PalmOne's new Treo 650 smartphone is one of the season's most eagerly-anticipated gadgets. But it looks like they let it out of the gate too early. First there was the memory problem, which, to PalmOne's credit, they addressed quickly. That satisfied me and I bought one, only to find that while it's a great device in a lot of ways, as a phone it stinks. From the other end, it sounds like I'm inside a cardboard box, and lots of other people are complaining about the same thing. No word yet from PalmOne on this problem. Any other 650 owners having problems with their new units?"
Remember what Smokey the Bear says. Only you can prevent your Treo 650 smartphone from starting a forest fire.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
One would think they'd take the good parts of the 600 (namely the radio/phone part) and merely add a higher resolution screen and other small improvements rather than seemingly designing it from the gound up again.
... when one actually READS TFA, one finds that a few people seem to be having this problem, and a great many more don't. And that it could be Sprint's crappy service in the first place.
As long as the phone is problem free before it comes over to ATT/Cingular side. I don't mind it Sprint users beta test a final product, till Palm gets it right. =)
...You don't sound like you're on the toilet.
That's always awkward for the other person.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
To solve the voice quality problem, you probably shouldn't use the phone from inside your new house. :-)
Bort.
Free, Anonymous surfing: Pagewash.com.
What the fuck are you on about man. Speak fricking American, lube boy...
You are inside a cardboard box. Those robo-womb-battery-pods are the rosy sci-fi view of the future.
WTF does Sony have to do with this?
Oops, until December 10 they're backordered
I guess it's back to carrying a Treo and a real phone.
(I know you can buy a nice third-party headset for cell phones. It's just a joke.)
sigs, as if you care.
Just tell everybody who asks that you're calling from the dunny (toilet for those who don't speak Australian).
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I was going to buy the Treo 650, however, now that I have heard this, I'll be waiting for my GPS, Camera, MP3, WiFi, TV Control, Weather Station, Glucose monitor, Range Finder, MicroDrive, FM/AM, Fuelcell driven Phone PDA.
Probably a good idea to read the forums before buying the product.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
First of all, check that you are not really inside a cardboard box.
Oh well, perhaps I've been the informal help desk for my family for too long.
Or "Can you hear..." sorry, could't resist.
On a more serious side, I used to own a Samsung cell, but have since replaced it with a Morotolla. I have spoken to several different salespeople for cell phones because I cannot get reception on the new motorola phone inside building with lots of metal...such as grocery stores (lots of steel fixtures, not to mention canned goods)or the local marine equipment store. With the Samsung phone I had little to no problems at these locations.
BUT
There's always a but. I am told that my crapy reception phone has better sound quality on the other end than the phone I could talk on anywhere!
At lest the Motorola does not reach Canada from Port Clinton, Ohio. Nasty roaming.
Laugh, it's good for you!
Is it just the built-in microphone or does this happen with a headset too?
"I've got to stop masturbating! It makes me too lazy! Stop it, Albert. Stop it." -- Albert Einstein
You already bought one of those cardboard houses?
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. Add Bunny to your signature
(> <) to help him achieve world domination.
Have you recently purchased a recycled house?
From the other end, it sounds like I'm inside a cardboard box
This makes total sense, and is even possibly by design, because after shelling out $599 for a cell phone, a cardboard box is probably going to be most Treo 650 owners new residential address.
~jeff
Thinking of the Clie perhaps? PalmOne makes the Treo, Sony makes Clie.
From the forum, posted by bael (post number 18 in the thread linked to):
First call I made I was told that it sounded choppy like y'all are describing. I turned the volume down on the phone and that seemed to help.
So, turn the mike down a bit and problem solved. By the way, this story summary is a joke. "From the other end, it sounds like I'm inside a cardboard box"? Would it really be that much of a stretch for the editors to edit this sentence (or add one of their own) to explain that the people at the other end are experiencing choppy reception because of a microphone issue?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I've had my 650 for about 2 weeks (on Sprint) and haven't noticed this problems. I just asked my wife who probably accounts for 1/2 my cell phone time and she hasn't noticed anything in the quality of reception. In noisy environments like my car I use the ear piece (which I think is also the law in my state) so perhaps it's the mike on the phone in noisy environments but that doesn't seem unusual. The first problem was a non-issue for me when upgrading for me and SD cards are so cheap I doubt it ever will be.
I really like the 650. The touch screen is much easier to navigate with my finger and nail than my 300 and the increaded resolution is really nice. Browsing is also fast and quite usabe. I don't bother with the palm version of slashdot since I can read the regular one just fine.
There are a few minor interface issues like it takes a while to move to the dialing screen which sometimes makes me think that it didn't register the click and the call logs interface high-lights the last call dialed and the cancel button but the cancel button has focus (not the last number) so I often am sometimes confused when I hit enter and it doesn't call the last number. Nothing huge though just something to get used to.
The only reason I see to wait is if you're still deciding whether to shell out $450 for a phone. For me it was worth it.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is.
My friends (gasp!) have told me that whenever I used my Treo, it sounded like I was stutering, and they couldn't understand me most of the time. I tried my bluetooth headset, and it worked fine. Is this a microphone problem?
-b0lt
got sig?
/methinks you've hit on something
--;
who accounts for the other half? ;>
aside from looking like a moron with a PDA on the side of my head, there's the issue of the screen getting all greasy after I've used the phone.
check whether your Treo 600 is the real McCoy.
McCoy?? What company is that? I've never heard of it. I thought we were talking about Treo's?
"From the other end, it sounds like I'm inside a cardboard box, and lots of other people are complaining about the same thing. No word yet from PalmOne on this problem. Any other 650 owners having problems with their new units?"
Okay, let me get this straight. The guy bought a phone without testing the quality first, now that he has had it a while he decides he is unsatisfied and wants the people he bought it from to do something about it?
You, my friend, are a sucker in every aspect of the word. You bought a phone because of all the gimmicks without actually making sure it was adequate as a phone.
Just to keep moderators off my back, imagine this:
"Yes, I bought this Porsche and it does not accelerate fast enough, what are you going to do to fix it?"
These two match up well with my logic. I mean, if the phones had a tendancy to explode or fail due to faulty components, that would be different. But this is a simple case of a product not being very good and will probably improve only in the next model. Really, what incentive would they have to sell you another PDA phone in two years if the one you have now works perfectly?
--
I'd rather see a hundred comments unmoderated than see a hundred comments moderated badly by some jerk with an axe to grind. --CmdrTaco 6/26/00
A phone should primarily be, ummm, a phone I'd think, but then mine is 6 years old and still does fine. No games, no camera. Just SMS and voice.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've had (in my company) 4-5 Treo 300s. They all needed replaced at least twice. (speaker problems, display problems, reset problems.) When the 600 came out, I replaced all the 300s we had. Big mistake. In the last year, we replaced EVERY ONE at LEAST 3 times. (One..my boss..6 times) They are ALL built like crap. I wasn't expecting the 650 to be anything better. So I bought everyone Blackberrys about 3mos ago. They are MUCH sturdier, and everyone likes them a lot better.
It's just trying to be too many things to to many people...and noe of them are all that good.
My
Any chance you've moved recently?
Znevb fgbccrq naq chyyrq uvf qevccvat funsg sebz gur erqurnq. Fur ynl gurer tnfcvat sbe n zbzrag, naq gura ebyyrq bire vagb n xarryvat cbfvgvba. Znevb vafregrq uvzfrys vagb ure sebz oruvaq. Nf Znevb qebir uvzfrys va naq bhg bs gur erqurnq, fur ernpurq qbja orgjrra ure yrtf. Nznaqn pbhyq bayl thrff fur jnf gbhpuvat gur fnzr cynpr, cynlvat ure svatre onpx naq sbegu naq va pvephyne zbgvbaf nebhaq ure gueboovat pyvg.
Seriously, I think I could construct an entire episode of the Simpsons from one discussion. Citing out of context lines from the Simpsons, is either redundant: when the reader has already seen every god-damn episode a dozen times; and is sick of the mangled half-arsed attempts of posters to reproduce them while still remaining half-dignified; relevant; and {the important part} actually *fucking* funny, or it's simply a waste of fucking time: when the reader doesn't watch the Simpsons; or doesn't care enough to remember every goddamn frame of every episode; they have no idea WTF the quote means; it's not funny because you took it out of context, mangled it, and probably stopped two lines before you hit the fucking punchline!
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I had a color sidekick. The web browser and email were great on it and rock solid stable. My only complaint was that the phone wasn't as good as some other phones.
I got a Treo 600, paying a lot more for it than the sidekick and I was unimpressed. The internet apps were not as feature filled and a lot more buggy and the O.S was not a real multitasking os. The terminal app sucked compared to the sidekick and there was no instant messaging included. That and the keyboard wasn't that great. It felt like I was using the old mac os on the thing with applications ocassionaly freezing or not being able to do things in the background. Then the thing broke. When you pay as much as I did for a treo 600 the phone better work. It was even more poorly made than the old sidekicks!.
I was so dissapointed that I canceled the contract and got myself a sidekick 2(now available for free with rebates on amazon). The thing has a decent camera, certainly better than the treo's and has yahoo messenger,etc built in. The phone is made by Sanyo so it's a lot sturdier than the old model and the radio is supposed to be much improved. ANyway, I'm looking forward to it. Any other sidekick II users care to comment?
Personally, I'm so addicted to wireless headsets I would probably never use the phone without one, so a bad mic is a non-issue to me.
I am, however, wondering if anyone has found a good voice-dialling solution for the Treos (even if it's not free). That's the main thing holding me back from purchasing a 650 (well, once the GSM models are available).
FWIW (add salt accordingly) I've also heard from a moderately reliable inside source that the 700 will be out in around 6 months, possibly running PalmOS 6.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Never heard of those problems on handspring Treo 600. I heard that Palm had used a different manufacturer for 650...
As was discussed previously on slashdot, cell phone makers tend to pile huge amounts of unrelated functionality, rather than produce a phone with good sound and reliable service.
The reason is obvious. It costs a hell of a lot more to increase service reliability than it does to add tetris.
And for some reason, the market is completely tolerant of this....
One, the Treo is made by PalmOne, formerly Handspring. Two, Sony is out of the Palm business. Keep up or don't post.
Since when did the Clie has phone functions?
Don't have a cow, man.
Sounds like you answered your own question in the writeup. What are you hoping to gain by raising the issue with Slashdot?
I can't wait for the Treo phone that runs Windows and has a built in XM Radio and a free EA Sports game. /. editors will keel over.
Moving quickly to stem the tide of further disillusionment with their products, a representative for PalmOne explained that as a gesture of goodwill, all future Treo 650 models would ship with an additional backup cellular phone (choices to be confirmed, but expected to feature the Motorola V60x or MPx200, the LG Electronics C1300 or the Sprint SPH-N200).
Antonio Meucci (1808-1889) was the real inventor of telephony. On the past June 15th, 2002, the US Congress officially recognized that the italian inventor Antonio Meucci is to be credited for the invention of the telephone, and not Alexander G. Bell, as so far claimed.
reminds me of the old joke...
After having dug 100m, British scientists found traces of copper wiring dating back 1000 years, and came with the conclusion that their ancestor already had a telephone network one millenium ago.
So as not to be outdone, in the weeks to follow, the French dug 200m (100m deeper than their neighbors and headlines in the French newspapers read:
"French scientists found traces of 2000 year old optical fibers and concluded that their ancestors already had advanced high tech digital telephone 1000 years earlier than the Brits,"
One week later the Quebec press reported the following: "After having dug as deep as 500 m, Quebec scientists found absolutely nothing and concluded that 5000 years ago, their amerindian ancestors were already using cellulars.
What do you expect from a company which made decent and innovative handhelds, but wanted to be in the phone business after it partners up with a phone company which wants to be in the handheld business? Harmony? Features that work? Combined innovation?
When two companies treat one another as their customers and the customers as a for-granted market, this is the shit you get.
huh?
Oh come on, this is isn't very hard to figure out... Hammer... Hit on something... I can't send you a picture, but a hammer is a tool you use to hit on nails with. Get it? Hammer? Hit on something?
Now is it sinking in?
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- Dual color LCDs
- Bluetooth, infrared & USB
- Plays MP3s and AACs
- Built-in FM stereo radio
- Digital Camera (640x480 with flash and zoom)
- MMC slot
- Voice Recognition
- Speakerphone
- Phone book, calendar and to-do list
- Alarm clock
- Tri-mode (800/1900 MHz CDMA, 800 MHz AMPS)
It's a bit on the ugly side, but not too bad. Should be available in the next few weeks. I have no idea how much it will cost; I assume I won't be able to afford itSend/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
You forgot XM!
Libertas in infinitum
but does it run linux? seriously the hardware my be ok but does it run linux? one reason why i get pocket pcs is that i can flash it and install what ever distro i want. Using familiar now but the new gentoo looks nice. There is nothing like having X windows send your apps to your handheld while walking down the street :)
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I've had my Treo 650 for a week now. No problem here. Sound quality is fine. Even better with a BlueTooth headset (I got a Jabra).
Make sure you eliminate other factors before you blame the phone. I had a lot of problems with mine at first because of some software from my Treo 600. Once I hard-reset the 650 and carefully reinstalled the apps I wanted, all problems went away. I am a happy owner.
-- Max Tardiveau
At least at Verizon (which carries the phone in question) you have 15 days to test out any new equipment and return it with no questions asked. I took advantage of that with my last phone that got crap for reception. I returned it 14 days later after I had determined it was "inadequate" as you say. How are you supposed to make sure it is an "adequate" device without actually using it on a day-to-day basis? It does not appear to me this person was a sucker.
Does the GSM version also have this problem, or is this a problem specific to the CDMA version?
This is clearly not a universal problem; even with low signal strengths, I haven't had this problem.
Palm immediately quits giving away free cardboard housings with the Treo
Have Linux installed at your place in Amsterdam, for cheap
I am waiting with eagerness for the fashion elite to decide than man-purses are the next "it" item!
Before that I used a Motorola T22, which I still own. Both are equally good, the siemens having a better form factor and a modem built in, the Motorola having a regular 3,5 mm earpiece/mic connector, lit keys and volumecontrols that can be opereated whilst phoning.
Both have experienced extreme mistreatment over the years. Dropping, bounching, scratching, various liquids and so forth. They both have required a batterypack removal at some point (unrelated to anything that happend to the phone physically) in order to be resetted, but that's about it. The M35 appears to be a phone that can be backed in an oven at 200 degrees centigrade, thrown from a 5 story building, run over by a tank and dropped into a foot-deep acid-beacon and then eventually still be used as a fully functional phone.
It's for reasons like this that I, as the usual techno geek, am very conservative when it comes to updating my cellphones. I'm a freelancer and dependant on a working phone. I do have a PDA aswell, which I bought 2 weeks ago, but it is the most unspectacular model I could find with a 320px color screen (a Palm Tungsten E). It has all the features needed and probably will stay reliable for me a long time.
Bottom Line:
If you're buying a piece of hardware that your gonna use in situatins where you can't afford it to get in your way, go for reliability over featureitis. Less newfangled 1st generation gizmos built in == more reliable. My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
... washing your face. Just a thought.
Sean
I bought a Treo 600 in July.
Ive never had a phone with so many problems.
The first one suddenly grew a whole lot of permanently orange pixels. The second wouldnt connect to the GSM-network and kept whining about insufficient power even though it was fully charged. The third permanently crashed after two hours use.
The Treo 600 is superb in so many ways. Its fast, easy to use, integrates flawlessly with Outlook and has a nice keyboard. Sure, neither the speaker nor the coverage is like purebred phones like a Nokia or a Motorola, but its acceptable.
I ended up trading my Treo in for a Sony Ericsson p910i. Even though the speaker is perfect, the screen is much bigger and better, and a number of the phoniesh functionality is way better, I sometimes miss my Treo. I think its mainly due to the Treos superior keyboard and general responsiveness.
Now, if they could only make the damned thing work
... looking at the managers and saying "I told you so!"?
I'm having a number of issues with my 650:
1. Memory issue like everyone else. I called Palm and requested the "free" 128Meg SD card but they can't even say that they'll be shipping it to me automagicaly.
2. Phone sucks. I'm having issues with the BT 250 like everyone else. When I called Jabra, they said it's is a BT 1.0 (on the headset) and BT 1.1 (on the phone) issue, but when I called PalmOne they said it's the individual headset and are shipping out another one.
3. Sync issues with my desktop. Calendar won't sync. Palm tech support said it was due to low memory (although only after I worked in a compliant about the memory issue, not through trouble shooting the problem to that conclusion). Memo/Tasks/Contacts sync just not calendar. (Yes, I tried the custom settings, and set them to sync calendar).
4. Phone application is slow to respond to input. I get delays of 2-4 seconds. just long enough for me to think the click didn't work, so I click again and fowl up the call I'm making.
5. No Voice dial.
6. The Multi-Connector for power slips out too easily.
Do they sell XDA II/IIs in the US? If so, my advice to you all is to get one.
http://www.my-xda.com/xda2s_spec.html
I bought a XDA IIs a couple of weeks ago. Before that I used an XDA II for about a year. Both these devices were rock solid, both phonewise and pdawise. The XDA IIs is pretty much like the XDA II, but with internal WiFi and qwerty keyboard.
The only competitor worth mentioning is the new IPAQ pda/phone. But that device has a lot less memory and cpu power. + It comes with an ugly antenna that sticks onut at the top.
Regards
Enjoy reading everyones comments on the Treo 650...was seriously considering purchasing one...however the comments made are making me second guess my decision. I am in the market for a handheld device that can handle my management software (ACT); Excel files and Adobe Standard files... I had been looking at Treo 650; T5; and HP iPaq h6315. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, ham523
PalmSource/PalmOne (and palm specific sites) seem to have attracted either a very busy troll, or a well coordinated group of them - See the current state of PalmInfocenter.com, the near-total destruction of several other sites, and the conversion/widening (Usually at the vehement request of a few exceptionally vocal users) of others...
Now, I'm not going to point to a certain competitor of theirs who is famous for launching faux 'vox populi' movements(See: Astroturfing), and has spent a LOT of money trying to win people over from Palm - But they DO seem like likely canidates.
It sounds like the crystal itself is getting overwhelmed and doing the cancelling. This is a problem with some of the smaller microphones that are IMHO crap. It's also used as a feature on noise cancelling hearing protectors as it cuts way down on needed electronics. Police headsets
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Now for the review. The phone works great and there are no sound problems as reported. Palm has finally decided to address the problem of noncompatible Palm OS apps, of which there are apparently many. The installer quarantined some of my existing Palm OS apps including Eudora. After installing my Palm OS apps and syncing, many of the apps did not work (reset the unit). There is no way to tell which apps are breaking the OS, so one must delete apps willy-nilly in the hope of finding the correct ones. As of today I have managed to get Eudora to work, but not AvantGo or the included VersaMail. I have no problems whatsoever with the phone, nor with crashes or orange pixels. The unit shows 20M of 23M is used and I can't figure out why this is nor does the Delete/Info menu list any files that consume this much memory. But so far this has not been a problem. MIDI ringtones downloaded from the net render way better than they did on the 600. Ebooks (e.g. Gutenberg) can be more easily saved and read in MemoPad than before, although this still needs work. An alarm clock is now included. The camera now has 2x zoom and video recording (but try to send a video and you will get a prompt asking if you want to pay Sprint $5/mo for Video Email). Battery life is slightly worse than the 600, the keyboard stays lit longer. To sum up, PalmOne still needs to better address data corruption/incompatible app issues but they have made some progress. Thanks for the free unit!
When my wife started to travel internationally, we went to T-Mobe on a pair of '600s. I've been keeping in touch with the sweetmeat via SMS from the US while she has visited St. Petersburg, Russia, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I love the speakerphone feature, though sometimes I have to point the microphone right at myself to get good justice.
The 2.5mm earpiece that came with it is rather marginal.
I would rate it 9/10, and my previous CDMA Kyocera7135 about 8/10.
A no-camera version of a Treo6** would be nice. I took one series of photos that was kind of fun, but the feature seems more trouble than it's worth. I'd rather that engineering were invested in the direction of a GSM/CDMA uberphone...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
At least at Verizon (which carries the phone in question) you have 15 days to test out any new equipment and return it with no questions asked.
Oooh, do you know of a way to get the 650 through Verizon? I've been unsuccessful thus far.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I have had no sound quality problems, maybe only some of the devices have bad microphones. I have had, however, a lot of issues with VersaMail rebooting the device. When it happened, it happened the same time on the same event, like "Empty Trash"... once it started rebooting on that action, it would everytime, making it so I could not do that action. I would have to remove my VersaMail files with "Filez" (which drops all the data, starts the program over again). It's happened on different actions about 4 times to me so far. I have found other discussions about this elsewhere. Other than that, this phone is great! I had a Treo 600, upgraded, this one is much better. I love the Bluetooth Hot Sync, the video capture is great, takes really good photos for a phone. I ordered a Bluetooth GPS receiver, should be here soon. I have purchased some Mapopolis maps and can hardly wait to try it with the GPS reciever. Mapopolis was kind enough to send me a new prc file that works on the Treo 650. I had to send a support complaint, but the responded with a prc quickly. The Mapopolis for Treo 600 almost works on the Treo 650, but because of the increase in screen resolution, it's mucked up. I had to buy a 512 MB SD card for $50 at Best Buy. It came with a $20 mail in rebate, so it was really only $30. The tiny 23 MB that comes with the Treo 650 is not enough if you want to use the MP3 player, store maps, pics, videos, etc. I am disappointed with the BlueTooth implementation. I'm glad it's there for headsets and GPS receiver, but it's really just a serial port to the Palm OS, the BlueTooth acts as the serial port translator. This seriously limits what you can do with it. I'd like to use it to provide Internet access to my Bluetooth enabled laptop, for example, but I cannot!
What, have you been burying PalmInfoCenter in posts accusing other posters of being pedophiles?
... I have a unit I'm happy with.
:)
If not, lighten up a little - I wasn't necessarily talking about you specifically. If so, well, as you say - Life really is a journey of self-discovery. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
OTOH - Maybe if you spent more time on the phone with Palm, and less time trying to incite widespread bad publicity, maybe they would FIX it - I'm sure that having to re-re-re-re-re-replace your unit (DHLing them from Texas) until you got one you were satisfied with would speak more clearly to their bottom line than one post out of the twenty-a-day on Slashdot.
After all, my recently replaced (Under warranty) Treo180 has a LOT better reception, and is a lot more sturdy - No, the return process wasn't as simple/straightforward as I would have liked, but
I suggest you try something similar - Unless, of course, you have another agenda.
Anyway, I'm guessing it's not the Treo, but the app.
Most of you having "phone" and other problems with this thing seem to be using sprint or some other undesirable service. (my sympathy to all of you) Has anyone had this same issues with a Treo on the verizon network?