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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?"
... 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.
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.
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.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Never heard of those problems on handspring Treo 600. I heard that Palm had used a different manufacturer for 650...
This is because you are using the CDMA version of the 650.
IMHO - Sprint and cdma service is not good in comparison to GSM and GPRS data services.
UID 1000000 is just around the corner.
Actually physics of radio frequencies allow Sprint more bandwidth as they usually operate 1900mhz and above. GSM is usually 1800mhz and often 800mhz. This means better reception due to NLOS properties.
The summary -- Sprint allows better data transfer and potentially better voice quality at the expense of more dropped calls where GSM allows better reception without LOS yet lower voice and data quality.
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
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!
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!