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?"

Comments

And of course...

[absurdist]

... 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.

Just use an external mike.

[RealProgrammer]

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.)

Re:Upgraded 600?

[s.o.terica]

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.

Yes, you'd think. Apparently Palm traded in the 600's Sierra Wireless chipset/radio for a Qualcomm chipset/radio. No one would claim the Treo 600 had the best sound quality in the world, but it was completely passable, and it had fantastic reception. Boo, Palm.

Default microphone setting to blame?

[WIAKywbfatw]

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?

No problems here.

[tealwarrior]

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.

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