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

How is YOUR reception?

[Psychofreak]

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.

My Treo

[b0lt]

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

Re:My Treo

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be noted that the parent's opinion is not any kind of universally recognized fact.

I had also assumed that GSM was better voice quality / etc. than CDMA, but then I did a little bit of testing and personally find the voice quality on CDMA to be immensely better than GSM. Of course there are a million factors, mainly which network and which phone you are using. But I have never been able to find a GSM phone that really sounded just like a landline from both ends. (Most CDMA ones don't either, but I have found some.)

Upon this surprising realization, I went and look at some technical papers and there are good theoretical reasons why practically CDMA seems (to me) to sound better.

All these features and you want to phone?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

How do you get enough time to use all the features if you're also going to yammer away on the phone?

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.

My color sidekick was better

[TheNarrator]

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?

Voice dialling

[ErikTheRed]

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.

Re:And of course...

[Fishstick]

>My Ericcson(sic, probably)

Yup - Ericsson. Eric's son (scandinavian company/name)

The company's history dates back to 1876 when the founder, Lars Magnus Ericsson, opened a repair shop for telegraph equipment.

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/freshwater/histlme.htm

just another barely on-topic post -- I don't feel much like doing any work tonight

Re:Lesson learned.

[Babbster]

This is a good idea in theory, though in execution it is quite problematic. The majority of people who post about products in online forums are those who want to complain about something. This being the case, it's not a truly representative sampling. For example, you could play a MMORPG for months and enjoy yourself. Go to that game's message board, however, and in most cases it will appear that everyone playing the game is threatening to quit over what they consider game-breaking issues.

The REAL lesson is not to buy expensive devices without being willing to return them for refunds and get on with life - even if you might get dinged with one of those lame restocking fees.

Re:Thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

All this other crap is just that, and makes a phone cost way more then it should

I agree, but I strongly doubt removing these features would lower any prices. Costs a little bit to develop but next to nothing to implement and throw into the phone. Anyway I'm still using a Nokia 3310, works fine.

T-Mobile GSM, baby

[smittyoneeach]

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...