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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.
...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.
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!
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?
who accounts for the other half? ;>
"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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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....
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).
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.
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
You are not too far wrong in your subject line, even if everything after that is bogus. By posting about this to Slashdot I did have the thought in mind that more publicity would light a fire under PalmOne to offer up a good solution to the problem. It has worked once with this product already on the memory issue. I also wanted to make potential buyers aware that they may run into this problem, and that if they do, they aren't alone.
As I said in the article, other than this problem, the 650 is an amazing little device, and if they fix this issue, I'll be very happy with it and won't hesitate to show it off to all the early-adopter geeks I know. Actually I already have done that a bit, and even with the iffy sound quality most of them are still drooling over it. There are tons of awesome things about it.
But hey, I guess only Microsoft employees have a motivation to speak up when they're not satisfied with a competitor's product, right? After all, nobody would ever post a negative comment about anything if they weren't being paid to do it.
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!