Enthusiast Hacks WiFi Into Treo 650

Sammy at PalmAddict writes "Shadowmite, a Palm enthusiast has managed to hack his Palm One Treo 650 smartphone, enabling it to work with the Palm One WiFi card, despite Palm admitting the Treo was never designed to use WiFi technology. Shadowmite managed to get his hands on the Pa1m One WiFi card and modify it so that his Treo 650 could use it. The experiment was a success, and is causing quite a stir -- putting pressure on Palm One to provide support and fully support the new drivers."

Comments

What?

[mg2]

So, if I somehow shoved a Gamecube network adapter onto my N64, Nintendo would need to provide full support for it?

I don't think so.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article - it's not at all that the device wasn't intended to work on the Treo, it was purposefully not supported, even though supporting it was an extremely simple matter.

The article explains it clearly. This isn't really that clever of him, but he's just the first person to do it. The SIDO Wifi card fits into the Treo, just like other Palm products, and it only makes sense that it should work. The software was just lacking. That's all there is to it.

You can just hear the board meeting in your head at Verizon/Other Cell Provider with the Palm Treo Sales guy:

Palm: And not only that... but this thing is practically a mini computer! It's got Bluetooth, and file-transfer, and wifi...
Verizon: Wait. stop right there. What was that last thing you said?
Palm: Wifi. it's awesome, you can just be a part of any nearby network.
Verizon: Isn't that exactly what VoIP handsets do? Those things we don't own, and can't charge for?
Pam: ...
Verizon: Take that out.

Re:What?

[SubTexel]

And? It still does not mean they have to support it just because someone wrote drivers for it. It's still a hack, and not released by the company, so sorry no support.

Re:What?

[AK Marc]

I don't support lying about the capabilities of the device like Palm did, but you know what, just because someone figured out how to do something they weren't supposed to, it's absurd to say that Palm should now provide support.

And I disagree. They claimed that it was incapable of working, so they wouldn't provide it or support it that way. They were proven to be liars. Since the only reason given was that of a technical problem, and that technical problem was solved, then they should be required to support it. And by "should be required" I think that if there was a law suit against them, they would lose. They lied in the marketing. They committed an offense called "false advertising." Of course, it is different than the usual case because they lied in claiming that their device was less capable than it really is, but they still lied in order to sell more of their products.

Or, to ask it another way, why do you support people (or corporations) being able to lie with impunity?

Re:Poorly explained

[sh0gun]

It is not you, http://treocentral.com/ is a much better website and has way more information.

See this thread for more information about WiFi drivers on the 650.

Also this thread has some useful information on a patch that was obtained by someone that fixes problems with the sound quality of the Treo 650 microphone.

Still waiting

[dsginter]

I'm still waiting for my non-cellular Wifi walkie-talkie. Just imagine the possiblities... Like IM for voice...

Re:Still waiting

[Wesley Felter]

Vocera makes them, but if you have to ask, you really can't afford it.

Why do wireless carriers not support features?

[frdmfghtr]

Somewhat OT...

This brings up a question I want to ask T-Mobile.

My BlackBerry 7100i can be used as a wireless GPRS modem connected to my notebook via the USB cable. It works; I *know* it works, because:

(1) I've read the forums where people tell how they got it to work (after getting T-Mobile to unblock some ports); and

(2) I've done it to send/receive e-mail via Outlook when I enable their t-zones service.

Now for the question:

When the products the carriers promote have these capabilities, why do they not support them? I would be willing to pay for the service if T-Mobile would admit that it works and support it. If a Treo 650 can handle WiFi, that's a selling point and likely to result in more sales.

Re:Why do wireless carriers not support features?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

> If a Treo 650 can handle WiFi, that's a selling point and likely to result in more sales.

But the people selling the devices are really selling cellular service. If you can use WiFi, you can use VoIP for free rather than the cellular minutes. It has been alleged that it was Sprint that explicitly asked PalmOne to not provide WiFi drivers for the Treo 650.

Re:Why do wireless carriers not support features?

[Monkelectric]

Sprint is a bunch of dickheads (tm). I bought a nokia 3585 to replace my 3588... The 3588 and 3585 are supposed to be *identical* except for the color screen (which I dont give a crap about).

I get the 3585 home and discover theyve disabled *ALL* the text messaging features, the Java VM, even the ability to select rings for different callers...

Anyone want to go on a killing spree with me?

Re:Why do wireless carriers not support features?

[Jarnis]

Why buy subsidized crap phones?

In Finland carriers can't subsidize phones, as by law it's illegal to tie the phone and the subscription. If you offer a phone, the price and terms of sale must be same with or without subscription to any service, so you can't tie the two.

So phone manufacturers sell their phones. More features = more sales. They don't have to bend over for the carriers - they are not their customers. So if carrier would prefer that the phone doesn't have WiFi... well, tough, they don't have a say in it.

And we have pretty damn cheap airtime, as the only way carriers can compete for customers is by offering a good cheap product - they can't just toss a cooler phone free, tied to some stupid package that appears cheap, but ties you to one operator for x months (or years).

Sure, phones cost money. Shocker. Feature rich phones cost a lot of money. Double shocker. At the same time your phonebill isn't used to subsidize someone elses shiny new phone used to lure him to the crappy service that you are stuck with.

Re:Why do wireless carriers not support features?

[bgarcia]

Why buy subsidized crap phones?

Why? Because they'll give me 5 brand new phones with 1 year of service, and they'll pay me for it, year after year!

This year, I ordered 5 Sony Ericsson T610's from Amazon with T-Mobile service. I paid $50 for each phone, and there was $250 in rebates available for each phone. I put them all on a family plan for $80/mo. Then I sold the phones themselves on ebay (I kept the 5 Motorola phones that I got in a similar deal last year).

The math works out like this:

+$250 (5 phones @ $50 ea.)
+$175 (5 x $35 activation fee)
+$960 (12 mo x $80/mo for a family plan w 5 phones)
+$228 (~$19 in taxes/fees per month, x 12)
-$1250 ($250 in rebates per phone, x 5)
-$500 (sell all 5 phones on ebay, make $100 on each)
--------------------
Total: get paid $137.

Plus I get another year of service for 5 phones! Subsidized crap phones are the only reason why I can even afford a mobile phone.

Voip

[Michael Hunt]

It would be nice, now, if somebody wrote some SIP software that could take advantage of this hack. A Treo would make a sexy as hell cordless phone, which presumably would then be able to roam onto GPRS/GSM if and when the wifi network is unavailable.

The only 'pressure' is $$$

[Anonymous Coward]

putting pressure on Palm One to provide support and fully support the new drivers.

I have a fully functional Handspring/VisorPhone unit. At the point where the new treos offer something more (802.11) then I will consider paying $500+ for new hardware.

It is palm's loss. At the point where I have VOIP and 802.11 working everwhere else will I look to make a change. If Palm does not have a solution, I WILL jump to Windows CE or Sybian.

I left the Newton to Palm....I can leave Palm.

War-walking

[Indy Media Watch]

Pressed to your ear, this would be the most innocent looking wireless sniffer yet (if someone can get it to run as one).

Download link

[Uneasysilence]

http://www.uneasysilence.com/index.php?p=1719 Skip the digging and get it now...

Greedy Carriers

[blowhole]

It seems to me that the common thread in mobile device deficiencies is not the hardware or software companies, but rather the cell phone carriers. They are the perennial pessimists when it comes to new technologies, myopic in their fears that a handful of geeks will bring their business crashing down. Instead of embracing and developing them into new and exciting money-making, experience-enriching features, they castrate their own products solely in order to frustrate users. Swap castrate and frustrate freely in the previous sentence.

Imagine 10 years ago if a cell phone carrier told Motorola that their new cell phones were "way too small, anyone could just carry this around in their pocket. What will happen to our public telephone branch?! We have too much invested in the current infrastructure!"

Re:Greedy Carriers

[blamanj]

It's not to frustrate users, it's to gouge users. Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens all the time.

For instance, I worked at Intel in the early 80s. Intel invested a lot in development tools, compilers, assemblers, etc. It was the de facto leader in the technology. They sold their tools on their own platform, for which they charged about $25K.

When the IBM PC came out, all the software geeks said, "Hey, let's port this great software to the IBM PC, and think of all the developers we'll get." Intel management said, wait, if we do that we'll only make a couple hundred a shot for a compiler rather than $25K a shot for a development system. No way.

End result, Borland and others (and eventually Microsoft) introduced software that ran on the IBM PC and development system sales crashed anyway. Not only that, but now no one even bought Intel's software.

Moral: You can buy some short-term profit, but screwing your customers is a bad strategy long-term.

Tones...?

[kcb93x]

Some type of sound tone...either volume, or speed of tones...like a metal detector? Or maybe a system of them...one variation for quantity of signals...another variation on the sounds for quality of the signals?

Re:Although it could be argued they should do this

[GrouchoMarx]

This was a clever hack but I'm sure Palm sells stuff with WiFi for a little more than the Treo 650 goes for.

OK, so you don't know what you're talking about. palmOne (there is no such company as "Palm" anymore, hasn't been for a year) sells exactly ONE model with integrated Wi-Fi, the Tungsten C. They also support Wi-Fi on 3 other models via their Wi-Fi SD card, which is an imperfect solution. (It takes up the card slot.) The Treo 650 price varies with the carrier, but is typically in the $500-$600 rage or up. It's NOT a cheap product.

Meanwhile, most new Dell PPCs and HP PPCs come with Wi-Fi now, and the PPC world is now being inundated with variants on the BlueAngel/Harrier design: Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS, AND Wi-Fi. All three wireless types in one fairly nice handheld. (Still uses Windows Mobile, which bites, and it's not against-the-face-friendly, but it's still a good device.)

Your point about "don't buy cheap and then complain" is valid, but has nothing to do with this issue. The Treo 650 is NOT cheap, it's a top-shelf product. Other products in similar price ranges all have Wi-Fi. You're NOT getting what you paid for here, that's what people are upset about.

(That said, I still want to get a GSM/EDGE Treo 650 when it comes out. The lack of Wi-Fi is just annoyingly stupid.)

palmOne - going down the tubes

[Silicon_Knight]

Palm is VERY quickly losing my respect with the way they treat their customers.

I started out with a Handspring Visor, my girlfriend has a Palm 3 series PDA. Almost all my friends and family uses Palm PDAs. That said, my Palm T3 will most likely be the last Palm PDA that I'll buy.

Started out with me purchasing my Nokia 6820 video phone in Asia - naively thinking that, "Hey, it's bluetooth, it'll be supported". It took almost half year after that phone's release before Palm would release drivers for it in their phone update - but, the drive only works as a modem driver. SMS and remote dialer apps for the phone isn't support. It *is* supported fully for the Palm T5 though.

Side by side comparison the T5 really isn't that much different from the T3 - minor tweaks in OS, faster processor and more memory. But what if I were to upgrade to the T5?

Forget it. I'd be ditching the "Collapsing PDA" feature that makes the T3 small and compact to carry, the silent, vibrating alarm for when you don't want to be obnoxious, the voice recorder functionality. I gain the ability to use the PDA as a flash drive, which I already own a few, and can add into the PDA via 3rd party software. They tossed out the Palm Universal Port which up till now most accessories use, as a standardized interface to the PDA - and for a top of the line product, the damn thing doesn't even come with a cradle.

What the hell are they thinking?

With the improvement of Pocket PC handhelds - and more vendors resulting in more selections - I'd have a hard time justifying purchasing another Palm PDA.

-=- Terence

Sprint's Vision Service

[st3v]

Sprint doesn't want the Treo 650 to have the WiFi features since they want you to subscribe to the $15/mo Vision (CDMA 1xRTT) service. It might cost more per month for PDA phones.

Sprint especially doesn't want people to connect their phones to a PC or laptop through a USB cable or Bluetooth, because they want you to pay $80/mo for the unlimited wireless internet (Vision) through a PCMCIA card.

Verizon is even worse since they cripple their phones a lot more. But I still switched to Verizon from Sprint since it gets better reception for me (GSM is horrible over here). But at least Verizon's wireless internet is much more stable than Sprint's was for me. I use USB cables to connect my phone to my laptop to get free wireless internet using my minutes on off-peak hours.

This is pretty old news...

[bigtrouble77]

We've been discussing this hack over at treocentral for quite a while now. Shadowmite's most impressive accomplishments are the custom roms he developed, stripping much of the crap out and adding a few critical apps (like notepad and DUN support- so you can use the treo as a modem). It's no secret the 650 has some major memory issues and by flashing his bare bones roms you can get rid of buggy apps like versamail and realplayer and instead run 3rd party apps like snapper mail on your sd card. Shadowmite deserves alot of credit for helping make the treo650 a decent product. -BT

Depends on your viewpoint...

[Svartalf]

The ONLY reason why it's not supported is the Telcos don't want you using it- partly because of VoIP capabilities and partly due to the fact that they want you using their expensive data service instead of a potentially cheaper/faster WiFi hotspot.

In this context, they should own up the lie and, at the minimum, come clean on it. This is the same sort of crap about crippled Bluetooth on some Moto models except worse, they came up with a lame-ass lie to cover for the real reasons. In all honesty, they should eat the pain from the Telcos and the Telcos should be revealed for what they are over all of this.

Re:Although it could be argued they should do this

[Cajun Hell]

I'm sure Palm sells stuff with WiFi for a little more than the Treo 650 goes for.

Nope. The fact is, when you get right down to it, the product that everyone wants, simply isn't on the market. At any price.