Day One with the Palm Treo 650
Day One with the Palm Treo 650
Treo 650 died of complications resulting from the 1.17 firmware update. I received my replacement Treo 650 through the Warranty Exchange program offered by Cingular about a week ago, and so far the new Treo has worked like a dream.
I understand the Palm Treo 650 is nothing new. I understand that its really old news. What is new about all this is that I am going to try to use this phone, a PALM OS phone, over the stack of Windows Mobile Phones I have laying around. This is part of an ongoing effort started by myself to learn more about the “other” companies OS versions.
The 1st thing I did was charged it for a while. Then I loaded up the software and saw a familiar face from the past, HotSync!
Knowing little about today’s Palm OS, what I saw next was a shocker. I was asked to press the button on the sync cable and when I did, the software started to whirl! An option came up on the screen asking me if I wanted to sync with some program I didn’t pay attention to or Microsoft Outlook. Well, what do you think I chose? Considering Outlook contains my entire life, Outlook. This was a PLEASANT surprise I was not expecting. ATTN MICROSOFT!!!! Want to make it easy for Palm users to join our fight? Offer this functionality in reverse for Active Sync!!!
I spent a good part of the day on this phone without using any headsets, etc. The reception was good and the conversations were clear as could be. I asked each person I spoke with how I sounded and they all said I was just fine! Total talk time was around 3 hours today. An hour and a half was with one friend of mine and the phone never became uncomfortable. I am hope 13 hours after my day began with 100% charge and the indicator shows a tad over 50% life.
I had attempted to upgrade my old handset to 1.17 according to the directions provided by Palm and Cingular, but the firmware update didn’t go smoothly and I had to repeat the process more than once. The update made the old Treo very unreliable, resulting in periodic White Screens of Death when I ran the Chatter Email application on it.
Mark Blanc, the author of Chatter Email had suggested that there was no conflict between Chatter Email 1.1.4.3p and the 1.17 firmware. From what I’ve seen since I got my replacement Treo 650, he’s right.
My observations for today:
Blaze, the built in web browser, is horrible. I haven’t taken the time to see if there is any settings to make webpages not look BAD. I am definitely not in Windows Land anymore.
Since I started using a Treo with the 1.17 firmware update, I’ve noticed much better support for my Motorola HS850 Bluetooth Headset. The Treo tries to connect to the headset whenever a call is placed or received. This makes a lot more sense than the previous behavior, which required me to press the action button on the side of the headset.
The lesson I’ve learned from my firmware update failure is this: from now on I’m only doing a firmware update if the performance enhancements offered by the update specifically address a problem I’ve recently experienced with my Treo. In other words, I’m not doing anymore updates just to stay current.