Should I get a Treo 650?

[ciphergoth]

(More geek stuff, sorry)

My Treo 600 has finally given up the ghost. Yesterday, on the way to deliver money to LARC, I slipped on a bit of wet cardboard and went arse-over-tit in the drizzling rain. When I got to LARC I found that my phone was refusing to connect to the phone network claiming insufficient power, and a full recharge and hard reset is failing to persuade it otherwise. I'm borrowing an old Nokia handset (ex-kitty_goth's and destined ultimately for ergotia's use) while I work out what to do about it.

The obvious object of desire is the next model up, the Treo 650, which seems to have just now become available through Orange. If I was superstitious, I'd think it was Meant, but I'm so not. And there's something telling me that I should think hard about getting a 650.

I used to have a Treo 180, but the flip-over screen snapped off. Apparently that happened to everyone who had a Treo 180. Then I got a 600. Since then I've learned the "taking the SIM out" trick to help it get online, had conversations while it was plugged in to the power so it didn't buzz so loudly, shouted into the microphone as it becomes unable to pick up my voice, and other annoyances. I believe that of those I know who also have 600s (wechsler, julietk, purplerabbits, some_fox, adjectivemarcus, [Bad username or unknown identity: one_other_-_shit_-_who_is_it?]) all of them have had problems of one sort or another.

About Revenge of the Sith, I've been saying "If you go to the same restaurant twice and they serve you shit both times, would you go a third time?". So I should probably be applying the same principle here.

On the other hand, Palm claim that they know about the reliability problems with the 600 and have gone to a different manufacturer for the 650 to address them, and I do feel a sort of loyalty to PalmOS. And the reviews look good. I want a smartphone, but I won't touch Wince of course, so the only competition is a Symbian-based phone - which would mean ditching all my apps and working out how to port across all my addresses and suchlike. So I'm torn.

Update: Of course, I could just get a free Bluetooth phone, and buy a Bluetooth Palm - would that be nearly as good?

What are all you other 600 owners thinking of doing?

Comments

[juliet]

I'm about to send my 600 to PalmOne for repair/replacement (not sure what they'll do with it) as it's still within its year's warranty. I am Sorely Tempted by a 650 but really can't justify the cost atm. If they're offering an upgrade when it actually becomes available (I don't think it's *actually* available yet, just *about* to be? The Orange bloke I spoke to yesterday while sorting out warranty stuff said that they're running lots of tests on it before releasing it properly).

I'm a bit worried by the problems with first the 180 & now the 600; but tbh I have limited other options. I really can't function well without a PDA; having separate PDA & phone doesn't work well (I just leave the PDA behind & then what's the use?); I don't get on with Graffiti so P800/900 are no good (which also knocks out separate PDA as I can't get it subsidised by the phoneco so it'd be £300-400 for one with a keyboard); and whilst I might reluctantly consider WinCE, I can't face the porting problem. Anyway, I *like* Palm! So, yeah, I'll be sticking with my repaired 600 short-term, & possibly upgrading longer-term, depending on the finances.

So far the lifetime appears to be about a year (the 180 should have come under warranty as well, for me, except that I had problems with Dabs which led to them not registering the report in time :-/ ). Which means a) warranty may well be valid, & b) I can kind of see it as paying £100/yr for the phone. Which is a little expensive, but £8/month is IMO worth it for the convenience.

Symbian cheerleading

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

The P910 has a tolerable keyboard on the reverse of its flip pad, and the handwriting recognition is considerably more naturalistic than graffiti. I would really recommend trying one out before writing it off completely.

I think Treos are always destined to a be bit shit, tbh. The underlying OS simply doesn't fit well with telephony.

I haven't played with WinCE PDA-with-phones, but the smartphones all suffer from having a really crappy and unintuitive UI. Admittedly, this might just be familiarity with UIQ and Series60 talking, but I find navigating around them really hard work.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Make that £200/yr - that's what the Orange website is listing as the upgrade price!

[juliet]

Yes, I saw that (wasn't there at all yesterday). Bugger that - if/when I do upgrade, I shall be locating myself a better deal from elsewhere.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of going back to a regular phone to be honest. I'd love a 650, but I can't justify the expenditure since I'm now on a £15 a month plan so I'd be paying full price for a 650 (either in cash money or in installments by upping my plan and not using the minutes). I mainly use the Treo for texts, photos and Eatwatch anyway, and I would make more straightforward calls if the phone worked acceptably more than half the time. What I want is a phone with good texting capability and a decent camera that uploads straightforwardly onto my computer at home, the rest is gloss...

Treo 650

[bootpunk.livejournal.com]

KI'm glad its finally here - what a bloody wait that was. I'll be getting one despite not having any experience with earlier Treos - I have owned two Palm IIIxe's tho'. The deals Orange are offering don't seem very competitive so far ... I was going to stick with Orange, but unless I see better prices from them I might consider a switch, the deals I've seen with Vodafone were quite a bit better iirc.

Re: Treo 650

[juliet]

Expansys are offering what appear to be some good deals with Vodaphone (£117 for the phone, £35/mth for 275 anytime mins, 205 texts, & a weird thing called 'stop the clock' whereby you only pay for the first 3 mins of evening/weekend calls, up to 60 mins).

[resists spending money she REALLY DOESN'T HAVE]

[cries]

Better Deals

[bootpunk.livejournal.com]

MobileBay.co.uk have some good looking deals. Looks like it will pay to shop around a bit.

Of course, now is when my fucked credit comes back to bite me on the bum. Wonder if I can just pay for a year up front if I fail a credit check ...

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

I've been waiting for the 650 to come out for months, and planning to get it ASAP - my 600's starting to have comms problems, and I want something with bluetooth & a decent screen, that can use all my Palm apps and work well with my Mac.
Mind you, I'll need to get a decent case for this one - the old one's dropped it 5 times.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

The 650 is being made by HTC, who make most of the Windows smartphones - and who are also the employers of HP's Singapore-based calculator division (sadly lost in the Compaq merger).

Coincidence? I think not.

[skx.livejournal.com]

I pretty much agree with your resteraunt analogy.

I've made my mind up to not watch the third film just yet. I'm sure I'll see it at somebodies house on DVD when it's released - but right now the thought of having the sage "closed" isn't enough to outweigh my disappointment at the other two prequels.

[hughe.livejournal.com]

i downloaded a spoof of ep3 a few months back. the spoof is better.

[bootpunk.livejournal.com]

But does it top the spoof trailer for EpI - the South Park version? Dammit, after watching that trailer I didn't want to see the film unless it was done in a South Park style (and I managed to stay true to that - haven't seen EpI or EpII to date).

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Of course, I could just get a free Bluetooth phone, and buy a Bluetooth Palm - would that be nearly as good?

I have a Bluetooth phone and a Bluetooth PDA (not Palm), and have played with numerous smartphones. I'd say having them separate is not nearly as good as having them integrated if you would carry both about with you everywhere anyway - Bluetooth sucks in many fiddly ways and integrated, integral connections are out-of-sight less bothersome. OTOH if you would prefer not to carry the PDA the whole time, and only occasionally want GPRS/3G connectivity for your PDA, it's way better, since you only have to lug the phone around.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Two ideas.

1. Have you upgraded the firmware in your Treo 600? I did so and found that a lot of the annoyances have been fixed in the later firmware updates. (Grepping around the Treo 600 forums on www.brighthand.com should reveal the sources for downloads, and user experiences.)

2. If it's complaining about the battery, how about getting it re-celled, first? It's bound to be cheaper than shelling out 200 clams on a T650.

Finally, I've still got my T600 but I'm not using it. I've downgraded to a Sony-Ericsson T610 (nasty, nasty, cheap rubbish after the Treo) ... because I needed Bluetooth that badly and the T650 wasn't available when I needed it. But I may be upgrading to a T650 when I get over the sticker shock from my current PDA.

Post-finally, you really ought to check out the Windows Mobile stuff. It's Microcruft, but they've currently got the edge over Palm on multi-tasking, software availability is "good enough", stability doesn't seem to be too bad, and there are some nice phones out there (like the Orange SPV M2000) which look like real competitors for the T650. I know Micro$oft is the Great Satan and all, but your phone is (a) a vital day-to-day tool, and (b) a consumer item that you'll be replacing in a couple of years anyway. You can always switch back if Palm get their act together ...

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Speaking of the Bluetooth Palm option, that's a good one. The Tungsten T5 has some quirks, but they were ironed out pretty quickly after launch and it has a nicer screen and much better battery life than the T3. The new Lifedrive also looks really interesting, but the battery life sucks -- a T5 and a 1Gb SD card is not much more than half the price and even if you factor in waiting 18 months and buying a 4Gb SD card (when they come available) it'll work out cheaper.

My one caveat is that phones are going in exactly the opposite direction to where I'd like to see them go, with lots of colour camera nonsense and less(!) functionality -- if you want a data terminal for your PDA, you can do a lot worse than an old Nokia 6310i (still available from Orange, I think). I am sorely tempted to buy a new battery and go back to my three/four year old Ericsson T39m -- until EDGE/G3 really catches on it does everything I want in a phone and also has a proper keypad protector (unlike the SE-T610).

I'm taking a break from Palm with an HP iPaq hx4700. VGA screen, yummy; but the killer app for me is a thing called TextMaker -- a real full-blown word processor, not the crufty rubbish I've been putting up with on palms for too long. There's also a vim port and perl and python; WinCE has come a long way in the past couple of years. Finally, the Linux port is in progress and once they get the frame buffer, WiFi and Bluetooth working I may well migrate over to OpenOffice/Firefox/TBird on a VGA screen small enough to slip in a pocket.

[(Anonymous)]

If I wanted an all-in-one PDA and phone, I'd get a Sony Ericsson P910.

I have a P900 lent to me by work, and it blows away the Palm in almost every respect bar inability to run Palm software. It can multi-task properly, it has a web browser that can actually deal with real web sites rather than just cut-down sites for mobile devices, it has an e-mail client with a unified inbox for all your messaging (categorized into SMS, each POP/IMAP account, MMS, ...), the sound is audibly loud, and the screen is bigger than a Treo's.

The only problem with the P900 is it doesn't support handsfree Bluetooth, so it won't link with the Prius. That's allegedly fixed in the P910.

—meta (http://www.pobox.com/~meta/)

[Watch LJ b0rk the above HTML.]

Sith

[jhg.livejournal.com]

I've not seen it yet, but Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright loved it - and they made a whole TV series about how shit the Phantom Menace was...


J