Twelve Black Code Monkeys

I’ve only had my Treo 700wx for about 4 months now, but it works very well for me. Now Palm is finally unveiling a decent successor, the Treo 800W. It has just about every enhancement I can think of outside of a multi-touch iPhone interface, and a bigger screen. The only thing I don’t see mentioned is GPS capability, but given that other Palm devices are including this and the wealth of all other features, it seems pretty likely. The only thing that I’m a little sad about is the microSD, since both my cameras and my phones have taken regular SD now for the last 2+ years. But maybe by the time I actually get this phone, the 8GB microSD will be affordable. You can now get a 16GB SD card for half the price of an 8GB microSD… Oh well, I don’t even use more than one quarter of my cheap 4GB SD card in my current phone, so I guess I should stop whining!

http://blog.treonauts.com/2008/01/more-treo-800w.html?utm_source=tnemail&utm_medium=daily

Today the long-awaited LifeDrive from Pa1mOne was announced. TreoCentral has a great synopsis and links to various articles about it on the web.

I applaud Pa1mOne for being the first PDA to actually use a hard drive expanding their line to include a hard-drive-based device. What took these companies so long? Apple has had the hard drive iPod out for what, 5 years almost? They’ve even had their Mini iPod with a very small 4gb (now up to 6gb) hard drive. Frankly this is overdue. It’s also a bit ironic considering the debacle that Pa1mOne caused by not only keeping the same low amount of memory from their Treo 600 to their Treo 650 phone, but adding insult to injury by actually making the memory significantly less efficient thereby effectively decreasing the amount of it – something that they are still trying to fix.

Nevertheless, as I said, hands off to you, Pa1mOne, now let’s see this same hard drive technology expanded to other devices, in particular, your next smartphone, the Treo 700, or whatever it may be called… “CallDrive”? Obviously there are many advantages that flash memory has over a hard drive including speed, resistance to breaking, etc. But the one big advantage that hard drives still have over flash is cost.

The other key features that the LifeDrive has which will really make it the premier PDA until the competition can catch up are the screen and built-in Wifi. Some PocketPC’s have enjoyed built-in Wifi capability for a while, but this is the first PalmOS device one of only two Pa1mOne devices to have this feature built in. Most PalmOS devices (Treos included) don’t even have an option for external Wifi solutions, although Enfora will be offering options for Treo 600’s and 650’s any day now. As PDA’s and smartphones become beefier and more realistic alternatives for carrying around a laptop, a large, high-resolution screen is a must for legibility. Who wants to read a document or a web page that will only show you 30 characters per line, or only one third of a picture until you scroll (or shrink it down so much to fit inside the screen that you can’t tell what it is)?

The only disappointment for me is that the LifeDrive doesn’t come with a keyboard. But I realize this is a personal taste and that many can get along fine with handwriting recognition, and there are always external small keyboards for those who need them. It also doesn’t have a built-in camera, which would have been nice. Finally, LifeDrive runs on the same OS that my Treo does – PalmOS 5.4 or Garnet. While I certainly don’t mind this, it would have been that much more irresistible if Pa1mOne had actually been able to wait until Cobalt, their next generation OS, is out. Cobalt will make the big jump into a truly multithreaded OS which will improve the usability of PalmOS devices by an order of magnitude.

Not long ago, users of the Sprint-branded Treo 650 got an update that fixed some issues that have been annoying Treo 650 owners. Namely, the memory issue that caused much more memory to be consumed than for the Treo 600, and very low speakerphone volume levels. Now a version of the firmware for GSM Treo 650’s has been leaked via a Singapore Palm User Group. Users with Unlocked Treo 650’s as well as Cingular-branded Treo 650’s have been trying out this “test” version of the new 1.21 firmware. It seems a bit risky to be playing with an unaproved firmware version, but so far it looks like those who have successfully loaded it have had the same improvements to their memory and speakerphone volume as Sprint customers who’ve loaded their new firmware. So, for those who don’t want to play with this yet, just know that this bodes well for the update coming out for GSM phones in the near future. Stay tuned!

Update: There’s actually a detailed description posted by user 100th Monkey in the MyTreo.net Wiki, just in case you want to try this out.

I know what this looks like, but please pay no attention to today’s date! I know many people who have blackberries for work. They’ve seen my new Treo 650 and would love to buy one themselves, but they need to stay connected to the office. When I was first researching options to synch my information last summer, I came across Good Technology which offers a server-based solution similar to Blackberry’s. However, the price was prohibitive for a single user. It was more of a solution for a large business. A few days ago, Good Technologies announced a similar offering designed more for small and medium-sized businesses called GoodLink Small Business Server Edition. Although no prices are given, it’s still likely way to costly for the average individual consumer, but will smaller businesses decide to scrap their blackberries or blackberry plans due to the Treo’s superior overall connectivity and vastly greater selection of third-party applications (which are also generally much less costly)? RIM has been working on a version of their blackberry software specifically for Treos, but we still don’t know when it will be out. The last news from a month or so ago was that it was in “final beta.” Maybe now they will be rushing it into production.

I came across a post in a Yahoo Group earlier today from a Treo 600 owner, Tom Wendell. Tom was lucky enough to have tested the new GoodLink product at his company and shared his thoughts about it in a long post, which he gave me permission to reprint:

“I’ve been selected as an alpha tester for the evaluation of the GoodLink product for our company (> 22K employees worldwide). I thought I’d give you some info on the initial installation of GoodLink and some first impressions of the product.

I’ve been using PalmPilots for around a decade, IIRC (started out with
PPilot Personal). I have accumulated a number of apps which I consider to be indispensable for my work as a field engineer for a medical device company. I currently use a Treo 600 on Verizon with a 256MB SD card.

Our company had been using Visio for e-mail wireless updates, but we ran into a number of issues with the product that could not be resolved, so the company is looking to use another product to sync with Outlook. GoodLink is the current target of our testing.

The GoodLink (GL) installation is initiated by connecting via Treo web
browser to the Good company website. Once the product is downloaded, the .prc file sets up the GL app and the wireless connection. The product then connects to the GL server at the company to populate the on-board GL databases. Once in place, the GL program provides you with immediate updating of the Outlook database for mail, calendar, notes, contacts, and attachments to e-mail messages.

Immediately upon opening the GL app, you are presented with a Today screen (similar to Outlook), with the ability to go to Calendar, Contacts, E-Mail, or Notes. The e-mail client is impressive, with a preview screen and the ability to access a drop-down menu containing all of the folders you would find to the left side of your Outlook desktop application. The preferences to allow these folders to be populated is not immediately apparent when perusing the menus, but I hope to find it this weekend (note: found the navigation on the FAQ on good.com). The calendar is OK, with appointments blocked out, but not color-coded or otherwise identified unless you touch the appointment to bring up the detail. You do have the ability to dial a call directly from the appointment text - an important feature if you’re driving and have to join a teleconference or contact a colleague.

As slick as the interface appears, there are several glaring issues that are serious obstacles (for me, at least). One is the amount of memory the app takes up out of the 32 MB on board the Treo. Other issues include incompatibility with other mainstream programs and the inability to implement some features in Outlook that are very handy for setting up meetings (like busy search). Another issue with the GL contact list is that the list no longer has the 16 user-defined categories that the Palm OS uses, it only has 2 categories - Personal Contacts and Company History. Additionally, the Notes app also had lost it’s categories and there is no way to define anything in any of the databases as ‘Personal.’ Everything and anything is liked up with Outlook. This is a serious shortcoming for someone who uses their company-purchased Treo as their own Day-Runner to schedule work and home activities.

As I mentioned earlier , the install process is very memory-intensive. From the Treo_Users’ Guide: “Treo 600 - first time GL install = 12.5 MB (…) Treo 650 - first time GL install = 14.6 MB.” (ref: GoodLink Treo Users’ Guide, p.30). Knowing the number of applications our company’s field personnel have on their Palms and Treos, the recommendation
from IT was to do a backup, hard reset, install GL, then re-sync to get the other apps and related databases back onto the Treo. This caused many of the applications to think they weren’t registered when they were re-sync’ed back onto the Treo, so I have some more digging to do in my files to find all the registration codes (but that’s MY fault for blindly trusting our IT dweebs). The large size of the installed GL app caused several apps on my Treo to be removed and put into Archive on the desktop. I’ll have to see what I can get to run from an SD card - it doen’t appear that GL will store any of it’s databases on an SD card.

Now, about the on-going memory allocations for GL. According to the Guide, the product supposedly uses about 5.8-6.0 MB for data storage after installation. However, upon opening the Delete screen from the default app launcher, you see that GoodLink is listed as using 8257K of memory. The discrepancy between what is listed as memory requirement and the actual requirements was resolved after contacting Good. The other 2 MB is taken up by sounds, images, and application logic (it looks like a little shuck ‘n jive by the company to make the memory usage seem not as bad). There are several other GL items that are listed separately (i.e. Contacts 115K, Calendar 109K, etc.). I know that the calendar and contact databases are highly dependent upon the contents of the Outlook calendar and contact lists, but here’s an interesting quirk about GL - the app does NOT use the Palm OS internal databases for calendar and contact lists.

This quirk is probably the most significant hurdle for power users to
overcome if they want (or are forced by their company) to use GL. The use of a separate database for calendar items, contacts, notes and the like means that applications like DateBk5, Beyond Contacts and other programs will not co-exist on a Treo that has GoodLink installed. The Outlook calendar doesn’t change on the desktop, but the Treo databases are blank. I have also noted (on the Delete screen from AppLauncher), that there are now two calendar databases. Since I have been a registered user of DateBk5 since the v3 days, I have optimized DateBk and my shortcuts to allow me to rapidly input appointments and contact info using Graffiti (now Jot), shortcuts, and DateBk templates. Furthermore, I have my calendar appointment color coded by category, with icons denoting the type of appointment (implant, follow-up, meeting, teleconference, etc.). Going from the integrated DateBk5 calendar, contact list, and todo list to the plain vanilla of the GoodLink calendar system is like going from a large, HD, flat-screen TV to a console B&W TV of the 60’s. This is a HUGE shortcoming, IMNSHO.

Oh, and did I mention that Jot doesn’t work in GL? It is activated and
works in other non-GL apps, but not while in any of the linked GL
apps. HUGE shortcoming #2….

Oh, and did I mention that you can’t beam (send or receive) contacts and appointments in GL? HUGE shortcoming #3….

So far, the programs we have found that don’t play well with GL are
DateBk5, Jot, Beyond Contacts, MMS (under Verizon) <BTW, it works when GL was unloaded again>, and Voice Dialing by Voice Signal.

I had great hopes for this application, but I am not willing to
significantly change the way I use my Palm (Treo or otherwise) just so that I can have wireless updating of my Outlook e-mail and calendar. I think that someone who is just starting to use a Palm OS device would be thrilled to use GL to get their Outlook functionality on their Treo. The loss of so many powerful apps to allow GoodLink to run is simply too high for me, personally. This message was not intended as a slam against the GL product, just an observation of how its installation would affect this self-described Palm power user. I’m sure that for some people, this app would be the cat’s meow.

In my job, I work pretty much independently from others in the company. My schedule changes on a minute-to-minute basis (therefore I am the one updating the calendar, in most cases). I only have slight interaction with other teams at my company, mostly via teleconferences. Therefore, the wireless updates that are the main selling points of the GL app are of limited value to me. If I were working in-house on development teams, my assessment of this app might have been wildly enthusiastic about the capability to keep up to date with emergency meetings and the like.

I have been looking forward to getting a Treo 650 upgrade from my company when Verizon finally gets their tail in gear and puts it on the list of supported devices. Now, if my company goes ahead with using GoodLink, I’m going to have to seriously consider getting a high-res screen Palm device instead and go back to carrying two devices again. I should be able to sync the DateBk5-enabled unit to Outlook using Chapura, like I do now.”

While this has some great info for people who are thinking about such a solution, it is definitely a very individual evaluation. Tom has been using Palm devices for a while and has developed an adherence to some PalmOS applications that don’t work with GoodLink. For people who are new to the Treo or haven’t even bought one yet, these issues probably won’t be that important. Of course memory is always an issue especially given the relatively small amount of it on all Treos as well as the inefficient use of it on the Treo 650. Although where I work everyone uses a blackberry, I would love to at least have the option of carrying around a Treo instead. It will be very interesting to see once RIM has unveiled their Blackberry Service for Treo how these products compare with each other!

My Treo 650 is due to arrive on Friday, maybe Saturday, or if I’m extraordinarily lucky, maybe even Thursday! With that in mind I have been researching upgrade procedures from the Treo 600. It seems the prevailing wisdom right now is not to do the standard, backup and restore procedure, but rather to start from scratch and install applications one by one. Part of this is to avoid potential incompatibility issues. The other is due to the memory issue on Treo 650’s.

As you probably know, the Treo 650 has a different KIND of memory than the Treo 600. This memory is “non-volatile flash” memory which means that it can retain information without power, unlike the Treo 600’s. Unfortunately, the minimum allocation size of this memory is much bigger than the Treo 600’s at 512 bytes. So a file that only has a few bytes of information still takes up 512 bytes. The effective result of this is that the applications that took up only 50K on your Treo 600 may take up 80K on your Treo 650, and so memory gets eaten up much more quickly.

Pa1mOne in their ultimate wisdom for some reason decided that most users did not need any more memory on the Treo 650 than on the Treo 600. Even if we believe that Pa1mOne was unaware of the less efficient memory usage on the Treo 650 (and if this is true I’m not sure whether this is a harsher statement against Pa1mOne than them realizing it but simply ignoring it), the phone still deserved an increase in memory. Pa1mOne’s competition is PocketPC Smartphones that typically come with 64MB of memory (double what’s in Treo’s), and sometimes more. It seems rudimentary that in this day of cheaper and cheaper memory that this was a very cheap method to compete better. But as it stands, the memory has become the chief bottleneck for performance of such phones for power users.

Speaking of power users, it seems that Pa1mOne doesn’t really value them as much as the mass of other users. While this may be a good decision based on standard marketing practices, the problem with this for a company peddling advanced electronics is that those driving the development, hardware and software innovation, and even a lot of the buzz and referred sales for these devices happen to be those power users. I have heard countless users on discussion forums and other websites complaining about this memory issue and about Pa1mOne’s seeming disregard for the issue. There are some who have decided (and are I’m sure advising their friends) that the Treo 650 is not the phone to upgrade to, and that they plan to either wait for a future edition that gets some of these things – especially the memory – right, or even that they are going to vote with their feet and buy a PocketPC phone.

This is truly unfortunate and I hope for Pa1mOne’s sake that they get their act together, but what are we all to do in the mean time - if there even is a mean time? Pa1mOne’s answer to the firestorm that erupted when the memory issue became public was to offer a free 128MB SD card to users who requested it. Since then it seems that even those requesting it (the offer is not really advertised anywhere) haven’t been able to get one. This is not really any compensation either because a 128MB card is probably worth $15 on the open market and really doesn’t go towards fixing the issue. Most power users will want at least a 512MB for their phone, so the 128MB will just be used as an added card for storing some temporary files like MP3’s.

So, my thought this morning was towards fulfilling this need from someone other than Pa1mOne, since I can’t expect them to offer a real solution any time soon. TiVo has worked with a dedicated community of hardware and software hackers and developers since its inception. The result of this is a few companies (the best know of which are Weaknees and pvtupgrade) that offer kits or full installation services that will take your TiVo and expand its storage capacity by leaps and bounds. What I want to know is why aren’t there some enterprising electrical engineers looking into if not starting a company to do this for the Treo, at least trying it out on their own? Is there something inherent in the Treo 650’s design that makes it too difficult to get under the hood and change things? So I would just call on all people who have this kind of technical ability to do this. Unfortunately Pa1mOne made a big mistake, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be fixed by it’s most enterprising and knowledgeable “power users,” despite the lack of regard we seem to garner from Pa1mOne.

So come on people, let’s create our own solution to this problem! I’m not about to try myself because that would require at least four more years of schooling, but I know some of you have the expertise to do this right now!

With all the excitement over the Pa1mOne’s new Treo 650, forgotten by many is that there’s another phone out there that has a lot of the same functionality and can be found at a pretty darn cheap price. Sure the Treo 600 is now a year and a half old, but it doesn’t make it any less functional. This is the phone I’m currently using (since my Treo 650 hasn’t come in yet), and it serves me very well indeed, as I’ve mentioned maybe a few times here before?

Used Treo 600’s are going for about $300 give or take on eBay these days – I’ve been doing some research as I will be putting my own up for auction hopefully soon enough. But, it appears you can get a brand new one from Amazon.com for as little as $125. Here are the catches: you need to sign up for new service with Cingular, meaning being roped into a two-year contract; secondly, if you want to pay $125 and not $225, you also have to sign up for a subscription to Audible.com. Audible.com, as I’ve mentioned here a number of times, is an audio book download service. You pay $20/month and get two audio books that often could retail for $50 or more each. Huge selection, and they are playable on the Treo itself.

So, if you are looking to switch cell phone carriers anyway (I’m seriously considering doing this myself when my contract runs out with T-Mobile in a few months) and either would be interested in trying out Audible for a year or your already an Audible member but you’ve already fulfilled your commitment, you could enter the Smartphone world on the cheap. And with all the Treo 600 users trading up to the Treo 650, there are tons of accessories available for dirt cheap as well. Aside from this, I’m pretty sure you get the bonus of getting an unlocked phone. Cingular Treo 600’s unless I’m mistaken, are unlocked.

Well, since this day seems to be all about Treos and mobile phones and such, I figured I’d post this excellent in-depth review of the Treo 650 posted just a few days ago on the Singapore Palm Users’ Group (SPUG) Forums:

“The Treo 650 looks almost identical to the Treo 600. I’ve been using the review unit for four days now, and no one has noticed that I’m carrying a different device.

That’s not such a bad thing at all, in fact, I believe the design choice was an intentional one. The Treo 600’s body was almost perfect for me, and in my opinion, has not been surpassed yet by any other handheld device. The presence of the antenna, however (even if slightly reduced in size) still irks me a little…”

Nice work!

Pa1mOne has finally come through and made Treo 650’s available for “the rest of us.” Well, I guess except for Verizon and Nextel, although the Treo 600 was never released for Nextel. Basically, Cingular is now officially offering the Treo 650 on their websites at least, and you can order a 650 directly from Pa1mOne not only for use with Sprint and Cingular/AT&T, but also an unlocked version at a very reasonable $599 without any service agreement.

On the other hand, Amazon.com is also offering the 650, and if you are also signing up for new service, you can usually get a big discount from them. So for example they have the Sprint version of the Treo 650 for only $309.99 for new Sprint customers. A similar offer for other carriers is likely to become available soon, and I’ll post an update when they do, and until then you can now buy the Cingular version right off of Cingular’s website for only $399.99 (if you’re a new customer). Update - ok, you could, but somehow Cingular seems to be playing games with us and has taken the page down at least for the moment! Aside from the new customer offers, one can also get $100 for signing up with Audible.com. For those who haven’t heard me talk about this service before, it’s an audio book service where you download the audio books as files (like MP3’s, but with a copy-protection scheme or DRM) for prices that are considerably less than what you will ever find via retail. Most books are unabridged and you can play these files both on your computer but also on many portable devices like the iPod, the Treo 600, and now the Treo 650. It’s Definitely worth a look. If you are already an Audible.com member, as I am, you can also get the $100 discount if your contract is up = you will just need to sign up for a new year’s commitment to Audible’s subscription fees. I think the way you do this is you have to actually call Audible’s customer service.

So, if you were at all wondering whether I have taken the plunge myself, yes, I have. As soon as I got up this morning and found the news out, I immediately ordered an unlocked 650 from Pa1mOne with a Bluetooth headset. Apparently it will ship in “1 to 2 weeks” but as much as I’ve been longing for this, I opted not to take the express shipping and will simply put it out of my mind until March. Yeah, right! This also means that I will be selling my Treo 600 to defray the costs of the 650. In the past this has meant a trip to eBay. Unless of course one of my friends is interested in buying it from me cheap = I will have to cut you a really good break if I know you, since I was given a similar generosity by the friend I bought mine from.

The model I am buying is the unlocked GSM version of the phone. A quick factoid = there are some different protocols (communication languages) that cell phones use depending on carrier and on what part of the world you live in. The two major ones currently are GSM and CDMA. GSM is used in most of the world = maybe 95+%. CDMA is used in North America and a few countries in South America. But while CDMA used to be the primary protocol in the U.S., it is now becoming much less so = both Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM, whereas Sprint and Verizon use CDMA. There’s lots of debate on the internet regarding which protocol is best, which is complicated by newer versions of these protocols, so called 2.5G or 3G (G for Generation). I can’t speak to the technical differences too much, but GSM does still have two undeniable advantages over CDMA. For one it is used throughout the world, so theoretically one can take one’s phone almost anywhere and it will work, although you might need to call your carrier to activate it for international use. Secondly, GSM phones use SIM modules, which are little postage-stamp cards that contain a tiny chip. This chip is represents your mobile phone account, and can be transferred from phone to phone fairly easily. Whereas CDMA the entire phone is representing your account, so if you want to switch phones, you have to go through your carrier, and if you want to have more than one phone you will probably have to pay more. But SIM cards aren’t always straightforward either. Mobile carriers often lock the phones they sell so that they can only be used with their network. If you want to take your T-Mobile phone and lend it to a friend who has a Cingular account and SIM, you can’t do it. You will have to get the phone “unlocked” first. Sometimes this is not an issue at all. T-Mobile does allow you to do this if your account is in good standing (perhaps also you need to be a customer of theirs for at least 3 months). I remember also hearing that Cingular in general did not lock their phones, however they are locking the Treo 650, so I’m not sure what their policy will be regarding unlocking it. The reason I ordered an unlocked version is primarily because I’ve heard that T-Mobile is not offering the 650 until at least May. Oh well! The added bonus, though, of having an unlocked 650, is, of course, that I could decide to move it over to a Cingular account, and I could do this without any problem with an unlocked device.

Now that I will be getting the 650, I should finally be able to write up my follow up to the Treo 600 vs. Color Sidekick Review I wrote last summer. This one will be about the 650 and the Sidekick II, which my wife currently has. What would be great is if I could also get my hands on one of the newer blackberries and/or even a PocketPC phone and throw those into the mix! But without any real recognition from these manufacturers, I would have to go out and buy these phones, something that my current budget won’t allow for! Heck even major sites that cover gadgets and consumer electronics don’t get a lot in the way of loaner units for review, so I’m not going to be presumptuous and expect this will ever happen for me, but it sure would be nice!

I know that I concentrate on this one phone when there are others out there, but from all I read the Treo 600 and 650 have the most media buzz about them. Is PalmOS the best platform for a smartphone? I don’t know. There are certainly other OS’s out there (Windows Mobile and Symbian) that have larger development communities and phones from major manufacturers who use these. A lot of PocketPC phones also have had Bluetooth and even Wifi (if not built in at least available via expansion card) for quite a while now. Why then am I just concentrating on the Treo 650’s new release? It’s a good question. For one, I’m somewhat biased due to the fact that I have a Treo 600. I’m also biased because I’ve had owned Palm PDA’s, including the Palm V and a Clie model who’s number escapes me. I’ve played with PocketPC devices here and there, but never owned one for an extended period. Aside from this, my inclination is to like Palm because it is not the 1-million ton Gorilla that is Microsoft. In fact until recently it was looking more and more decentralized. Not quite open-source, but the software company PalmSource is separate from the hardware company Pa1mOne, and there were other hardware developers out there like Sony, IBM, Handspring, etc. But more recently there’s seems to be more consolidation. Sony has given up on the PalmOS and is no longer making Clie’s. I’m pretty sure IBM isn’t making their PalmOS PDA’s either. Pa1mOne of course bought Handspring and now they are one company. There are still plenty of third-party developers, but the situation is looking more and more like Microsoft and it’s very tight control over its mobile OS marketplace.

Several events have happened with regards to the Treo 650 have started to erode even more hope in this product. Some have to do with Pa1mOne itself, but others have to do with decisions primarily made by its mobile carrier partners.

1. Pa1mOne decides to have a graduated release of the Treo 650. Sprint gets it in November of 2004, and none other get it until 2005. It’s the end of January and the second mobile carrier to get it, Cingular, has yet to, and it looks like they won’t be for at least a week or two more. T-Mobile will not get until at least May and Verizon will also be late. I’m not sure how much of this is Pa1mOne and how much are the carriers, but I just think it’s ridiculous to have different carriers not be able to have access to basically the same device at the same time. It causes some real resentment and there’s nothing that customers can do because most are locked into contracts that are very costly to walk away from.
2. Sprint disables DUN (Dial-up-Networking) via Bluetooth. Many users, even power users won’t care about this. What this does is allows you to use your mobile phone as a modem. Doing this means that you can basically do data for free (if you are getting unlimited minutes at the time you connect). You don’t get the data from Sprint to your phone, but rather you are just making a phone call and the data travels over that line to the phone, which is then passed to a laptop. Maybe it’s six of one half dozen of another in some ways because with digital phones, everything is really data when you come down to it, although a voice call takes up less bandwidth then Sprint’s higher-speed data network. However, you can still use a cable to connect your phone to your laptop, the only thing you can’t do is to use Bluetooth (wireless) to connect. Not a big deal, but a stupid limitation. Sprint eventually backtracked after a big outcry that propagated over the Internet and promised a “fix” but has yet to come out with one. A user eventually created a hack that did just that, though it is of course unofficial.
3. Memory Deficiency. After the Sprint Treo 650 came out, it was soon discovered that the way it managed memory wasn’t as efficient as the Treo 600. Because it contained the same paltry 32MB of memory (12MB of which were taken up by system files), the effective result was that the 650 was actually a DOWNgrade when it came to memory! The fact that Pa1mOne could not add even a few dollars worth of memory to alleviate this problem and give Treo users more breathing room angered many of its customers including this one. While the 650 is definitely better in some ways, it still lags behind competitors in others, such as memory, ability to handle Wifi (or even have Wifi built in), it’s still somewhat low resolution VGA camera, etc.
4. Now that Cingular is finally coming out with the Treo 650, it seems like they are ignoring the whole debacle with DUN and the Sprint Treo 650 and are planning to disable it as well. Or perhaps they saw how Sprint took a momentary lump for disabling the feature but still hasn’t issued their fix and a lot of people have just forgotten about it. Why they would care enough to disable a feature that only makes DUN a little more convenient (but doesn’t make it impossible by any stretch) is beyond me. I can understand why these carriers might not want you to have DUN if you aren’t paying for a data connection, but just making it a little less convenient doesn’t make sense. I think one big problem is that these carriers have distinct marketing groups. They have power users who are going to take advantage of these things like DUN, and Wifi to circumvent the fees that these carriers normally charge for the equivalent services that their own networks provide. There seems to be an inherent conflict of interest here with these companies battling with some of their customers. But I think they are fighting the inevitable. Eventually we’ll be using very high-speed, high-range wireless networks that blanket the country (the world) and they will use Skype or Voice Over IP technology for voice calls and the same data network for data. I guess until then, these carriers will still be butting heads with the power users who want to push the technology to its limits which also means ostensibly robbing the carriers of money. I would argue, though, that this group of users is very small compared to the overall customer base and also that these users, if they could not take advantage of these loopholes, would mostly not be paying the extra money in order to do the things they are trying to do with the loopholes but via the normal use of the phone.

So, with all this taken into account, I wonder how wise it is to concentrate on this one phone. I would certainly be willing to try out a PocketPC phone, but not having the disposable income to buy a new cell phone every couple of months as some on these mobile phone forums do, I’m probably not going to be looking at one any time soon – unless of course I start getting some sent to me for review purposes, but so far that hasn’t happened. While PocketPC phones have some advantages like those I’ve listed (as well as tighter integration with Windows on your PC, if you happen to use Windows, generally faster processors, etc.), they have disadvantages as well. For one, they generally are a bit bulkier than the Treo, although of course there are exceptions to this. They also tend to be a bit pricier as well. I’m sure there are other pros and cons that I’m missing, and for different users, different platforms will be the right decision. I’m not saying that either is right for everyone. People need to look at their specific needs in a phone/data device and figure this out for themselves. All I’m saying is that the idea of the Treo (or any PalmOS smartphone) being the only phone to look at is being slowly eroded from my mind. Part of this is because I simply can’t buy the phone yet due to what I think is probably a marketing decision or exclusivity deals by Pa1mOne, T-Mobile, or both. I know that PocketPC phones have the same issues and this is why many power users simply skip the branded phones and go for generic unlocked ones (but pay a price for this). Then again, it doesn’t appear that there are such unlocked ones available anywhere for consumers, only branded ones. Perhaps that will eventually turn the tide for some as they get sick of waiting for their own carrier to come out with a model. If I’m waiting months and months for T-Mobile to come out with a Treo 650 and there isn’t even an unlocked one available, maybe I’ll just get fed up and go over to a PocketPC phone. This is the risk that Pa1mOne faces by offering the phone to some but not all who want it. There just seems to be something inherently unfair about that, don’t you think?

It looks like the Treo 650 may soon be available to most of the world. For the last couple of months, it’s been exclusively available in one country (the U.S.) from one provider (Sprint) using a radio protocol (CDMA) that is incompatible with 99% of what the rest of the world uses (GSM). Last week we heard some rumors that Cingular (which uses GSM) would soon be carrying the long-awaited follow-up to the popular Treo 600. Today there is word that Pa1mOne has put up a page about a GSM Treo 600 without specifying a specific carrier, and writing that it is “coming”. This is good news for most smartphone enthusiasts who have been thinking of buying the Treo 650 because what this is saying basically is that Pa1mOne should be at least selling through their own site an unlocked GSM version of the phone which anyone who’s carrier uses GSM (most of the world outside the U.S. does, as well as T-Mobile and Cingular/AT&T within the U.S.) should be able to use without any problem. Just swap out your SIM card and plug it in and it should work immediately.

For some reason Pa1mOne has decided to remove the picture they put up, so it now links to a generic page, but Treonauts has a screen capture. Seems similar to another snafu that they made and then retracted later which leads me to think that either they aren’t communicating very well with their web team or else this is yet another stealth marketing move to create more buzz amongst the fanatics!