Nothing in mind....just interested in hearing about its feature set in action....um, actually, I would like to try to gauge if the apps would be in anyway useful to myself, so any insider info you can provide on these would help. Thanks, I look forward to comments.
Mobile Phones
- Thread starter The JoJo
- Start date
Fushigi --> http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=8938
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Yeah, I'm aware of that. I'm not anticipating it being too much of a problem for me as I don't have a huge contact list & I run most apps of the SD card vs. internal RAM. My data usage shouldn't be much of a problem under the new architecture. My T600 has over 14MB free; if that drops below 10MB on the 650 I'm still in good shape.
Palm went to the 512 sector for some reason; most assume it's related to the new memory architecture & the way RAM is backed up to NVRAM continually. I personally don't care how it's stored internally, but I'm surprised they didn't use a 128 or 256 byte sector vs. 512.
As far as the return rate, that's probably at least somewhat misleading. I've read where a lot of folks ordered the phone from PalmOne & their carrier (& anyone else who listed it) and just cancelled the order(s) with the supplier(s) who was(were) slower at fulfilling the order. As I ordered through the roadshow program for a larger discount, I don't expect my phone for at least a couple more weeks.
Palm went to the 512 sector for some reason; most assume it's related to the new memory architecture & the way RAM is backed up to NVRAM continually. I personally don't care how it's stored internally, but I'm surprised they didn't use a 128 or 256 byte sector vs. 512.
As far as the return rate, that's probably at least somewhat misleading. I've read where a lot of folks ordered the phone from PalmOne & their carrier (& anyone else who listed it) and just cancelled the order(s) with the supplier(s) who was(were) slower at fulfilling the order. As I ordered through the roadshow program for a larger discount, I don't expect my phone for at least a couple more weeks.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
My Treo 650 finally arrived on Thursday. I was ill Friday so I didn't really mess with it much. Spent Saturday morning manually migrating apps so I'd get a clean install and then finally called Sprint to activate it & de-activate the Treo 600. Said activation could take up to 2 hours but it was done in under 10 minutes.
First impressions:
- Keyboard: Backlight is bright. No problems typing/viewing it in the dark. Tannin would approve.
Typing is also improved. The slight revisions they made to the keyboard have already improved my typing speed & accuracy. Basically the keys are slightly larger but more closely spaced. They also curved the layout into a somewhat of a smile. Typing one-handed is easy. The dedicated Alt key is a good addition. I'm still getting used to the re-positioned Home & Menu keys, but there new placement is logical. Ditto for the re-assignment of two function keys to the normal green & red phone buttons.
- Screen: Brighter, sharper, just plain better. It's now 320x320x64K colors; a 4-fold improvement in resolution & 16x the color palette. Really a night & day difference from the T600.
- Stylus: Now one-piece (no unscrewing the ends like the T600). All aluminum with a plastic stylus tip. Nice heft to it; feels good.
- Antenna: Same height, but it's now oblong vs. almost square. More petite & stylish.
- Weight: It feels a tad lighter than the T600, but just barely.
- Battery: It's now removeable. Battery life so far seems improved but it's a little hard to tell as I haven't used it long enough to do a sustained workload on it.
- Speaker: Louder & better clarity. Now adequate for playing MP3s at a decent volume (could use more bass, though).
- New Palm 'universal' connector: Not too impressive. Should be OK, but I wonder just a little about longevity. Sync speed should be better than before.
- Camera: Still VGA resolution, but images are much brighter & the cam now has a 2x digital zoom. Huge improvement. There's even a tiny mirror next to the lens so if you're taking a photo of yourself you can see if you're centered or not.
- Bluetooth: Not tested yet. My headset should arrive in a week or so & I haven't configured the BT on my laptop yet (for BT syncing).
- Phone app: More tightly integrated now. The only downside so far is that in phone mode I have to select Contacts before typing a name; on the T600 I could just start typing.
- Browser: Much improved. Better compatability with sites and a much better display thanks to the higher res screen. Still won't work for everything, though.
- Standard Palm apps: All work as expected. No surprises. Decent response time from the faster CPU.
- Email: The bundled Versamail connected to my Gmail & personal domain accounts just fine for receiving. I haven't tried sending yet. I'll have to talk to work about setting me up for MS Active Sync with Exchange. Because that's not set up, right now I'm also still running Sprint's Business Connection (BizCon) to access my Exchange email/calendar/contacts. A bit of a waste of RAM but I've got enough at the moment.
- RAM: Only 9.5MB free at the moment, but if I get the email thing straightened out that should recover 1MB or more. I can probably also move a couple of apps to the SD card to free up some more.
- SD slot: Faster than the T600. Higher-powered so it can accept SD-based GPS units and the like. Inserted cards sit just a tad lower than on the T600; enough so that accidental ejections should be less of a concern.
Moving on to 3rd party stuff:
- Games: Bejeweled & Zap 2016 both run great. Bejeweled is CPU-clock sensitive so it's animations are way faster than before. Haven't played much else so far.
- PTunes, LauncherX, Adobe Reader, GrxView, pEdit Pro: No problem.
- BackupMan: Fails partly into the backup. I think there's already an update/fix for this.
- Card Export II: Runs but my laptop doesn't see the Treo as a mass storage device. Will look for an update.
Not tested:
- Editing Word/Excel/Powerpoint docs with the bundled Docs-to-Go.
- Playing videos from the SD card.
- Recording videos using the 'camcorder' feature.
- Bluetooth.
- Other accessories & 3rd party apps
- The JVM that's available.
- Wired headset (not bothering since I'm going BT).
- Probably some other things I'm forgetting.
Overall it's a very worthwhile upgrade for me. Of course it helps that work is paying for it, but I'd probably get it myself even if they weren't.
First impressions:
- Keyboard: Backlight is bright. No problems typing/viewing it in the dark. Tannin would approve.
Typing is also improved. The slight revisions they made to the keyboard have already improved my typing speed & accuracy. Basically the keys are slightly larger but more closely spaced. They also curved the layout into a somewhat of a smile. Typing one-handed is easy. The dedicated Alt key is a good addition. I'm still getting used to the re-positioned Home & Menu keys, but there new placement is logical. Ditto for the re-assignment of two function keys to the normal green & red phone buttons.- Screen: Brighter, sharper, just plain better. It's now 320x320x64K colors; a 4-fold improvement in resolution & 16x the color palette. Really a night & day difference from the T600.
- Stylus: Now one-piece (no unscrewing the ends like the T600). All aluminum with a plastic stylus tip. Nice heft to it; feels good.
- Antenna: Same height, but it's now oblong vs. almost square. More petite & stylish.
- Weight: It feels a tad lighter than the T600, but just barely.
- Battery: It's now removeable. Battery life so far seems improved but it's a little hard to tell as I haven't used it long enough to do a sustained workload on it.
- Speaker: Louder & better clarity. Now adequate for playing MP3s at a decent volume (could use more bass, though).
- New Palm 'universal' connector: Not too impressive. Should be OK, but I wonder just a little about longevity. Sync speed should be better than before.
- Camera: Still VGA resolution, but images are much brighter & the cam now has a 2x digital zoom. Huge improvement. There's even a tiny mirror next to the lens so if you're taking a photo of yourself you can see if you're centered or not.
- Bluetooth: Not tested yet. My headset should arrive in a week or so & I haven't configured the BT on my laptop yet (for BT syncing).
- Phone app: More tightly integrated now. The only downside so far is that in phone mode I have to select Contacts before typing a name; on the T600 I could just start typing.
- Browser: Much improved. Better compatability with sites and a much better display thanks to the higher res screen. Still won't work for everything, though.
- Standard Palm apps: All work as expected. No surprises. Decent response time from the faster CPU.
- Email: The bundled Versamail connected to my Gmail & personal domain accounts just fine for receiving. I haven't tried sending yet. I'll have to talk to work about setting me up for MS Active Sync with Exchange. Because that's not set up, right now I'm also still running Sprint's Business Connection (BizCon) to access my Exchange email/calendar/contacts. A bit of a waste of RAM but I've got enough at the moment.
- RAM: Only 9.5MB free at the moment, but if I get the email thing straightened out that should recover 1MB or more. I can probably also move a couple of apps to the SD card to free up some more.
- SD slot: Faster than the T600. Higher-powered so it can accept SD-based GPS units and the like. Inserted cards sit just a tad lower than on the T600; enough so that accidental ejections should be less of a concern.
Moving on to 3rd party stuff:
- Games: Bejeweled & Zap 2016 both run great. Bejeweled is CPU-clock sensitive so it's animations are way faster than before. Haven't played much else so far.
- PTunes, LauncherX, Adobe Reader, GrxView, pEdit Pro: No problem.
- BackupMan: Fails partly into the backup. I think there's already an update/fix for this.
- Card Export II: Runs but my laptop doesn't see the Treo as a mass storage device. Will look for an update.
Not tested:
- Editing Word/Excel/Powerpoint docs with the bundled Docs-to-Go.
- Playing videos from the SD card.
- Recording videos using the 'camcorder' feature.
- Bluetooth.
- Other accessories & 3rd party apps
- The JVM that's available.
- Wired headset (not bothering since I'm going BT).
- Probably some other things I'm forgetting.
Overall it's a very worthwhile upgrade for me. Of course it helps that work is paying for it, but I'd probably get it myself even if they weren't.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Latest Treo: http://www.digit-life.com/news.html?05/33/98#53398
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Howell
Storage? I am Storage!
Fushigi said:
Did you ever get the Activesync set up? I have had nothing but trouble setting that up and Verizon was no help. Alternatively, I have had zero problems setting up Blackberrys and PocketPC based devices.
paugie
Storage is cool
Until a year ago, 95% of mobile phones here were Nokia. Now, Sony-Eriksson has grabbed some market share.
I used to have a Nokia 3350. Traded it off for a 1100. Still don't have use for a camera phone. Meaning I can't afford them. All my kids have camera phones, though.
Dunno if the Philippines IS the texting (SMS) capital of the world, but if any of you get here somehow, you'll probably be scratching your head wondering why 10 out of 40 people in a bus are busy punching out SMS on their phones at any given moment.
I used to have a Nokia 3350. Traded it off for a 1100. Still don't have use for a camera phone. Meaning I can't afford them. All my kids have camera phones, though.
Dunno if the Philippines IS the texting (SMS) capital of the world, but if any of you get here somehow, you'll probably be scratching your head wondering why 10 out of 40 people in a bus are busy punching out SMS on their phones at any given moment.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Yeah, I've played with it. It works OK, but Versamail is pretty crappy compared to Sprint's Business Connection Enterprise Edition (Seven's product). Anyway, for ActiveSync we didn't do anything from the carrier side. We already use Exchange Webmail so I simply pointed Versamail to that. Practically nothing to configure.Howell said:
But Sprint's BCEE is psuedo-push and doesn't rely on timed syncs. I could lived with timed syncs and the extra battery drain, but Versamail wasn't too flexible on scheduling. VM also has a tendancy to go unstable and crash/reset the Treo. When that happens, it's a crapshoot as to whether or not your VM database has been corrupted.
All of that said, the company doesn't want to pay for BCEE anymore, so I'll have to migrate to something. As I've a spare laptop at the office that's always on, I'll probably run Outlook there and use the desktop connector to sync to BizCon Personal Edition.
I don't have any use for them either. Perhaps when they hit 3-4MP capability, then I might have a use for them to grab the occassional snapshot that is worth keeping.paugie said:
I've read that Japan is, but don't know if that's true
I remember a year or so ago, being on a bus and a group of young girls sitting across from each other were having a great time text messaging back and forth to each other. I imagine it was just for the novelty at the time ... as I'd doubt their parents would much appreciate the bills if this is a regular usage pattern.
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
A colleague has a Treo 650 on Verizon, he got a TomTom GPS for Palm Treo doodad the other day. Very nice, connects via Bluetooth. And he got a 2GB SD card so he can store all of the US on it.
The Treo 700w would be a winner, but having less resolution than the 650 is unacceptable IMHO. Also I would need a version without camera, like is available with the 650.
The Treo 700w would be a winner, but having less resolution than the 650 is unacceptable IMHO. Also I would need a version without camera, like is available with the 650.