Treo 650 Review Update:
04/02/2005
By: Carlos E.
This purpose of this update is to provide some additional information on my
experiences with the Treo 650. For the original review please click
here.
First of all, I am on my fourth and final Treo 650. I had to return three, with the third being a credit to my account for the purchase price, and then I had to purchase the fourth. This is because of PalmOne's return policy which does not allow for multiple exchanges. This proved rather annoying, and as of this update, I have not yet received credit to my account. Hopefully soon.
Secondly, this last one does have the 'updated', pre-NVFS fix, firmware. In other words, rather than having the following, like my prior three:
Firmware 01.14
Software 1.05-ROW
It has the following:
Firmware 01.15
Software 1.06-ROW
Although other people on other sites have reported that this update doesn't improve stability, I have to say that so far this phone has been without a reset since I've received it more than a week ago. Impressive considering the quantity of resets that I had with the prior three. I still hope they put out the NVFS firmware update for all of those that aren't SprintPCS customers. For the record, the third Treo with the 1.14 firmware was MORE stable than the other two, but still suffered from a reset here and there.
The bluetooth connection continues to be a sore point for me. The Treo has the worst bluetooth implementation of any phone I've used since Bluetooth came out. It's just not very good. Quality is ok, and profile and device support is marginal. I used the HS-850 Motorola headset for a while until I bought the Treo specific headset recently (upcoming review). Although the new Treo headset works completely handsfree, there are times when it doesn't quite connect and then you have to turn it off and on again to get it to work. A little annoying. Regarding the issues that I was having with the Jabra 250, it seems that in fact the one that I used at the Palm store was a Palm-approved Jabra 250. The moral of the story, don't get a Jabra 250 unless it's from Palm otherwise you run the risk of not having it work in Handsfree profile, just in Headset profile (which limits functionality).
I've also been utilizing the Bluetooth on my Treo to dial up to the internet in areas where I don't have WIFI access. Out of the box, this is only possible with the Unlocked GSM model, but there are hacks out there that allow you to do this as well. The generic 3G scripts that you need to use for this can be downloaded with instructions from here. It'll be up to your service provider and the service plan you have whether or not you can actually use your service the same way I have.
Additional Applications that I've been using which are great:
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