PDA/Smart Phones - which one?

[Helevitia]

well, I hope your right. Atleast I am giving it a shot

Dave

[Helevitia]

I got the phone today. They can't activate it until 11am on January 3rd because of the transfer of my old number ot the new phone. Oh well, at least I can add contacts and play with the camera and video

I already noticed that the speaker phone sounded like crap and so did the regular speaker. But that could be for a number of reasons and I won't judge the phone by this one call.

It's such a pretty phone though. It is truly a geeks wet dream. Even my non-geek family oohed and aaahed over it.

[Wombat]

Call friends on landlines with good phones, and see how they think you sound. Past Treos have had crappy built-in mics, and this may be no different.

[Jammrock]

Long story short, I may get my hands on a Treo 600 or 650 next month More toys for Jammrock

[Helevitia]

ughh....I've just finished reading massive complaints about the voice quality of the 650. I haven't even ahd a chance to use the phone yet and I'm already gonna return it.

The bottom line is, a good amount of people are complaining that the 650 has a problem with loud noises being clipped and echo problems to boot.

Interestingly, Palm talked to ONE guy about his problem and gave him a beta patch to test out. He loved it and posted it on treocentral.com. Palm got pissed off that he posted it and asked everyone to remove their IP. Another person, Shadowmite, has a website about hacking the treo 650 and includes this patch/fix in his ROM updates.

Most users love this patch and say it works great, some still complain.

There is to many problems. Memory issue, voice quality issue, reboots, and more!

Well, I have the phone, so I will try it out for a few days anyway, but it looks like it is going back.

[VJ]

I'm really impressed with the Nokia 6260. It runs Symbian OS, audio quality is great (but sometimes a bit silent), and the PDA featurelist is impressive. I can imagine that when combined with a bluetooth keyboard, this could really compare with a Treo (combination keyboard + 6260 will be bulkier, but the 6260 on its own is be smaller).
I feel the main advantage is given by the Symbian OS: all phones with this OS will be similar.

The formfactor is nice, but the phone does have some downsides (I'm not bothered by most of them):
- batterylife: I normally reach 4 days of standby, but apparently, here at my parents place it is down to 2 days (with very infrequent use). I'm guessing the base station is not that closeby
- mono mp3 playback
- in camera mode, the resolution is 480x360 (in browse mode one can reach 640x480)
- sometimes the other party is very silent (not sure if this is a phone issue though)
- edit-key is close to the keypad (one needs to press them simultaneously to select things, this is not a one hand operation and the keys are quite close)
- in closed mode, there is no info on who is calling (apart from e.g. a custom ringtone); answering the call on opening the phone can be switched of though


Jörg

[Helevitia]

I am now posting this message from my 650. Not bad at all! The keyboard takes a little getting used to, but it really makes it easier to do stuff like this. Now I just need to tedt out the phone and mail. Bye for now. Dave

[Helevitia]

OK, so I went a full day with using the phone. Mostly inside my house and a few miles away.

I'm actually suprised I'm saying this, but the phone worked flawlessly! Inside my house, I always had 2 bars or 3 on occasion. Outside my house I had 4 or more wherever I went. Nobody complained of any quality issues.

Also, I posted over at treocentral.com to get other Bay Area users opinions and every single person that posted had a positive comment. I even had people say they switched because t-mobile and/or cingular was horrible and Sprint works everywhere they don't. Maybe Sprint has improved?

Also, they pointed me to www.cellreception.com which was enlightening. Sprint doesn't seem to be as bad as I orginally thought.

And last, someone pointed me to a PDF from this time last year that goes over the different carriers. Thought some of you would be intersted. Check it out here:

http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=62196

Oh and I also learned that Sprint's 1900Mhz has the hardest time going through walls, which would explain why everyone complains about indoor use.

[Jammrock]

Glad to hear you like it I'm hope'n to have a 600 or 650 within a month

[Helevitia]

One more thing...In California, you actually have 30 days to return the phone without being locked into a contract.

Hey Jamm, don't look at the 650 if you get a 600, the screen alone will make you want the 650 over the 600.

[Helevitia]

I am lovin' this phone!

email: I setup gmail with the default mail program(versamail). It works perfectly. It looks so nice on the high res screen. I have reduced the fonts and the email looks almost like it does on a PC.

web: The default browser is Blazer. It works decently. Palm has two settings to view web pages: enhanced and wide(normal). I view all of the pages in enhanced since it seems to be easier to read. Wide is good for some pages so it is nice to have the option. Not sure of the download speeds exactly but I would say it took me about 1minute or less to download a 1MB file. So it is about 3 times as fast as 56k. If it was a little faster it would be perfect.

Irda: Love this feature. Never used it before today. Now I can just beam a document or mp3 file at the touch of a button.

Camera: Not bad for a VGA camera but it would have been nice to have a 1.3MP camera. I can see it coming in handy from time to time.

Video camera: Amazing how well this works. No zoom, but still looks decent. A 30 second clip is about 500K.

Games: I've tried out Chess, Tetris, and some kind of flying shooter. They are all very fun to play and look fantastic! It's all about the screen, trust me.

Battery: My work day is ending and I have 75% battery left. I've used almost every feature at least once today. I've talked on the phone for approx. 40 minutes. The battery is impressive in my opinion. The talk time is 4.5 hours without bluetooth so I can see this being the biggest drain. The phone charges in about 4 hours.

Sound Quality: I have not experienced any of the problems that people are complaining about except for the first call I made to Sprint. I twas horrible. I have since talked to Sprint twice and each time I talk to them it sounds awful, so I am chalking up my bad experiences so far to Sprint only. Listening to people sounds slightly muffled. Everyone tells me that I sound fine. I would rate listening as average.

Speaker phone is slightly below average. If you are in a noisy car, you will experience the most problems.

The speaker is distorted at full volume.

Keyboard: It looks so nice lit up, even in the day time. They really did a good job designing the keyboard feel and lighting. I am only 5' 9" so it is probably easier for my fingers to use the keyboard. I can see bigger people struggling a little more.

Hotsync: works like a charm. I haven't had any problems.

Contacts: I love how you put everything in on your computer and download it to the palm. No more using a keypad to enter contacts.

Calener: Typical calender program, not much to say.

What else? Lots of geek knobs. Tons of hacks and stuff to download and play with (which I haven't done yet).

I think the biggest complaint I have so far is the fact that it is hard to find good free apps. They all cost money and they are expensive! Anyone know of a good site to get freeware?

All-in-all I would say this is a great device. I would recommend it in a heartbeat. If anyone has any questions, let me know.

oh yeah, something else, it puts text messages in chat style so you can scroll up and see what each other has typed. Love that.

[Taz]

This site any good?

http://www.freewarepalm.com/

If you use IM's at all then take a look at Veri Chat

[Helevitia]

Thanks for the link Taz Definitely some goodies out there. I'll take a look at Veri Chat.

Dave

[Helevitia]

One word: VNC!

I can get remote desktop or VNC working from my Treo

[VJ]

Wi-Fi for treo 600 and 650, without using the SD slot:

http://www.smartphonetoday.com/articles/2005/1/2005-1-7-At-Last-Wi.html

Might be interesting...


Jörg