Palm Treo 650 (CDMA)
Average Ratings
A fun toy, but very unstable.
I acquired my Treo 650 from Verizon several days ago.
PROs: Clarity, zero dropped calls thus far, good camera, excellent speaker phone, solid battery life, the PDAish features are very useful
CONs: Unstable to the point of frustration, no flash on the camera, no 802.11 solution readily available, charger and sync cables use cheap plastic connectors that do not stay in and are prone to breaking
Comments:
The Treo 650 randomly goes into a rebooting loop, which I can usually remedy by tapping the reset button with the stylus. However,
I have already had to restore the phone to factory default settings three times in as many days due to this rebooting nightmare.
Another complaint is that you can't use the Treo 650 as a modem for your laptop out of the box. You have to download some hacked software or purchase an application called PDAnet. This is frustrating because many cheaper phones allow you to connect to the internet with your laptop via a cable or bluetooth, but this expensive "smart" phone does not.
On the top-left corner of the telephone dialing screen, it typically says "Verizon Wireless", but half the time it shows a bunch of random high ascii text instead. This has been the case after all of my hard resets, so I suspect this isn't unique to my device.
One of the biggest reasons I bought this was because of the SD slot. I wanted to buy the PalmOne SD 802.11 card. I tried it, but it doesn't support the Treo 650. I found some hacked drivers on the web, but they crashed my Treo. The only 802.11 solutions I have found are some bulky "sled" with pass-thru charging, and some leather case with built-in 802.11. Having to purchase bulky sleds to enable 802.11 completely negates the purpose of buying an all-in-one pda/phone in the first place. I am disappointed by that.
Overall, I'll be happy if they ever offer a firmware upgrade to fix the crashes (assuming the problem isn't hardware-related) and if they offer Treo drivers for the palm sd 802.11 card.
Palmone's Xmas cash grab
This phone would be great if it were done.
Pros:
Good voice quality
Customizable side "hot" button
Speaker phone truly usable for "hands free"
Cons:
Bluetooth headsets are unusable - tried 2 plantronics and 2 jabra models at CES in Vegas with crackly, distent, and unusable results
Versamail crashes the unit on send / receive, randomly re-downloads all email items durring the day, will re-download all items if the trash folder is emptied, auto-send/receive not reliable with more than one account configured.
Long delay when dialing from contacts view
I feel that I've paid top dollar to be a beta tester.
Good bye Palmone forever!
Versamail troubles with Treo 650
Pros: Awesome functionality in this device. Syncs with my mac. SD slot. Great screen.
Cons: No built-in wifi. Can't use wifi card without hacking phone. SD slot (I prefer CF.) Versamail problems. VERY expensive. Lower res screen than PPC phones in same price range. Keyboard should be on top of device for better balance. I don't like anti-aliased text.
My client bought this phone for email and palm functions only. Not for use as phone except as backup to current phone. Hotsynced first. Versamail would not launch. Hard reset treo and setup Versamail. Works great with aol and POP. Disabled the backup folder and old conduits that were left over from the previous palm device so only the data would get synced. Works great. A week later the versamail settings reverted their defaults, which means it lost the account setup and all emails for the AOL and POP accounts. All other data is fine. I just replaced the POP info into the versamail account and it seems to be working again. Will setup AOL later. If that happens again it's going back and being replaced by a PPC phone.
TREO 650, BEST PHONE EVER?
being that this phone contains features which i have never been introduced to, this phone is the best phone i have owned. i have played with the treo 600, but this phone beats it by leaps and bounds. the screen resolution is what i believe is double the 600. this has somewhere around 320 by 320 pixels while the 600 has around half. i have noticed while playing with both phones at the same time that the 650 runs A LOT slower. also, i counted that there is a 5 second delay when you are making a phone call. in many cases if you press call, it'll remain at the same screen. after this happens, you press it again. when you press it again it cancels the call, and you're back at step one, making the phone call again. also in many cases you will find yourself taking the phone out of your pocket and touching the lcd display's end call button. if i were the designer of that part, i would make it to where only the real buttons work when an incoming call is on its way. another thing is that the bluetooth is not as clear as i have seen in some other phones. also the phone freezes once every few days when i use some downloaded programs. this sounds like a lot of problems, but i still love the phone, especially the quick internet browser.
VZW 650 is awsome
Wow i have had this phone for a couple days now and my overall review is excellent
Pro's
Loud Speaker and ringers
Good voice quality
good screen quality
Cons
Seems to reboot sometimes but it is fine after initial sync
Vibrate is not that strong
Camera takes sort of fuzzy shots
Treo 650 - Has Bugs to Work Out
I am an avid Palm user and have been for 6 years and have been waiting for a phone that effectively combined the Palm PD feature with a phone and camera. Unfortunately, I found the SPRINT support was horrible and I was never even able to load the Treo/Palm software on either my office or home PC. I spent at least 6 hours on the phone with either Sprint or Palm and 3 visits to the Sprint store (including one where I brought my laptop) to no avail. Additionally, the blue tooth earphone I purchased had very poor reception and was useless for use in a car (or any other environment where there was ambient noise). The volume is very low. I also was never able to successfully utilize the picture mail (again despite many calls to Sprint). Bottom line, a real disappointment. Reluctantly I returned the phone and blue tooth earphones. I am hoping that the next generation is better. I recommend that anyone who buys this phone make sure that it is FULLY functioning before leaving the store (i.e. internet, phone mail, blue tooth and if feasible desktop software). Good luck!
WHAT WENT WRONG?!
I've had this unit since end of december and i'm waiting on my 4th on to come in. As a phone it's not bad, i do get poor reception some times(i live in st.louis) not to many dropped calls. The bluetooth needs work, i get poor connection to my jabbra, witch bits. as for as software goes, my first one the versamail messed up, the second one documents to go keep messing up-every time I would open a document, the phone would soft reboot, on my 3rd one express 411 would lock up my phone, and if I set a song to a select person it would show that, song set but would play only the normal ringer. This is a known problem and Palm One is trying to work on a fix.And the kicker is that when the phones are defective that they now send a referb as the replacement.
In my thought, since the amount of money we spend on the phone Sprint and Palm one need to take better care of us. If you are looking at getting the phone, I would advise you to wait another month or so till all the bugs are worked out.
One AWESOME Smartphone!!!!!
I would have to say that this is one of the best phones I have owned. Especially that I was a orginally a Pocket PC user, I am really impressed with this phone. PalmOne/Handspring has done some awesome things to even convience a Pocket PC user to come back to Palm. The phone seems very nice in size and fits well in the palm of my hand and is easy to hold and control. This device has got me to really start to like the Palm Platform after having a hard time with the Platform in the past. Palm did some nice work. Compared to the Audiovox VX-6600 that I just exchanged for this device.
Pro's -
- Everything over on this phone easy and great from some one that is one the move all the time like myself.
- The phone has nice light display
- Key's light up
- Awesome camera
Con's -
- The one thing that would have been nice is if it would of a had EV-DO. Even though that is not that big of a deal.
- The other small flaw to this unit is that doesn't come with a very well built voice command feature.
Verizon Treo 650
I too like this phone which I got on 6/10. The biggest reason for getting this phone was the Bluetooth wireless option. To my dismay, I found that the Voice Dial and Bluetooth are not compatible. You can activate Voice Dial manually and after the call connects, it will transfer the call to the headset, but you cannot initiate a call directly from the headset. Come on guys, with all the problems with using a cellphone while driving is it too much to ask that we truly get handsfree dialing. I don't want another car kit I want to use my headset with voice dial.
Great Phone on Verizon
I got this phone three days ago so this isn't a long-term review, but so far my impression of this phone is very positive. It seems like a great implementation of phone and pda, it's fast and good at what it does and I'm wondering how I got by without it this long.
Voice quality is great and the speakerphone works amazingly well, even outdoors. The only thing I feel the phone is lacking is voice dialing which can be added via software, but that software doesn't support bluetooth headsets so it's relatively useless.
I'm back to Verizon after trying Cingular in Central Georgia and I'm glad to be back. The data plan pricing from Verizon is steep, but on a corporate account it's discounted and becomes more reasonable. Coverage here with the 650 is great.
Overall the phone does everything I could ask of it, calendaring, email, solitaire to pass the time when waiting at the doctor's office, etc. I haven't looked at the picture quality on a computer yet, but on the screen of the phone they look great.
I'm very pleased with the phone and the service...I highly recommend both!
