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Day Five with the Palm Treo 650

Posted by Chris Leckness on February 25, 2006 – 8:59 am  Share
closeThis post was published 3 years 8 months 26 days ago.
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I am going to take back some of the positive feedback about the camera on this thing. I stand by the phone aspect being great though. Until I was preparing the photos for todays (yesterday’s actually) posting, I had only seen the photos on the 320×320 screen of the Treo and they look pretty good. When I took them off the camera and brought into my editor I realized that they were pretty bad really. If you are emailing pics or sharing on your phone only, I guess they are ok, but these are not "Share with the Family" quality.

Answering some questions presented in comments and emails:
Does your Treo have the "constantly going into power-saving mode" problem? Like, launch the Camera app, and then wait 10-15 seconds … does it turn the screen off on you?

No, I have not noticed that. I have my power setting set to turn off at 1 minute. To check that out, I set my pref to 3 minutes and started up the camera and it stayed lit the entire time. I also have only had 1 "phantom" soft reset. One thing that has happened 2 times is the phone is turned off by something I have run. All of a sudden, I have voicemail. Weird. It hasn’t happened in the last 2 days though.

why do you want to minimize/close a Palm OS app?

That’s a good question. I guess the only answer I can give is, "Because I can". LOL… No, really. I don’t multitask much with Windows Mobile devices either, but when I am in a call and want to look up something for the person I am talking with or go over a spreadsheet, it is nice.

I will ask my question again for anyone with a Treo 650 to answer. When I am on a call and the screen is lit and then the screen turns off while on this call, is it normal that the click is so loud?

Click read more for photos taken with the Treo 650

 Click on the images to see full, unedited image taken.


(Left – Outside, Overcast 1x /// Middle – Outside, Overcast 2x /// Right – Inside, low light 1x )

( Left – Inside, Overhead lighting 1x /// Right – Outside 1x )

PS. I fell asleep early last night and I am starting to feel much better.

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Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.


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  • As for the click: when I'm on a call and the screen blanks I don't hear a click at all. The only time I hear a click when the screen blanks is when
    a) I'm using a wired headset
    b) When I'm *NOT* on a call

    What's happening in that case is that the device is powering off the headset jack. As a result I hear a click. But I don't hear any clicks when the screen blanks while on a call. So I would not call that behavior normal.
  • As others have mentioned, the ability to use other apps while on a phone call is already available. I regularly do exactly that. Give it a try. When you're in a call, just hit the "Home" button and you can access any of the apps on the device, including Contacts and DocumentsToGo.

    Also, have a look at www.palmfreeware.com. I found a palm version of pente there. It's what I do most of the time on boring calls.
  • If you happen to have the latest version of pTunes try the streaming from http://mob-me.com and save their links as music playlist downloads, I did it to my card with no problems. I found that the di.fi-**** radio station to be one of the best with very little buffering or reconnects, which shows up as PocketTunesdi.fm on my Playlist.

    There's also TCPMP for movies on your Treo with Pocket DVD Wizard running on your PC that converts movies to MP4 files that you can then load to your card. Even though the screen is small it shows the movies extreamly well and after awhile you forget the screen size if it's a good movie that you can get into.

    I have a 1 gig card which is best for this as you can fit two movies on the card. I found that 300 meg is the best setting for most 2 hour movies.

    I have the Treo 650 InnoDock Cradle which features a 3.5 mm stereo output jack, allowing you to connect your Treo 650 to a headphones or external speakers for playing music or listening to movies, plus it works well using your Treo as a MP3 player.

    Just some more ideas of what you can do with this all around communications and entertainment machine.
  • Dave
    You can use applications while on a call. Press the "Phone" key again while on the call, and one of the buttons will show "Main View." Hit that and you can go to your launcher and do whatever you want (other than use the internet/data connections). Make sure you click speakerphone first to make it easier.
  • Steve
    To answer your question about the click when the screen dims on calls... I've had a Treo 650 for quite a while now, and read alot of forum posts on Treocentral.com and I've never heard that complaint before. I have never heard a click when I've been on a call from the screen dimming and I've never seen a post about it, and trust me if it happened on most Treo's there would be posts about it.
  • Jordan
    Hey, you can talk on the phone and play around on the applications. try it out! I always play bejeweled when stuck talking on the phone. :) It works out great!
  • Dan
    I have been working with the 'Blue' (formerly AT&T;) GSM Treo 650 for about eight months. I noticed the screen off/on 'click' more with ROM 1.17 than before.

    I consider the VolumeCare app by gotreosoftware.com to be one of my most important apps, and I haven't tried to make the 'click' less annoying - - just dealing with it.

    Only 'issues' in eight months are soft reseting with some text messages, and minor issues with commontime and Lotus Notes PRC.

    Currently working with the Cingular 8125
    and like the PPC data handling better than the Treo, but it is early in the trial. The Treo so far is a better phone.
  • FYI -- just performed a hard reset (hold red phone button while resetting, then at the second Palm startup screen, press "up" on the 5-way navigation circle) ... and I was at least able to turn the phone on and use it as a phone. Now, I'm HotSync'ing all my stuff back onto the phone.

    Wish me luck. :-)
  • Oh man, I wish it would. I've just completed the updater to 1.17, and now the phone's busted. Can't launch any apps, can't HotSync ... it just starts up to the phone app. and trying to switch just goes to a white blank screen.

    After a bit of fiddling and trying to hard reset the phone (which I can't remember the ninja moves for right now), it seems the phone is working better -- I can now get into the "Home" apps list.

    There's definitely some problem updating from 1.15 to 1.17, but if I can get the phone working again, I'll be happy.
  • Good Idea...

    Firmware: 01.51
    Software: Treo650-1.17-CNG

    Looks like this fix will take care of your problem, huh?
  • Have you mentioned which Treo 650 you have? I have the GSM version through Cingular, and it has the "Treo650-1.15-CNG" software on it. This is what came with the phone when I got it back in August 2005.

    I just looked and it seems Palm has released a 1.17 update in November 2005 (which I totally missed):

    http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo650updater/cingular.html

    Part of the fixes included in 1.17:

    "Correctly saves Auto-off power setting. This addresses an issue experienced by some users after installing updater version 1.15"

    Aha. :-) It might be useful for you to post the version of the software you're testing. In the phone app., press the menu button then go to Options, Phone Info.

    Regarding multitasking -- you can go back to your launcher while a call is active, you know. Just press the "Home" button or any other app. button, the phone will continue as normal. When you want to get back to the phone app., just press the green Phone button.
  • It is possible to use other applications while on a call, so in that respect the Treo is able to multitask.

    Suggestions for taking better pictures with the Treo.

    http://portal.treobits.com/index.php?ind=news&op;=news_show_single&ide;=1802
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