# New toy! Treo 700w here!



## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I took delivery of a new PDA phone yesterday. It's the most talked about single item of CES the Palm Treo 700w which runs windows Mobile 5.0 and comes in a smaller than ipaq package to enable one handed operation, like a cell phone. 

My main reason for moving to this and Verizon, the exclusive provider right now for this Treo, is I am most unhappy with reliability of my T-mobile carrier up and down the east coast. Also, Verizon seems to have the fastest internet wireless. I've been using the EVDO network now for 2 months and it is "perfect" very fast, so fast that I never notice I'm not on my cable model from Comcast. Of course, with large downloads it doesn't compete but still for web surfing, the EVDO everywhere I have used it is very fast.

So enter my second of a three part move to Verizon. Now I really bought this Treo for my wife as I'm not that impressed with it's tiny QWERTY pad and the limited memory for programs. Plenty of storage ram. People using IPAQ's like me will notice the Treo's snappy processor and coupled with the EVDO speed makes the 700w just work without having to concern yourself that you have to connect, then worry about limited ram and having to reboot every 15 minutes like I now do with my ipaq 6315. 

The camera is terrific and it shoots video too in 640x480. But more importantly, I found the camera good enough to shoot documents and then when dumped out to my laptop it is good enough to read. The screen is much brighter and colorful than my ipaq6315.

If any decide to get one here's a word of caution about installing active sync. In the process, the install CD wants to update your USB drivers. MAKE SURE you shut down ALL usb connections before installing or it will choke and corrupt something on your hard drive and USB drivers. I had my USB mouse connected and it choked and then I could not reboot windows except in safe mode. I managed to remove the install in safe mode and then I had to launch in dos and do a chkdsk, then windows safe mode, did a scan disk (long) and for good measure not that I could boot full windows again, I did a defrag. Now with all USB stuff disconnected, I installed active sync with no trouble. 

Personally, I plan to move toward the UT Starcom 6700 because it has a faster processor and twice the anount of ram for programs. PLUS the camera is even better than the Treo with an optical zoom, flash and for video an LED light too.
The screen is a tad bigger than the Treo and just as bright. The keypad is slide out and 3 times the size. The external memory uses miniSD which means I need to buy new memory so my wife will inherit my ipq SD cards when I retire the ipaq.
The starcom will be available for Verizon on January 19 and will sell for $100 less than the Treo 700w. 

So far, my wife has had it for a day and just loves that it auto polls her e-mail every 15 minutes and then she can just tap reply, type a brief message ir speak a brief voice file and it auto attaches it and sends without much ado. I also loaded about 6 hours of mp3 music and StarTrek Nemesis movie on her 1 G card. BTW- the sound quality is fabulous by ipaq standards. You can actually use the Treo as a speaker to listen as it sits on your desk.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

How's battery life when using EVDO on the Treo for any given period of time? I find I run my battery dry with moderate surfing. Of course they also packaged an extended battery with my phone, but it is way too bulky so I prefer not to use it. I had to special order a second AC charger and car charger as not even Bestbuy stocked the correct adaptors. 

So please let me know how she likes it after 3 or 4 weeks of use. 

The one draw back I have found on the 730 is that it likes to hang when switching between EVDO and WiFi. I also noticed after leaving Bluetooth off for a week it was a pain to switch it on, but I think an installed app was hanging there as I uninstalled Scorekart and the issue went away. I also found myself bogged down when I installed apps to the phones memory. I uninstalled everything and reinstalled to SD card and I noticed a good performance increase.

Ah, I like the 730 but I probably should have waited another few weeks for the 700w.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

wifi uses lots of battery power. I keep mine off except when needed. Blue tooth transmitter is next. I would imagine that the EVDO phone connection transmitter will also use up power but that too can be switched off when not needed. 

Today was her first day using it while shopping and came home seemingly happy with it. Tomorrow, I have to program her exchange server e-mail for work. The 700w manual has a nice step by step procedure to do that so I should not have too many problems. I paired her BT HS810 headset tonight and it appears to work without problems. 

There are some things I found missing from win Mobile 2003 but I suppose that just gets getting used to the new OS. Not sure if it is winM 5 or the Palm mods that I'm finding different. 

One thing I find interesting is that while I worry over function, my wife is more concerned about getting the right style and color case. I found a website that makes custom cases for the Treo 700w and it seems that is the only one that will satisfy.


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## stonecold (Feb 20, 2004)

I find it stupid to buy Verizon Crippled phones. 

Sorry if you spend more than 200 dollars on a phone it should have all its features enabled not the ones that verizon thinks you should have.

6700 is a much better phone which I have been using for some time now.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

What do you mean stone? For instance, what features have been lost? I did not notice much of a difference in services when I moved from Cingular to Verizon a couple years back.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> There are some things I found missing from win Mobile 2003 but I suppose that just gets getting used to the new OS. Not sure if it is WinCE or the Palm mods that I'm finding different.


I have not noticed any real missing apps on win mobile from my iPAQ to my 730. Everything I had on the iPAQ appears to be on the 730, with the slight exception of Nevo. There is another Universal Remote SW package installed in place of Nevo. Nevo is better in my opinion.

I would guess anything your missing from your iPAQ to your 700 is either a licensing/prepackaged thing or a Palm to WinCE hack thing? Maybe there's a few bugs to work out on the Palm running another OS?? :shrug:

Oh and speaking of customization, I saw a website while surfing that will swap the face of the Treo out for a custom look. However knowing Verizon this would probably kill your warranty.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Jason- I mis typed!  What I meant was that with the Treo / WM5 the features are in different places and I need to track them down. e.g. I tried to locate the simple connections wizard I have on my IPAQ today screen " ))) " still can't find it but the BT logo is there so I can access it from the Today screen. There is no wifi in the current Treo 700w as it becomes an option SD card plug in which I do not like. Fortunately, I'm learning that wifi is not critical with EVDO for downloads. However- I did learn from Microsoft WM5 rep- demoing the Treo 700w that Palm will be making their next version of the 700w WITH wifi, No expected release date. Apparently Palm got beat up on not having that feature built in. On the flip side, there are two selling options for the wifi add-on. I don't think I will need it.  Anyway, for the most part, the Treo 700w actually has more features built in than other WM5 PDA/phones. 

I get Voice Command with the Treo700w that I will have to add to the UTStarcom which has the original WM5, not the Palm hybrid. It comes with picture speed dial on the Today screen which is a cute gimmick. It will be awhile before I can speak with experience on the other Palm WM5 vs, orig WM5 differences but there are several.

I think what stonecold is saying in his rude sort of way, (hey I respect that as I often get accused of the same thing) is that the Verizon phones are lacking a feature that all GSM phones have which is the SIM card. All the SIM card allows you to do is make a switch on the fly to different phones easy as swapping the sim card with some minor gotchas. It doesn't always work. As a T-Mobile sim card user the two cases where it doesn't work is when you want to move a phone that is locked to the sim card. duh! Now that is stupid but that is exactly what T-Mobile does. Fortunately, with some phones you can unlock them with a key pad number sequence. On other phones such as the ones I have you need to send in to a service and with shipping cost about $60 average to get the phone unlocked by a hacker type of business. You can do it yourself too but need to buy the software / hardware and all this spells- NOT WORTH IT in my opinion. We're going through this now as my wife wants to give my daughter her Motorola V600 and it is locked to our sim card. Cost is $75 to unlock it so she can use it with her sim card.

Also, with Verizon- stonecold may be saying that some features such as Blue tooth have been locked out of certain devices. Actually this has to do with services installed. You may only have services for "hands free" but can't use BT for other uses. I believe that is past since Verizon was sued and since has had to supply upgrades and all new phones to be fully BT capable for keyboards file transfers etc. The Treo700w is full BT capable.

There is one reason why I'm switching to Vwerizon. That is service coverage. I'm tired of losing business due to not having T-Mobile coverage. T-Mobile was great 2 years ago when I got the Sierra air card and GPRS. Then Cingular or anyone else didn't have it. Then they came out with the ipaq which was what turned me on to PDA and how it could make my life easier. But T-Mobile still had lousy service. Today Verizon seems to have much better service although not for international travel. Then again, I don't need international cell service. I don't need to be swapping phones on a single line so sim card is not important to me. 
It's all about matching the provider to the user and what works for me may be terrible for others. 

On customization, check out spb user interface. I have it on the ipaq and it makes the win2003 much nicer. I will try it with the 6700 when I get it to see if adding it to wm5 will help.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

BTW- last week Verizon lowered their 730 price to match the Treo. Sorry to break that news to you, Jason.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

damn damn damn:bang


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

While this won't affect me directly, I did see, today, there is a blogger report that confirms Verizon has disabled the bluetooth connection for making the Treo 700w work as a modem for EVDO internet connect on a laptop with BT capability. According to Verizon rep, the Treo's Blue Tooth does not meet specs for EVDO and to prevent trouble has disabled it. While some claim this is a conspiracy to get customers to buy Verizon's air card service at $99 for the card and $60 a month, Verizon claims that is not the case and it will be working with Palm to get the Treo700w OS up to specs and hopefully this will be a software upgrade expected later this summer or early Fall. In the meantime, people who are banking on this can still use the Treo700w as an EVDO modem for their laptop by connecting with the USB 2.0 sync cable and loading a 3rd party software application. 


I find all this facinating because there were several claims from early users of the Treo700w who claimed this does work and was not disabled. Verizon says those claims were bogus. I wonder if some of these leaks were actually instigated by Palm or Verizon to build the hype for Palm's cult user group. While all I heard was how great this Treo is, after the release when real (honest) people like me get the thing we discover how it really does work. This is the second MAJOR LIE now that I have seen on the Treo 700w. The first was it's memory increase. I discovered that one when I got my hands on one at CES. Even the Palm rep standing beside me looked puzzled and a loss for words when I demonstrated to him that the Palm did not have 64 megs of program memory but rather 32 megs with 20 taken up by the Palm/WM5 OS leaving only 12 left to launch apps. By comparison- The UT Starcom 6700 in side by side had 27 megs of ram left after the pure WM5 had loaded. On the storage side, both had 62 megs. 


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my wife spent the afternoon learning the Treo's features and claims to just love it! Jason- I was impressed with the battery life. She was working with it lit up most of the day and with an overnight full charge the battery, by 9PM this evening still had about 25% remaining. My ipaq would have crapped out at about 4 PM! I think she and I did about 1hr45 minutes of talk time on it as well. I guess the smaller screen makes a big difference. My ipaq has over twice the surface area.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Just an update- I now have figured out how to use the BT headset for listening to music and other mp3's. I discovered last night that by selecting com port through BT setup and resetting the headset, I could route the audio through it as opposed to the speaker. Verizon tech support claims that is not possible but I have it working and not hard to do. They just didn't know who to properly set the BT hands free up for this use.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

Don are you still using the Treo or have you upgraded to something else?

I recently moved to the Q. Boy do I miss the Samsung.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

I've had a 700w since July and I'm deliriously happy with it.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

djlong said:


> I've had a 700w since July and I'm deliriously happy with it.


Someone who is "delirious" is often happy with everything!


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

Well, it's a heck of an improvement over the piece-of-fecal-matter Kyocera that I previously had. I couldn't wait to be out of my hardware contract - loved the service I got but hated the phone.

Of course, the Treo 700w isn't for everyone. I'm a programmer and because I write software under MS's ".NET framework" I can write programs for this phone just the way I could for my old Axim handheld. The EVDO access is good and using this phone as a backdoor to the internet for my laptop (takes a $20 piece of software) makes it that much more valuable.

...and I never thought I'd be a fan of Bluetooth until I got this nice BT headset


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

djlong-

Couple of things you should note. I have both the XV6700 and the Treo700w that my wife uses. The XV6700 is quite a bit better for those who may be power users like yourself than the Treo700w. It has more memory and can be set to overclock upto 520 Mhz. or use a variable clock speed that throttles as your demands and battery life balance by your use. The 700w can have a wifi added but it is a bulky piece of baggage, while the wifi on the XV6700 is built in and requires a simple registry file mod to access it simultaneous to the phone as it comes stock with either or, not both. Of course it has a bit bigger screen too and a better keyboard. But the biggest advantage of the Treo700W is that it is a better device for those who want a better cell phone function and don't plan to add lots of memory hogging extras. The Treo WM5 modifications are great while the XV6700 requires 3rd party software for equivalent usability. I have my wife's Treo set up with 2003 exchange server push e-mail for her business as well as TomTom GPS and that is all she wants or needs beyond stock Treo stuff so it is a good match for her. On my 6700 I have custom browsers that go beyond the PIE capability. The extra memory allows me to use upto 6 applications at a time and I can easily toggle between them. The Treo hangs with more than two loaded most of the time. 

About EVDO speeds
I have had the cell phone EVDO for almost a year and also the PCMCIA laptop card. The laptop EVDO connection averages about twice the speed as my cell phones connections on actual speed test sites. The latest is my new Dell Laptop that has the Express technology built in and uses no plugin card. It runs about 4 times the speed as the cell phone EVDO. I was quite surprised at the speed difference between the phone and the latest Express technology on the same service. My Dell Express EVDO typically gets 1.1 Mbps speed and 1.4 on bursts as compared to the same test run on the Treo or XV6700 at 250 Kbps. 
So if you every find the need to improve speed on EVDO there is a better way but it does cost for that service as opposed to the BT connection you may be using with your Treo now. Good luck with your Treo.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> So if you every find the need to improve speed on EVDO there is a better way but it does cost for that service as opposed to the BT connection you may be using with your Treo now. Good luck with your Treo.


Don, on the Sammy, I reset the v-coder to max transmission, I found that this really smoothed out trans and even improved the quality of my phone calls. Verizon defaults their smart-phones at a variable V-Coder rate.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Jason- Where is that setting? I looked on the XV6700 but didn't see anything.


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## Jason Nipp (Jun 10, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> Jason- Where is that setting? I looked on the XV6700 but didn't see anything.


It is in the hidden menu. I found the directions on how to do this at pdaphone.com or maybe another forum. I think I have a .pdf screen capture of the procedure, I'll look for it and email it to you.


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