Treo 650 Problems?

Like you, I've put up with a lot of hassle to enjoy Treo functionality.. here's a short list of the dark side of Treo ownership;

- Treo 180 (1st generation): had 3 of them, 2 warranty replacements in a year. 3 weeks after I bought mine, the 300 came out, Handspring had no upgrade path whatsoever, in fact they swallowed my old trade-in Palm and never sent the $100 rebate.

- Treo 300: skipped that generation

- Treo 600: initial unit DOA, had warranty replacement which was a major hassle.

- Treo 650: warranty replacement after 1 month.

In summary: great design, poor manufacturing.

I have had my Treo just about 2 months. It is a love hate type of relationship. I can't say enough about having my calendar and contacts right there.

This thing resets more than I would care to mention. I also have had issues where I look up a contact dial it and it starts dialing and then goes back to the dial pad and loses the call.

There are numerous issues with the Cingular and Treocentral.com has a good thread on the SIM chip and how it is the culprit to many issues.

I have to agree with you in that Cingular is slow in providing an update for the Treo650

I recently purchased a Treo 650 via Verizon Wireless. Other than a few minor problems it seems to be working fine. My question is, is there something I might be missing? I mean, is there some deep dark problem I am not aware of? Or is the Verizon 650 more perfected than the infamous Cingular 650?

i have had spint for years.. never had a problem using it cheapo cel they gave me... i just got a trio 650. i get no bars in my house now and dropped calls almost every call.. has anyone else experienced poor reception?

joe

joem123@yahoo.com

Hey,
I have been looking into getting a treo 650 from verizon. The only problem I am having is the verizon rep said that in order for the phone to work i would have to have an internet plan for the phone to work. I have been looking on the internet and haven't found anything saying that. Can anyone tell me if the internet plan for the phone is required and why. Thanks

-Shaun

I‘ve had my 650 for about 2 months now and love it. In the past, I purchased every type of smartphone on the market and have been very disappointed. The Treo brand is head-and-shoulders above the others on the industry and they have made some very nice advancements over earlier versions. I purchased my 650 from Verizon and have not experienced any major issues (minor resets). Highly recommend this product for busy executives on the go!

Shawn Gunn
shawn@gunnmediagroup.com

Had a Treo 650 from Sprint for 5 months now. The first two months were very buggy, but starting with firmware revisions 1.08 and 1.12, the 650 has been quite reliable.

It was so godawful frustrating that if they hadn't come out with 1.08 and 1.12, I would have thrown the thing through the window. Fortunately, all has been quite good since April. If you buy a phone from Sprint, make sure it has the latest firmware. There are still some in the wild that still have the very buggy original 1.03 firmware.

I love my 650 but have a difficult time with the hearing voice reception on calls. I need to have the volume turned up to max 100% of the time just to make out what someone is saying. With a headset all is good.

Has anyone else had a volume problem and if so any suggestions on how to fix it?

eckerty93@sbcglobal.net

My history with the Treo is much like that of Zoli's, the first post. I have had the Treo 180g, Treo 600, and Treo 650. All have been on the cutting edge of technology, yet each had fatal flaws. The speaker on the 180g had faulty wiring which eventually rendered it useless. I exchanged the unit four times with the same problem-- now used as a toy. My Treo 600 was exchanged about six times due to a terrible buzzing caused by a wire that was not insulated sufficiently. Now also used as a toy. Treo 650 is much better, only problem is underpowered, quirky, unreliable Bluetooth.

Love the functionality - but I'm starting to reboot (and resync all data) almost daily. Since the memory upgrade (Cingular/last night), I've had to reset my system 4-5 times today alone. Palm Tech support told me to simply rename the backup folder and resync. Hey look mom, now it's an overpriced, unwieldy phone!

This is the most unstable OS I've used to date on any platform. I'm regretting that I didn't go with the company standard Blackberry. Can you hear me now Palm?

GOING ON THE WEB, TO SECURE SITES, SUCH AS EBAY, YOU CAN BROWNSE EBAY, BUT YOU CANNOT SIGN ON AND PLACE BIDS. HAS ANYONE FIGURED THIS OUT ON HOW YOU CAN GET ON SECURE SITES AND PLACE BIDS?

Constant problems with the hot sync cables. Some of my co-workers have the same problems. Other then that and the soft resets 3-4 times a day i love it.

I purchased the very overpriced Treo 650 a few weeks ago. After numerous problems cited by other commenters (poor voice reception), dropping calls and not holding a signal worth a darn, I headed back to the Cingular store and got a new Treo 650. Same problems. I've had enough. I loved my Treo 270 (although the life of the phones were poor) and wish it hadn't petered out. I'm going to return to TMobile and get a standard phone and some other Palm device. Palm desperately needs a quality competitor! They really should be ashamed!

I love the new 650 Verizon! I have even sold a few ads using the great resolution video, but I have had horrible problems with it resetting in the middle of calls and then looping. I have to do a hard reset to even get to use my phone. I keep my Trio 600 handy just to rebeam my contacts to me. I've spent hours on line with Verizon and Palm. They finally sent me a new 650 which is doing the same thing. No one told me about ugrading to 1.12 firmware revision. I'll look into that. I hope it works for a Mac.

I see most of the comments are linked to problems the 650 have with special versions for US operators. The problems are not in these versions, the problems are with the Treo. I bought one in Singapore, operator-free, and it drove me so crazy for two weeks (resets, etc.) that I gave it to a friend and started using his Treo 600, which was thoroughly tested for more than a year. The 650 was the crappiest phone I ever had. Technical support sucks, they tell you the obvious thing, even when you have told them that this does not work. A company that cannot stand up for its products deserves to go bust. I am sorry to come to this, as I have been a Palm user (and fan) for years.

Treo 650, great concept. Now if they could only stabilize it and make it work. Constant resets, dropped calls, voice level issues, OS lock ups, on my 3rd phone in 4 months. BEWARE Cingular sends you refurbished phones for replacement to your over priced 1st new phone. I miss my flip phone.

The handset volume issue is a huge problem (almost made me return the unit), and though Palm has not stepped up to the plate to fix it, GoTreo has a $15 program, VolumeCare, that they claim boosts handset volume up to 75%. I bought it last night and this seems to do the trick. It's the only option out there right now.

I have had my Trio 600 for just over a year with Sprint. I have loved it. After reading these comments I consider myself lucky because I had to reset it maybe 3-4 times in the whole year. But yesterday it just quit working. I have done all the resets I could. At Sprint they say they can't do anything for me since the phone is out of warranty (by about 2 weeks). They won't even fix it if I payed them to fix it. Any ideas? Please HELP. I can get it to turn on to the point when the Palm logo shows up with the hard reset, but that's about it.
Pavel

Problems:
Volume needs to be at 100% most of the time, and even then it's hard to hear especially if there's some environment noise also.
Can't hear it on speaker when the other end is ringing, so hold it to my ear only to get deafened by person answering!!
Phone returns to dialpad in the middle of dialing a contact.
Occasional lock-ups and soft resets.
Cradle/cable connector not that great.
Lacks voice recognition (and 3rd-party software doesn't seem to work/integrate well - at least for me anyway (perhaps it's my British accent)).

On the positive side:
Plenty (too many to list). Love the applications and integration. Form-factor almost perfect. Great screen.

I just got a treo 650 branded for cingular but unlocked. It seems to work great and I am very happy with it. I can not figure out hoiw to access my recent calls, can someone help.

I have had my treo600 since dec. the only problem i have had is that it doesn't automatically disconnect from internet when i send or recieve pix. Verizon is upgrading me no charge to a 650. after reading a lot comments here i am concerned about those problems. verizon tech had same problem with his when trying to help me. has anyone else had this problem

I've had my Verizon Treo 650 for 30 days. Love everything about the phone except that I can't understand what people are saying. Nice for a phone, eh?

The problem seems to happen when the other party is speaking loudly (for example, if they're in a noisy environment).

I've talked with probably 10 people who have the 650 on Cingular and say that they love it and never have voice quality problems.

Verizon is giving me the run-around. Very annoying with their whole "after your first call, it's our problem" claim.

My treo one night just turned off and then kept turning back on and off and it kept doing that and then i had to replace it.

I have a Treo 600 with Sprint for approx 18 months. I have had so many problems with the phone that I am now on my fifth. Many calls are dropped, loud tapping sound during calls, unable to make or recieve calls, worms on the screen, messages are left in my voice mail without my phone ever ringing, I've set my phone to notify me when a message has been left but I have only been notified approx 5% of the time. The alarm does work.

I had a Treo 300 with Sprint, and had no problems with it except for those caused by Sprint's lousy network coverage.

I'm now on my THIRD Treo 650 from Cingular. The first one hardly worked at all. The second one worked a little better except for frequent resets, dropped calls, and poor sound in any phone calls that didn't get dropped altogether. But the second one quit a couple of months ago, and Cingular sent me another one (charging me a restocking fee). The third one works, so far, except for the aforementioned resets, dropped calls, and poor sound. ("What did you say?" "Huh?" "I didn't hear you.")

I've used Palm devices since 1996 and I've never had this much trouble. I'm wondering if it's the Treo that's the problem or if it's Cingular. I don't know, but for the first time, I'm seriously looking at Pocket PCs.

I am one old friend of Treo. I have purchased one Treo650 from Verizon.It is unlocked. And purchased for use outside US(Bangladesh). But my Service provider could not enter in the program area of the set, because they do not have NAM Code. Can anybody help me? It is very essential for me.

I have purchased one Treo650(CDMA)from Verizon.It is unlocked and purchased for use outside United States. But my Service provider could not enter in the program area of the set, because they do not have NAM Code for the set. That's why I could not activate my set as mobile phone. Can anybody help me?

I am on my 4th 650 since June 05. Cingular is the worst! I thought ATT was bad! I am convinced that the 650 is a great idea that just doesn't work. kind of like a great looking car that you can't rely on to go anywhere important. it is a miracle that I haven't thrown the damn phone right out the window of my car. I have had almost every problem posted in this thread. I went from a Samsung phone that worked fine with ATT and made the mistake of migrating to Cingular and 'upgrading' to what I thought was the 21st Century. Now I am hooked on the idea of having my schedule, phone, music and game diversions all on one platform, but am terribly disappointed with the available technology. I wouldn’t wish this phone on my worst enemy!

I have had my Sprint Treo 650 for about 2 months now and I can't say how much I have become dependent on it. I left my reliable Tungsten T2 in favor of the "complete" package offered by this little gizmo. Like all new relationships I was taken in by the good looks and slim design compared to having to lug around two devices. As in most relationships I found myself overlooking the small dislikes that seem to show themselves in the beginning. After time those little nuances became major frustrations...the missed calls, the dropped calls, the lock-ups, the re-booting, the darn tiny keyboard...(I miss my graffiti). Alas my phone has since gone stark mad on me and is currently caught in an endless re-booting cycle …all do to me receiving a call while online on a search engine. Who would have thought? Do I wait for the Treo 700 now that it will run on Windows??? Has this phone had the potential to cheat on me all along????? Sprint suggests I just buy a new Treo phone for $50 with my damage replacement policy...is that really going to solve Treo's short comings....once a bad phone....always a bad phone!

I have had both the 600 and now the 650 both purchased from Orange in the UK. I have experienced the poor volume and constant resets with both models. My current problem is the same as Cliff in the article at the top of the page. The phone continuously switches itself out of GSM mode, even up to 20 times per hour.I am missing 95%of my calls as a result plus its very tedious having to switch it back in all of the time. I love my Treo but am now ready to stamp on it. Orange support is hopeless. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Love Hate, Love Hate... Cliff, I am ready to sue the crap out of Treo AND Cingular. I am on my third 650, for various reasons.

The first one just stopped synchronizing for no reason. I spent several (meaning 5 - 8!!) HOURS on the phone with techies in the Phillipines, and finally after they sent me a new cable, one of the techies said, "hold the plug in tight and then push the button.." Voila! Turned out to be a loose connection in the phone, not the cable.

Phone #2 came and it worked for about 3 weeks then started turning off; this is the infamous symtray issue. PLUS, this refurb phone had software that was 18 months out of date!! When I was on the phone with the techies this time, this second phone stopped synchronizing!! Same problem!! I've demanded a NEW phone this time, and I'm told it will show refurb, but will be "up to date, and have the new symtray fix." We will see.

I have 3000 contacts in it, each with 3 - 4 phone numbers. A great asset, but the myriad problems (seemingly assembly defects, not design ones...) and time spent have me pulling out my hair.

Hacked off Lawyer

I thought I was the only one with problems with Cingular and my Palm Treo 650! I 'migrated' from AT&T to Cingular. I have had nothing but problems!!! It took over 14 hours on the phone with cingular to iron out my problems. Now I have a phone that resets itself constantly and has memory problems. I overlooked lots but sad to say I will be looking for another device and service provider. I have been a faithful supporter of the palm platform for years. I have lost out on crucial business transactions. I have been slowly merging my data to outlook and looking for a reliable provider. I loved my treo 600. What happened to the 650?

you guys are scaring me. i started w/ the kyocera 6035 (black and white palm phone) and it was absolutely awesome. great battery life, and very good balance between palm and phone functionality. on equip replacement through sprint, and after my 2nd went kaput, got 'upgraded' to treo 300. p.o.c. i hated it. color screen was dim yet sucked the life out of the battery.

i stuck it out until it broke and i was upgraded to 600. had that for almost two years and it was a great run. *sheds single tear*. camera was pretty good (with add on s/w to boost the resolution of the pix). OS was stable. calls were typical sprint quality. then recently, the antenna died on me and i could not send/receive a call unless i was right under a tower. not good.

unlike previously, when i was able to get a replacement ups'd to me in 2 bus days, i was on the phone with sprint/nextel for three WEEKS trying to get a new phone.

just got the 650 yesterday. they sent me one without a camera. (??) i didn't even know they made them like this.

too early to tell about the other problems, although the speaker volume has always been an issue and i almost universally use headphones.

we shall see...

I just got my Treo 650 Verizon yesterday...I havent had any reset problems, although I did notice the volume issue as I was walking down the street. I really like the divice, but if I start having those problems within the next 10 days, im takin it back and getting something less problematic. It seems like people are having less trouble with the Verizon model on this forum.. anyway..Good luck!

Ok, most problems with resets are because of a bad SIM tray design. You should try a peice of paper behind your sim card or go to palmone.com and get them to ship you a fixed sim card tray.
Most other problems related to the Treo 650 have to do with Memory and too many programs installed. The lastest update addresses most of those however, I still can't reliably run Norton AV on the devices.
Some Treo 650 radios are powering off when the device is bumped or tapped. One possible cause of this problem is the SIM tray for the GSM Treo 650 smart phone is not seating the SIM card firmly to the unit. In the past, one workaround solution was to stick a piece a paper between the SIM card and SIM tray to provide more pressure on the SIM card so it would not loose contact with the phone.

How to get replacement SIM Trays:
Individual customers can call palm support @ 813-313-4913. Corporate customers with 100 or more Treos should contact their Palm rep through their Cingular DSC. Palm will replace up to 10% of the Treo SIM trays in an account. For example if a customer has 200 Treos with the old tray Palm will ship 20 for on hand replacements.

In general, my Verizon 650 is working fine. I am able use many of the apps I had on my M515. I've added others that have worked great. My biggest issue is that if i have the phone on (active, but not in use) and I am using the real player or audible.com player, they freeze up when I go into a celluar dead-zone and don't come back until I'm out. Why the two functions overlap I can't figure. A real annoyance.

I got mine (650) 8/3/05 with same reception, audio issues, wireless off when brushed or tapped.
The headset helps the voice quality I find, but mine stopped discovering bluetooth devices this week. I tried changing the BT headsets, then noted it couldnt discover ANY devices...not sure why...I do miss my TREO 270, as u could start dialing and automatically enter the contacts, but I like having the video cam. Oh yea, this is my 2nd 650....1st one died. I went thru 5 treo 270s(almost all broke hinges). I am frightened that Palm ended the advance replacement or the ability to BUY an extended warranty. Seems like they know something about the lack of life expectancy of their product. The Philippines tech support is problematic of the whole culture there. They are courteous, but just tell u what they think u want to hear, but not very empowered or helpful.
Palm has serious product manufacturing and quality control issues. The problem is, it's hard to live without your treo once u get hooked.
Like a junkie, I live in denial of all treos problems.

until now, i was pretty excited to get my 650 in the mail. i had a kyocera 7135 that died so they're bumping me to the treo. glad i found this site and you guys to read your input. keeping my fingers crossed.

I have had the lot since my first Palm Pilot.
Now use a Treo 600 in the UK on the Orange network.

Best phone/pda I have ever owned.

Looked at the 650 but it appears to be rife with problems whether on US or UK networks.

Seems the only real advantage of 650 over 600 is the built in bluetooth.

No way you are going to get my ears clamped to a piece of electronic gadgetry all day every day!!!! They are still not sure about RF from phones you know.

Use my Treo with a RF3 headset (new innovation - no wires, uses a hollow plastic tube (brilliant)
Go to RF3.com (+44 (0) 870 366 5729 or try ebay (where I got mine)

Regards
Graham

I've had my unlocked GSM Treo 650 for 6 months now and I loved it until I got my Cingular SIM. I had been using it in Singapore (Starhub mobile service) with no problems whatsoever. And then now that I have a Cingular SIM, it seems to hang on me at least once a day. Most bothersome is that I can't seem to send or receive international SMS although local SMS and email SMS seems to be no problem at all. I have had a session with Cingular tech support and they have not been able to figure it out. I have also opened a case with PalmOne but they claim it's the service not the phone (justifiable since it worked just fine with my Singapore Starhub service). I do believe it is an issue with Cingular's service, but exactly what about it is causing the problem I don't know.

I am currently on my fifth Treo 600. It is without a doubt the worst phone I have ever owned. Unexplained hard and soft resets, dropped calls, and data loss are an everyday occurance for Treo users. I love technology but I am getting off the Treo train. I am so upset with Palm that I won't even consider buying their regular PDAs anymore. Good luck dealing with your service provider. You'll get a 'refurbished' phone and maybe a little 'attitude' to go with it. If the cell providers would stop carrying this horrible phone, maybe Palm would get the message.

I am on my third Treo 650 since February of 2005. I have the same problems, with dropped calls, voice quality, and resets. I love having everything in one place but being in sales I can't afford to have my phone be so unreliable. Some of my customers have turned their phones back in. One of my customers gave me the following link about Treo Owners who filed a lawsuit against Palm: http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20050922/tc_pcworld/122653 and here is another. http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/682-1.htm

I've had my Treo650 from Cingular for about 8 months now. I have yet to experience a day when the phone won't reboot on its own. I installed the Treo650 updater just last week hoping it will lessen if not diminish the problems, but it only got worse. Now (after the updater was installed), the phone itself would just turn off on its own for no apparent reason. It will reboot on its own but not automatically turn on the phone once it's back up.

If I did not pay a hefty amount of $ on this device, I would have run over this what I would now consider waste of money. It has nice features and all but now it serves no better purpose than a nice piece of accessory in my purse.

I had about 3 Treo270's (broken speakers etc) 4 Treo 600's and now on Treo650. The 650 is very disappointing in terms of user software compared to 600 (inability to add ToDos, memos etc in Cal app, many key clicks whereas used to be one, poor sound quality, random crashing, slightly better with firmware upgrade) plus you lose all your sms messages when upgrading from 600 to 650. Palm have really blown themselves up. It could so easily be a suberb experience. and yes Orange/Palm customer service sucks big time.

I have similar problems with the unexplained resetting and shutting off of my TREO 650. I'm on to Treo 650 REPLACMENT NUMBER 5. Believe it or not. I've had 4 that had other problems like keyboard problems, memory problems, ear plug connector problems, sim chip problems, etc. My service has been with Cingular and they have been good about replacing the unit but since I've had 5 that didn't work in less than 6 months I had to revert back to a plain cell phone. Which I had to buy outright while I was out of town. TREO 650 is a piece of crap. I have given up on it all together.

I am mad as hell. I am on my THIRD Treo 650 in two weeks! Sub-par? They are the dregs. My "warranty" with Sprint only covers replacement with the SAME BUM PHONE!
I was urged to purchase this phone by Sprint employees as, I went in the store to purchase the iPaq phone, but was told that the Treo was a *much* better phone. Yeah, right! Now I'm stuck with this piece of crap. Oh, I love the "premise" of the phone but, it just doesn't work nor hold up well.
These are my problems in the two weeks I've had the phone (Oh, BTW, I'm just over the limit of two weeks to exchange it for another phone and Sprint's Customer Service is the pits!)
1. Soft re-sets itself at whim
2. No ringer - calls went straight to voicemail
3. Broken case after treating it pristinely ( I still have my original Star Tac and TimePort phones in excellent condition - Now THOSE were well-made phones!)
4. Constant dropped calls.
5. Constant complaints that my voice is choppy.
I found out today that someone switched my plan from a 1000 minute 1-year plan to an adjustable TWO YEAR plan!!! I am livid. I am sure that it was the inept rep that I last spoke with who probably thinks this will fly. I am at this moment contacting the Attorney General and the local TV Consumer Watchdog. I am NOT the one to mess with.
The Treo is an expensive phone. I am paying for service that I am not receiving and a wad for a phone that at best is eye candy.
I am going to tell everyone about this so that Palm and Sprint will have to "step up" and take responsibility for this shoddy product.

If it doesn't reset itself, best for you to do it! The 650 seems to lose its mind over time. I am on my second phone, which is no better. Upgraded the firmware too - slightly better.

Love my Jabra BT250 headset - I have to turn down volume on phone and headset it is so loud(can't hear through the built-in speaker of the Treo unless I put it on speakerphone) - headset works better on my wife's cheap camera phone - the 650 won't always pick up the headset or takes so long to pick up that it goes to voicemail. Answering from the phone works though (takes 5-10 seconds to switch to headset) - which seems like forever!

Also have had lots of hangs where the phone just sits and thinks...resets help here.

Will get into a state where it won't make calls - reset it again!

Biggest concern is that all the 650s I have had create a TON of interference - squiggly lines on TVs and monitors, every speaker in the room will crackle with a modem like sound until I move the phone further away...my wifes cheapo camera phone is on the same Cingular network and the electronics in the house don't seem to notice it...am I risking my future children keeping this thing in my pocket??

like you guys, im a treo fanatic, i just love the functionality of the device, i had a treo 180 before but upgraded it to t600, i like the pda function but the phone function really p*ss*s me off. Searched the web regarding on how to remove the buzzing sound, there is a solution guys...look for buzz fix at google and try to experiment on your treo..good luck

Unlike Mike Chua ("Chewy", to his friends), I just want the darn Verizon 650 to function properly. While it does this okay as a PDA, it really sucks as a phone, for all the reasons given on this blog. Thus it has lousy reception sensitivity and transmission clarity (I have to use an external antenna at work) and low volume on the internal headset. Sorry, Chewy, but this gadget is basically a POS.

don't buy your treo from sprint. they just keep hanging up on me. the problem is when I try to open a dock in word to go the phone just cuts off. and they won't fix it. I'm on hold now for the eighth time. if you are having the same problem with sprint and your treo650 please contact me at ljenkins@sprintpcs.com

I had the same problem with loose connection on the syncing cable. Was bummed and didn't want to have to go through the return and wait for a replacement process. I fixed it by getting a can of compressed air like you use on keyboards and blasted the connection pins on the bottom of the Treo. Placed it back in the cradle and pressed the sync button and off it went. So you may want to try that before sending it back on this kind of issue.

Dear People,

I live within the city limits of Boulder, Colorado, but on the north side in a drainage that reduces the strength of my Treo 650 (Verizon) signal. When I had a Nokia 3360 (ATT/Cingular), the signal strength was not great at home, but I could go into the basement (5-6' underground) without dropping a call. With the Treo, I'm dropping calls on the first floor and I sometimes have to go up to the second floor to improve my reception.

On the back of the Treo 650 up near the antenna are two ports protected with small rubber plugs. The upper one has a red and white sticker with "p1" stamped on it and the other looks like it might take some sort of an antenna jack that could, perhaps, boost signal strength. None of the Treo documents even identify the port, let alone suggest there's an accessory designed to make use of it.

Are you familiar with these ports on the Treo 650? Do you have an antenna jack that makes use of them to boost signal strength? Do you have another approach that might help boost an existing, but weak signal on a Treo 650 phone? I'm not wanting to spend a gazillion dollars to address this, but it's a major pain to have lousy reception at home, even if my business does not depend on it.

Thanks for your help with this.

Ed Byrne

Just sent this to palm:

People, people, people!
What's going on over there?
"There is something rotten in Denmark"
I was ready to buy a Treo 650, but after reading hundreds of complaints about hardware, software, and support, I have decided not to.
I have been a loyal palm user since Newtons went away, but now it seems that unless you guys tighten things up, you are digging your own graves. Think about it. If each of those hundred people tell five of their friends...
Very bad. Very sad.
So what's it gonna be?
Please cc this to the people upstairs!
-a concerned (former) customer.

I'm another unfortunate Treo650 owner.But since I was not eligible for an upgrade I had to pay full retail price for it! What upsets me the most is that at first it was locking up on me and had to do constant resets. I removed a lot of additional software and that seemed to improve.I put most of my files on an SD card.Now I am constantly getting interrupted with Hot Sync trying to boot while I need to make a call.I do the soft reset and it starts up again only a few weeks later. I truly feel stupid for spending a lot of money on this.It is suppose to do so much but the more you try to do with it the more problems arise! Now its basically being used like a standard camera phone because I'm tired of messing with it.And yes-I too am a Cingular customer.This sucks!

Have a Treo 650 with Verizon that is 4 months old. After having it "die," Treo upgraded the OS. It worked briefly; now the device locks up frequently and needs resetting. Also, despite recalibration, the screen is highly erratic with typing. Any suggestions re. the screen before I throw it?

DON'T BUY A TREO 650!!!!!

I had 2 600's and now am facing my third VERIZON 650, all since February.

I have had my Palm datebook corrrupted by the horrible synch problems from Verizon/Palm. If you like long nights on help lines to India, this is the phone for you!

I have now suffered my third screen failure. The 650 has to be handled like a Faberge egg or else it will break.

Sound? Huh? I just scream a few sentences to the effect that I will call from home or office. You have to be in a soundless environment with the phone surgically implanted in your ear.

The WORST tech buying experience of my life. I am a high-tech owner (MS eng) and can handle complex issues, but this thing is just crap, a repudiation of the once wonderful Palm OS.

Not Worth the Price

You will not have this phone much more than a year because it constanly needs to be replaced and the warranty is up in a year.

I have the whole love hate relationship going with my TREO 650. When it works it's like a gift from heaven, but when it doesn't it is the nightmare from hell. Initialy I had it replaced three times at the store under the 30 day warranty, three phones same problem everytime, cycling on and off during calls and freezing up. I couldn't keep it on long enough to make a call. After the 30 days had to call and received a replacement via mail. It worked great for about 5 months, then came the upgrade, now my blue tooth head set does not work with my phone, I can not hear callers half the time and they can't hear me half the time.

Considering the cost of this phone I have a very difficult time digesting the problems and inconvenience. I didn't mind paying the price for the technology if it worked. Now I'm about to embark on yet another return and replacement of the phone. The sad reality is I will have received less than one year of service out of this because once the one year warranty is up it will be done and if I count all of the down time and return time...

I just wish they could come with something that works well consistantly

I've had a Treo650 through Cingular since April from my firm. Most managers up through the CEO in the company have one. We don't have major issues with this phone. Personally, I did have issues with dropped calls at first, but that was resolved with the latest upgrade to the firmware. Still have issues with volume (it's always on max) but otherwise, I love this phone. My wife has had a 600 for years and has had no major issues, using it for everything with T-Mobile. My overall general impression of the posters here is they're all RIM stockholders.

Do NOT purchase a TREO 650...

Oh dear. I purchased my Treo 650 while on a business trip. The phone I had with me was dying, and I needed a phone! I thought I would "upgrade" to either a Treo or a Blackberry. After playing with both in the store - I got the Treo. Ouch.

To make a very long story short, I will say I have since received quite an education in things like 1xRTT, CDMA, Bluetooth, etc. This education was necessary and irritating to me - as I had better things to do.

I think the basic problem is that the 650 does many many things, but few of those things does it do well. I do not feel it is a viable business solution, it is a gadget for gadget freaks.

1. I discovered after returning home to a familiar environment that the Treo 650's reception is terrible - comparing to other cell phones I have in the house. Awful! 1 bar on the Treo translates to 4 bars on my other phones. It never occured to me this would be an issue. My other phones can hold a conversation anywhere in my home. The Treo can barely hold on anywhere at all in the house. I try to find a place it can maintain a connection, and then I don't touch it. I hover over it with my bluetooth headset.

2. Bluetooth...
Bluetooth implementation on the Treo absolutely sucks. It seems unusually weak and noisy. I compounded my stupidity by purchasing a Moto 850 headset without doing any research. It has severe connection problems with the Treo. What a combination they make! Sometimes I can transfer a call to the 850, sometimes I cannot - friends conclude my new phone is broken.

3. The camera absolutely sucks. My god it sucks. Forget about it.

4. Out of the box, the speaker in the thing is not acceptable. I downloaded VolumeCare which does help considerably however.

5. Out of the box, I found I could not use Google maps, but downloading the free program, Kmaps, solved that problem.

6. My carrier is Sprint, and they chose to disable call duration in the call log, but downloading PhoneToolsPro fixed that.

7. It does not come with any kind of voice dialing software, but I fixed that by downloading VoiceDial.

8. I had many nitpicks about the 650, navigation and LED issues included. Downloading Butler fixed most of those.

After downloading approximately 6 applications, I found the phone to be "useable," but the two most critical issues - "Deaf Ears" and sour bluetooth implementation cannot be fixed. If the thing just had great reception - I would not be writing this now.

Do NOT purchase a Treo 650.

Treo 650 - Great form factor, horrible phone. I really wish the feature set of the 650 could be put into a reliable device.

Same problems (everyone) has mentioned.

1. Resets often.
2. Lockups while traveling.
3. RF performance is very poor.
4. The “Volume Care” app is a good fix – but two things: 1) why am I paying someone else for this and 2) the app really lets you hear the scratchy poor phone reception too. Signal to noise ratio on this device is extremely low. Outgoing sound quality will produce feedback from your friends.
5. External RF interferance with other devices – for kicks you can try placing the 650 within two feet of a tv tuner, or your computer’s speakers. How did this device get FCC approval?
6. Cingular GPRS / Blazer – fine so long as you are not filling out forms, java-script etc.

I use this phone with a bluetooth GPS and mapping app from (DeLorme) – the company I work for.
And the phone makes this painful – hoy, I really hate admitting that!

Now perhaps the high price / horrible performance is the correct business model for Palm but I
would not bet on it.

My husband and I both have Treo 650s. He is on his 3rd in 5 months. Last night, mine abruptly stopped working for no discernible reason (I didn't drop it, hit it with a hammer, etc.). Needless to say, Cingular has been less than helpful...

I'm on my 3rd 650. The first two had the white screen of death and reset bugs already mentioned. Went through months of new sim cards and firmware updates. Finally, the third handset works kind of. That is there is still the volume problems, and incredible RF interference noted and it the resets/white screen of death return if you load any software other than the preloaded programs. Plus, Cingular has been complete jerks about the whole thing. Finally, it's almost rare to actually be able to get a GPRS signal so the internet and e-mail features are worthless.

I am on my 2nd Treo 650.

I have had every iteration of this phone, going back to the Handspring VisorPhone, which you plugged into ye 'ole Springboard slot.

That first one seems like it was their most stable phone.

This 650 is a huge problem.
I "Powercycle" up to 10 times a day.
(their internal lingo for "crash" -- notice the positive spin? "POWER-CYCLE")

Cingular has TERRIBLE customer service. They are aware of all the issues with this phone, and they play dumb and give us all the run-around.

I've been through several sim-cards.
Hopefully the new sim-tray will help.

Meanwhile, they have you under contract and will keep "trying" to help you, but all they are doing is covering their legal arse to keep you in your contract.

PalmOne should be ashamed.
I cannot wait to get out of this crappy contract, and by that time, I will get a different phone/camera.

Don't blame Palm, blame your crappy US networks!

I've had my Treo650 for 10 months, and am SUPER happy with it:

* Amazing speed (90k/s) for browsing and emails (EDGE network).
* Best SMS application in the world
* Push emails that work with my work email
* TomTom with bluetooth GPS for my car is spot on!

Only gripe: that stupid antenna! Apparently, Palm Tech Chief Hawkins admitted an internal antenna (like most Nokias have) would work just as well, but US consumers shy away from antenna-less phones, thinking they don't work as well!

In conclusion; US carriers are lightyears behind Europe and Japan, and the problems you guys are having with your Treos are more than likely due to Cincular et al, rather than Palm, IMHO.

My Sprint Treo 650 is pretty good. I've only had it for about 2 months but so far I can't complain. It's more like a mini-laptop than any phone before. The side volume button did malfunction and I am awaiting my warranty replacement. My biggest complaint is that you buy a brand new phone, but even after only a couple of months of ownership, the warranty replacement is a refurbished (used) phone.

I am on my second TReo 650. The only problem I have is that when I am out of a service area I cannot use any of the other Palm features on the device. If anyone has experienced this probelm, please contact me

Hi, all.

A friend of mine gave me an AT&T TREO 650 this past week, 19-November-05, because Cingular could not unlock it for him; hence, the phone was useless to him.

He gave it to me, and I got it unlocked; and, now, I am using the Cingular network. So far, I am extremely pleased with the Treo 650; I was using the Motorola v600.

My only complaint with the Treo 650 is that it doesn't have a feature that constantly beeps or flashes to indicate that I missed calls and/or have voicemail or text messages waiting for my acknowledgement.

This is especially a problem when I drive my exotic throughout the Bay Area. The engine is so loud that I miss calls. Since the Treo 650 doesn't have a beep and/or flash like my Motorola v600, I don't check my phone; hence, once I get to my destination, I'm off to do whatever things I do, and forget to look at my Treo 650 until I get a call -- then I noticed I missed a few calls and have some messages waiting for me over an hour ago.

So, that's my only complaint thus far. I have not had any crashes or lock-ups on the phone and the reception is much better than my Motorola V600.

If you know of any third party software that provides a beep and/or flash for missed calls and waiting messages, I'd really appreciated the point in the right direction. Thanks.

/s/ Alfonso Faustino

Well everybody, i was going to puchase a Sprint Treo 650 today, but thank god i read this. Thank you. Im still thinking about going there for the hell of it and maybe try to make 1 crash so that i can make a sprint employee look bad, and see for myself, but I will almost 100% not buy the 650

Thank goodness for Verizon's 15-day "worry free guarantee." I was a T-Mobile BlackBerry user who came over to Verizon; Out of curiosity I got a Treo 650 but kept it less than a week because of the bizarre, unstable Bluetooth headset behavior with my Moto HS850 headset; I could hardly hear folks I was on the phone with; I got tired of resetting once or twice a day after taxing the device with complicated tasks like telephone calls. Verizon happily swapped me for a BlackBerry 7250, no cost to me, no questions asked. I couldn't be happier now, and I am ashamed for ever looking the other way. (Conclusion IMO: Treo = cute and exciting but unstable, BB = less exciting but intuitive and rock-solid.)

Bought a 650 as soon as it came out through sprint. On my second, pulls the White Screen of Death once every 3 days for 15 minutes, with no rhyme or reason.
Having said that, I consult in 3 schools and 15 different other locations weekly. I seem to suffer from CRS (can't remember sh!t) and this thing buzzes me 5 minutes ahead of time to get my butt into a class and pick up my clients. I even bought the GPS thing which for 150 dollars does about as good as one would expect when magellans go for 4 times that. I play scrabble till my eyes bleed on long flights too.
I waited for this damn thing to come out when i was buying cassiopeias in 1995! So.... all in all I'm not complaining. non-volitale mem sys is a big plus too. BTW Sarah is a babe!

Ack. After reading every post in this thread, I kind of feel like a chump, having upgraded to a Treo 650 last weekend.

The first few days were heaven, but midway through the week it started giving me a problem which I haven't seen described on this site.

When I place a call, the person on the other end picks up and says hello. I hear them fine, but when I talk, they hear nothing. After a few hello's, they give up and hang up. Meanwhile I'm yelling "can you hear me now" five times, but nothing. Crickets. Unfortunately, now it happens every time, so I'm out of luck.

I'm not thrilled with the idea of going rounds with PalmOne. I've had Verizon service for 5 years now and have never once had an issue; their customer service has been extraordinary as well. So I'm hoping PalmOne will step up, but after reading this thread I'm not getting my hopes up...

Cheers

The Treo 650 I recently purchased in really crappy. I think that I am a person that is used to getting the best bang for the buck. When I saw all the features and upside of the "smartphones" I was instantly drawn in. The problem is that these phones have been very unreliable.
I am currently sending my phone to Cingular to have it replaced as it's phone feature no longer works. Now it's just a Tungsten!

Just to jump on the bandwagon, I have a Treo 650 from Verizon. I have had the phone since May 2005, and in the beginning, everything was golden. I love having the all-in-one email/phone idea, but I think it was my early bliss that blinded me to some very big issues:

1. The phone likes to reset itself several time a day. I even removed the third party software and it still resets itself periodically.
2. The Bluetooth connection is less than stellar, to put it mildly. The sound is crackly, and you can barely hear the other party.
3. Don't try switching to speakerphone – you will end up shouting at the phone while people basically hang up on you in frustration (yes, you can't hear and they can't hear you).
4. Now this one is right from tech support at Verizon: if you are sending an email, the phone will not ring and it will go right to voicemail. If you have the automatic checking of email, that function will interrupt anyone trying to call you at the time of your email download. Now, maybe everyone else knew this, but I didn't, and it makes no sense. It should be a PHONE first, then a data device. Apparently, all of the Verizon PDA phones are like that.
5. I really like the way the Treo 650 looks, which is why I dropped my old BlackBerry. In retrospect, I never had any problems with the BlackBerry, and you know what they say: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

It is a shame that the style and feel of this phone is better than the operations of it. But, I should have read this post before I bought it. I would encourage anyone who is interested in purchasing a Treo 650 to be very diligent in the research, and make certain that you give it very thorough usage in the first two weeks so you can take it back if necessary.

Anyway, I have my eye on the 8700c from Cingular, and assuming it doesn't have the same data interrupt issue that the Treo has, it's a done deal.

One of the main reasons I bought the 650 is for playing music. But the small sized audio jack means you have to use an adaptor to use speakers or headphones. This means you put stress on the jack which means my jack is no longer working and so either I have to forget about music AND using a corded headset for phone calls, or I have to give up my phone and pay for a repair. In addion, I tried THREE different Bluetooth headsets and my friends complained they couldn't understand me. Finally the guy at Radio Shack said he heard that the 650 doesn't really work well with bluetooth. Anyone else with these problems? Anyone know of a fix?

I am on my third Cingular Treo 650 in 5 months. I am running Goodlink software for Outlook synchronization ( schedule , address book and e-mail) . The first 650 started resetting itself endlessly after three months , the warranty replacement started resetting the day I received it. The latest warranty replacement worked perfectly until the latest Palm software (recommended to me by a Palm e-mail) which was supposed to improve sound quality and Bluetooth performance was installed. Now it resets almost every time I hit a key and bring it out of sleep. I constantly find it on my hip with the radio turned off - so I am missing calls I did not know I had. Taking the latest software off and re-installing the previous version has not resolved the issue. I am just about to give up hope that I can have my schedule, address book , e-mail and phone in one machine. Anybody out there have a solution?

I have experience some of the problems everyone here describes on the Treo 650. the biggest complaint Ihave that does not seem addressed is the un-reliable transfer of data during sync with Outlook. I have Outlook 2000 and right now I have 2 memo/notes that are on my handheld/Treo 650. When I sync, they do not transfer over unless I tell the hotsync command to have handhelf over write the desktop. I have seen this on occasion with calender and contact/address folders as well. Anyone know of a fix to this?

I have gone through 3 treo 650's in a period of 2 months. I seems like the next phone is worst than the previous one. The best part about it is that Cingular is absolutely helpless about the situation. I'm currently waiting for the 4th phone, if this one gives me any problems im going back a regular phone.

The TREO 650 is a nightmare. I received it as a birthday gift from my husband- I feel awful that he spent so much for such a horrible product. Sure the camera, video, calendar, web and alarm are fantastic... but the phone (and this IS essentially supposed to be a telephone) hardly works at all. Because the telephone constantly turns itself off, it is basically useless in that regard. It is extraordinarily difficult to hear and the speakerphone is a joke. The screen often indicates I have voicemail when I do not. I constantly receive messages asking me to check for a missing or damaged sim card. I have NEVER been able to sync my data. Dropped calls, poor signals (if any), etc. etc.
As many have noted in this thread, Cingular has been of no help whatsoever. I am ridding myself of the TREO and Cingular at the first opportunity. My verizon blackberry (used for work) may be clunky, but it ALWAYS works. I have heard that there is a pending class action suit pending re the problems with this device. If there's still time, I plan to join the class and recommend others do the same. Talk about warranty of merchantability- it's supposed to be a telephone and that is precisely the function that simply does not work. For those considering the new Treo 700, I advise caution.
nml

Has anyone experienced an endless beep during a call? Every so often I'll be on a call and all of a sudden I get a continuous beep that blocks out the person I'm talking to. The only way to stop it is to disconnect from the call. Doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for doing it. No one seems to have an answer although I did go onto a Sprint site and saw several comments about this happening to them. Any suggestions?

Elke

I got the 650 for 3 reasons:

- I can get email
- I can use a wireless headset
- I can listen to MP3s

Many of the positive comments about the Treo in the above column actually are about the calendar programs and such. Those have been around in PDAs forever, so they shouldn't really be called positives of the 650.

I'm having 3 problems with my 650:
- I can't listen to music
- I can't use (a decent) wireless headset
- I can't get email.

hm. good purchase?
Tys

Had the Treo 600 for about six months. Had numerous problems with dropped calls, poor reception, and finally locking up. After 3 600's, Verizon finally sent me a 650. Have nothing but good things to say about it. No problems or disappointments...

I have had a Treo 600 thru Verizon for about 6 months now and am experiencing most of the problems stated above. I constantly get dropped calls, I cannot pick up messages when traveling (and I travel a lot in my work), the phone frequently resets, etc. I do not feel comfortable in transferring the company phones to my Treo on weekends because of its instability.

I use the 600 a lot for internet access when traveling but, like many others, cannot "sign in" to many of the sites I use.

I constantly find messages on my phone when the phone never rang - even when I'm getting 3-4 bars on the phone.

I have made repeated calls to Palm and, occasionally get someone I can understand. After multiple calls I finally got a promise that they would sent me a "reconditioned" phone in 48 hours - that was 6 days ago and I still don't have it. When I expressed concern about getting a phone that someone else had returned with a problem, I was told not to worry - they would keep sending me phones until I get one that works. I sold all of my Palm stock that afternoon.

Come on Palm. Why can't you get this product working! When it works, it works well but the times it works are getting fewer and fewer. This is not the quality of service I expect from Palm.

Is it OK to start complaining about the 700's yet? Actually, Palm is blaming Microsoft ActiveSync 4.0 (what it installs as), or 4.1 (what it says under Add/Remove) for not working with Win 2K. Seems to work with Win XP.

Stay away from Treo 650!

I regret myself. But I am addicted Palm phone user and treo seemed the best solution for me.
Phone's HW and SW is full of bugs. Palm's desktop 5.1.4 has many known issues and they just do not fix it. The sound of phone is too low- now fix from Palm for that too. And the high price for this POS- what a joke- they should be sued.

Just upgraded from Treo 600 to refurbished 650. However, 600 was a ATT phone while 650 was to be a Cingular.

Worst transition between companies, I would say. Here's why......

Refurb'd 650 had problems with email when I got it. After several calls and several wasted hours, it was determined by Cingular that my device was bad and had to be replaced. That is when things started going crazy.

When I call a 800 number (Cingular), the person does not know how to reverse migrate me back to 600 and they took me through multiple groups (literally, I was on phone for 2 hours talking to different folks) and lo and behold, the phone cuts off. So I have to start all over again. FINALLY, after spending alomost an entire day, I was reverse migrated and back to original state.

Now, I was going to get a replacement. After about 7 days, no replacement still in my hands, my Treo 600 went kaput. I called Cingular and they had migrated me to the Treo 650 (keep in mind, I did not even have the device yet) and it took hours (again, bouncing back and forth from Cingular to ATT guys) before I was back to normal.

Finally, the Treo 650 arrives but although I was told that I would have a replacement for $140 (the price I had paid for the original 650), the new one came with a price tag of $370. What a rip off??????????

I am done. Sending back the Treo 650 for good. Is is so frustrating that when you call a 800 number (the only number we have), people on the other end keep saying they are either Cingular or ATT and that one or the other cannot help with my problem. What BS is that? As far as I know, they are one and same company.

I am a seasoned techie and I must tell you that the Treo 650 SUCKS!
I overpaid for the phone and then to add insult to injury, I have been paying for third party software to deal with the BS issues that the phone comes with,like, Volume useless, resets, lockups etc...
What a total joke, no more, I just hurt my foot by stomping on the phone and it was worth it, it is now in my garbage pail in 9 pieces where it belongs.
What a total dissapointment and no recourse from Palm!
I never wanted to give my business to RIM as I worked for them for 6 years and they screwed me over but I surrender, I am returning to call clarity and stability.
THE TREO 650 TOTALLY IS A POC !

Like everyone else I purchased my Treo 650 in 2005 because like most gadget freaks, I had to have an all in one machine.
In the last 5 months I have had countless problems with reception and rom storage limitations but, oh well that is small price to pay.
The last issue however borders on the insane.
In December I decided to heave the Internet feature as I am always around a computer anyway so why the 40 bucks a month.
I notified Verizon in December to stop the service and ok that was uncomplicated.
I just received my Verizon bill for January and,are you ready? The bill was for 8000.00
Not kidding here!
It seems that what they forgot to tell me is that the phone will continue to seek internet connection after the service is terminated.
Oh, and by the way they charge by the kb. Oh yeah.I have had several lame excuses about how this might have happened but the reality is that the bill reflects 1400 minutes of use on several days. Don't know about your but 1400 minutes is almost the whole fricken day. I have a life.
I have told the customer service folks that no payment is headed their way.
Stay tuned as I hunker down for the Verizon Party line

So this is my first smartphone which seems not so smart at times! I constantly freeze, reset, and drop calls. i tried to use the warranty thru cingular and they sent me a refurb. phone that was worse than mine that i bought BRAND NEW!!! i sent it back with the quickness!!! i also contacted treo directly and of course they cant do a thing for me. what does anyone recommend to get this issue resolved. i even took it to a repair place and they told me cingular will send me a new one...yeah right

I have just updated from my Treo 600 to the 650 and find that I cannot dial from my contacts if there are any ascii chars within the telephone number. I have 1000's of contacts where I use prompts within each telephone field such as
w: morning 012054 12121
h: afternoon 012054 12122
m: emergency 012054 12123
Does anyone know of a fix or if the older 600 contacts program (which worked OK) can be transferred into the 650.

Also, can the new 1.20 ROW ROM update (to fix bluetooth problems) be installed on my 650 phone which is Orange - they are slow to provide updates, if ever!

Any info would be much appreciated

i am in the process of purchasing the palm 650 for my husband. should i waste my time? if not what other phone out there is similar?

im having trouble with my treo 650 when it comes to putting music on the expantion card and listening to it when im ready, my computer says that the file is saved but when i put it back in the treo nothing happens. Am i the only one or is there someone out there that can help me do it correctly

I am in the processing of replacing my 1st VERIZON Treo 650. It was constantly rebooting itself, or just turning off. Now, it's completely dead for no apparent reason. I wish I had never bought this phone. I never will again!

The treo 650 is my first phone from palm and I love/hate is for some reason. But most of all the treo now freezes when playing music and then trying to dial a number, this was after doing and update using the 650 updater 1.20 yesterday. I know of another persons who have encounter the same problem, any idea on how to resolve it; I have tried all types of resets, the soft, hard and zero reset and none have worked. I have also tried doing the update again and that did not work.

Treo's 650 telephone sound quality is very poor. Voice fades in and out making it difficult to have a conversation without many interruptions. When talking the screen is activates by the touch of your face next to it causing interruptions. Phone freezes and crashes with a lot of loss calls that need to be constantly repeated. Sent the phone to Palm for replacement and when received replacement, the freezing portion was reduces but not eliminated. The communications are still disastrous and totally unacceptable.

I'll add my (terrible) experiences with the Cingular version of Palm's Treo 650. I purchased the phone from Cingular at the very end of December. I did so because of increasing problems with the Nokia phones my wife and I had been using for the past several years (old TDMA) - they were always on Cingular Extend and it was rare to finish a conversation before it dropped. Cingular said the old TDMA towers were being replaced with GSM towers (many had been damaged or destroyed by the hurricanes) and that we would have to buy new GSM phones and also sign up for a new rate plan. I chose the Treo 650 and my wife picked another Nokia; she is happy with hers while I'm anything but with mine. This morning (02/23) Cingular's Warranty Exchange said they would send out a 3rd replacement (my 4th phone from them since purchasing the original one). Cingular's Customer Service has told me they don't have any indiciation of problems with the Treo 650 but that's not the case with Warranty Exchange - one of their employees said she gets a LOT of calls about this phone. So here I am, less than 2 months into a one year warranty and a two year rate plan and I'm on my 4th phone... I do love the PDA features but am extremely unhappy with the phone features. So far, my experience with the phone is that it is VERY UNRELIABLE and that Cingular is willing to keep sending replacements but isn't willing to do anything else (exchange the Treo for another brand/model, refund my money, allow me to get out of my two year rate plan, etc.). I'm hopeful that the groundswell of dissatisfaction will ultimately cause them to correct this problem.

It has problems, but man... I haven't seen anything bad enough to regret the purchase. I've had mine for over a month and bought one for my wife too a week later. This is glorious compared to the $299 Palm 3C that I used for 1 month then during moving it broke.

I have it through Sprint and upgraded my wife's 1.12 and my 1.13 firmware to the newer 1.13a firmware just so we were consistant. But all firmwares seemed to work quite well. If you have OLD firmware please upgrade, I think you will see a big difference.

- I get reboots accasionally when I run The Core Media Player (open source) to watch movies.

- My battery will run out in a day if I run Verichat ALL DAY LONG in boring meetings.

- I can't backup the JVM from IBM. It is marked to not backup... for good reason it turns out it's resource files are not able to be transferred due to their length. (I use Linux mostly with the excellent swiss-army knife tool pilot-xfer)

- The Bluetooth headset isn't as great as I'd hoped, but I think I had unrealistic expectations... I think my expectations were as good as the best cell phone (without bluetooth).

Other than that it works pretty flawlessly. Without running TCMP I probably get a reboot once a week. Seems good enough.

Good Points:

- LOTS of FREE/opensource Palm apps - ssh (secure shell for remote logins), TCMP, JVM with lots of Midlets, Eat Watch, VeriChat, 4cast, Filez, KMaps, PalmVNC, etc.

- LOTS of commercial Palm apps - Documents 2 Go, Popcap Games (great), PalmRevolt, shareware up the wazoo.

- Nice integration like - vCalendar format is recognized in VersaMail and added to the calendar app.

- Ways to send files etc - Beam, VersaMail, VeriChat, Bluetooth, SD Card, USB...

This is probably a phone for geeks, and I just can't see it because I am one. If you want a phone that can do some other stuff, maybe it's not for you. If you want the other stuff with a phone and you think you are technically savvy it seems like a great choice.

Dying Treos? I've got the $6/month insurance... If I have to pay $500 for a replacement - insurance is worth it.. and I don't have a heart-attack if I fumble it in my fingers over concrete.

I recommend it... maybe I'm warped.

I have had a cingular 650 for about 4 months. first my calls would cut off after about five minutes, then i found out about the sim card problem. went to 3 different cingular stores and none of them where aware of this problem. finally tracked down the right sim card, and the phone still had problems. I purchased a bluetooth headset, n now i am able to have a phone call longer then five minutes. Only problem with that is that the bluetooth does not connect consistently. The phone still freezes and i have to reset it at least twice a day. Jus trecently my battery stopped holding its charge, it now last about 8 hours before its dead. oh yeah and the fact that with cingular you cant have insurance on a pda is b/s.
Overall as a pda the treo is great, as a cell phone it just, well lets just say dont buy it!

Read reviews on several sites about Treo 650. Was convinced by Rogers Wiresless rep that they were all resolved. Bought the 650.
Had it 3 hours and returned it. It managed to reset 3 times in the first hour, cut off 2 calls ( seems to do it when the screen times out and goes blank - it ALSO cuts off the bluetooth call).

Went and got a reliable Blackberry.
Too bad Palm, it was a nice device - but I need reliability !

The 650 resolved a lot of functional issues I saw with my 600 however it bought its own dark secret of constantly freezing and locking up. whenever it felt like it (if phones have feelings). I am now searching for a replacement anything. Tis a shame, I loved the Treo concept but like the owner before me I need reliability 24/7,7 days a week I have a business to run.

I had a Treo 270 for about 2 years – I loved it.
Then got a Treo 600 which I have had for a year. Has been perfect for me.
(on O2 network in UK)
I must have been very lucky….!
Time is obviously running out for Palm and Palm Source!
No wonder Sony dropped the Clie.

What sound? This Treo 650 is horrible. I bought the mVox 900 speakerphone to correct the complete lack of volume, but boosting what is already bad sound isn't the solution. Fortunately I'm within the 30 return period at Cingular (and as I read here, they may be part of the volume problem) and headed back to the store. Will wait for the next generation.

One other issue is bluetooth - by the time my devices allow me to connect to the PDA, the call is usually already dropped, despite my asking Cingular to extend the ring time.

Man am I pissed. I just broke my Kyocera QCP-6035 Smartphone and its so old that Verizon insurance (Asurion) doesn't have any more so they sent me a Treo 600. It was awesome.

My new Treo worked fine the first 7 days (before I purchased a sync cable). Then I sync'd it, upgraded the firmware and loaded up my contacts and calendar. Now it crashes every time I turn on the phone within 60 seconds no matter what, I don't even touch it. EVERY TIME!

I had my Treo 650 for a year and was, for the most part, happy. I started having problems recently with the keyboard not working. I took it to a Sprint store. They inspected it and informed me it has "liquid damage." This explaination gets them off the hook for a poor product. The phone has never been subjected to "liquid," but how do I prove that? They told me the burden of proof is on me. I feel like Kobe.

Seems to me that most of the problems occur from poor signal sensitivity. I have compared my previous 600 with the new 650. Using the same si card in exactly the same locations within my apartment, the 600 shows perfect signal strength but the 650 often shows SOS only, in other words the signal has become nonexistent. I have experimented with call to the 650 and 600 and in these low signal areas for the 650 I get the voice mail whereas the 600 rings just like any normal mobile phone. Hope this explains some of the problems.

Wow....Well I am glad it's not just me.... backup backup backup everyday and export/beam to trusty old Zire 72S and Palm Desktop as well as take 'old' Motorola V220 phone on important forays, to use if necessary. Bought the Treo 650 after rave reviews from other photo stylists, terrific tool, but have to say when they call on Bluetooth, sounds terrible. Had I read this site before purchase - would not have made switch. Seems it is a problem with the item itself being poorly made, had problems with Palm V and Dell computers getting fried out on syncs a few years ago. Will check out Class action suit sites, and keep the land line phone:-)

I loved my treo for about 4 mos (although there were lots of things the store or tech support couldn't answer for me) BUT NOW, I'm having it freeze or lock up on me numerous times a day and or just turn off and re boot. I tried soft reset now hard reset and problems persist. will see what Verizon says

Awesome phone. I had every single problem described...then I bought a refurbished one from Cingular. I don't use weird programs or Versamail anymore. Now it does not reset or buzz or anything. I don't know which program caused it but I am sticking to the basics now and no more freeware. NO MORE PROBLEMS!!!!!!! By the way, Cingular phone cust. service is terrible, but in the store I found them helpful depending on the person/location. Don't forget to make sure your sim tray is the new one and you have the lastest update from your provider

thank you thank you thank you. I am NOT a techie, I can just dial a phone, I need a contact source to keep increasing phone numbers/addresses, maybe listen to music in the airport. This close to buying a TREO, but not now. I'll keep looking, because I don't know how to download fixes and I don't have time to deal with phone company pinheads with profit override motivations. love you guys, thanks for taking the time to write in doc

My Verizon treo 650 is incredibly unstable. I cannot tell if it sofe or hardware problem , but Verizon is overnighting me the second new one in only 4 months. I have no faith thta it will last out a year. I constantly do soft resets and have to do a hard reset ever few weeks. Today it finally rolled over and died. Does anyone have any better luck with the Windows based 700?

I have a treo 650 that constantly turns on and off. Runs the battery life down to 4 hours or so. Any suggestions as to what could be causing this?

I have been using the Treo 650 for about 9 months now with never a single "problem". Verizon is the carrier and of course I have had it reboot a few times, maybe get hung up on a call or two but nothing to get me to the level of frustration as most of the others posting. I have a 1GB SD card, have dropped the phone numerous times on concrete (which I wouldn't recommend), and still the phone works just fine. I've been so pleased with its performance, I am excited to say that I am upgrading to the 700w because the only downside I had was its lack of interaction with my windows OS on my laptop. I'm hoping to gain the same reliability with increased functionality when I make the switch.

For those of you experiencing problems with the 650, take this into account. The carrier makes all the difference. Trying to use advanced technology on Cingular's pieced together network just doesn't make sense. If you are using the Treo without an SD card you are also selling yourself short. And most importantly, if you don't sync your device on a regular basis you are most definitely asking for trouble. Do the above & I'm sure you will find that there isn't another mobile device with the functionality, reliability, or durability of the Treo 650!

Can anyone please tell me how to put movies on my treo 650?? i have a 2.0 gb sandisk card for it and i can listen to the songs i have on it but can't watch any of the movies i have downloaded on the card on my phone, but when i put the sandisk card in my computer everything works fine. Thanks

I bought a Treo 650 refurbished from Cingular. DOA! Would not recommend this to anybody. Cingular does not have stock so you may be waiting weeks or months for a replacement. I have been without a phone since Friday. I got a new contract Friday. I broke down and ordered a new one yesterday while they ship me a return label to ship it back. I have to pay for the old and new. They will refund the new once they receive the return in one piece.

Regarding Cingular, I spent 1 hour and 15 minutes before they sent me to the right people who basically told me I was out of luck. Total time to find out I was out luck was approximately 3 hours, talking to 4 different departments. Their favorite thing to tell you after you've been on the phone with them for 30 minutes; "You know, I think you got the wrong department". I am afraid to cancel the contract. You can imagine why. Go to Verizon folks. Treo 650 might not be the only problem!

I just got a Treo 650 through Verizon and love it - except - it won't maintain a bluetooth connection. When I get a call, if I try answering it using the headset, it takes about ten seconds to connect to the headset. I keep saying "hello" until it finally connects with the caller. I own a new Infiniti sedan with bluetooth, and unlike my former Motorola V710, the Treo will recognize the car and vice versa, but then the phone disconnects the two devices. When a call comes in, the phone rings, sends out a bluetoot signal to the car (very slowly) and by the time I can answer the call with any wireless headset, the call has gone to the voicemail box. Anyone else noticed exceptionally slow bluetooth connection times?

I just bought my first Treo 650 in September of 2005. Here it is 6 months later and I am on my 3rd Treo 650 with this one already messing up on me.

I love the technology of the Treo 650. My problems with the ones I have had are they keep resetting on me. Even the one I have now. When I have my Bluetooth headset on and a call comes in I have to accept the call on the phone. If I press the button on my headset it will answer the call and I can have a phone conversation with no problem. The problem comes when the phone call is over. The phone locks up and won't hang up. I have to take the battery out and reset that way.

My past Treo 650s would reset on me at least 4 times a day before I took them in and exchanged them with the warranty.

All in all, I loved the Treo 650 when I first got it. If there were no funcionality issues like I have been having I would still love it. I go through Sprint and they have been pretty good with helping me.

My latest problem I have had is where the Versamail email program stops going out and checking my email. I called Sprint on it and they said with the Treo 700 out that Palm would not be providing a fix even though they are aware of a problem.

At this point I changed my opinion of the Treo 650 from being a great tool to being a lousy boat anchor.

I am done with the Treo and there will not be a 4th one. I am exchanging mine for the PPC-6700 Pocket PC phone. I am hoping that with Windows Moble installed that the device will be more reliable.

I am very frustrated. I have my 3rd defective Palm Treo in 3 months. They all develop the same problem. After about a month the 2.5 mm port of the speaker phone and mp3 player become defective in a STRANGE way. It becomes the ONLY way the phone will work. In short the phone always thinks that something is plugged into this port even when it is NOT. This mean the phone ONLY works with a head set after about a month. If you pull the plug out the regular speaker and microphone on the phone never turn on nor can you turn on the speakerphone.

I'm having my 4th Palm Treo shipped to me now but -- I'm afraid it will just happen again. I DO use the plug frequently as I use the device to play music AND I plug in the headset for most calls. BUT I am not doing anything I shouldn't do NOR am I abusing the device in any way. This is all, standard, advertised usage.

Does anybody have any experience around this issue? No one at Palm claims they have ever heard of this problem before and I've talked to a lot of people there.

Tony

I purchased a treo 650 10 months ago and experienced several malfunctions since.
The worst problem is a sporadic, automatic daily recurrence while using calendar.
The unwanted daily event is erased, when battery is removed and reinstalled.
But events which happened to be stored earlier, on the unwanted recurrence time, are definitely lossed.
The palm support has no solution for this problem.

@ veronica...
hi. u might have a compatibility issue.. i think you might be trying to view movie files with your treo that the software you have on your phone (probably the mini-realplayer) doesn't support. if you could convert the files, or download a compatible software i think it should work.

I haven't had my treo650 a week yet. so far no problems. I have cingular. I am not a business person-just a wonderfully underpaid teacher. I bought it to stay in contact with my deaf friends at a moment's notice. I like texting. i want to type the letter and boom its there. I know such a silly little reason to buy an expenseive phone. I'm trying to learn the applications on this thing...not as easy as i thought. After reading the posts on this page I am wondering...what have I gotten myself into? Well I will be sure to use my treo to the max before my 30 days are up. Luckily spring break is almost here and I'll get to really put it to the test. In 5 days time i've never lost a call. I've used both the speakerphone and the included headset. I think people hear me better with the headset but I hear everyone just fine either way. Again...i'm probabaly not using it the way everyone else is for heavy duty business stuff. I've always wanted a palm pilot. I'm upgrading my telephone service from a prepaid to this. Why have 2 different devices to lugg around? Well I promise to update at the end of the month and let you know how it goes.

Sounds like I have just bought into some trouble. Purchase treo650 in the uk and have had an SOS signal after trying to use it with the bluetooth car kit. Work as a doctor and lost some hours with a non functioning phone. Any ideas on who I look to help for, the retailer, my network 02 or palm support

For Tony,

I've not experienced this problem with my audio/hand piece port on the 650. I use it in my car while connected to the stereo. I use two different adapters to interface with the car stereo and different headsets (for audio only) and the TREO headset that’s designed exclusively for the TREO 650 without issues. I’m sure this is not what you may want to hear but I’d suggest using a different headset (assuming you’ve been using the same one for all) as the one you’re using may actually be defective. I been using an external antenna with my phone without issues, but I’ve seen disastrous results with others using similar external antenna products. I use the SD card like a thumb drive on a regular basis and the only problem I’ve had is opening some Word documents but that went away as soon as I reloaded Word to go. Please tell me that your mute switch is broken or inadvertently being broken some how. I am curious as to which service you use. If you can’t get it fixed I’d look PPC-6700 Pocket PC phone as Jason did. To bad there’s not a lemon law for cell phones; you’d be getting your money back by now and justifiably so if your service provider is unable to resolve the problem after 3 attempts. Part of the problem is that when you sign up for these service contracts they (people you wrote the contract with) usually give you a refurbished phone. This is like getting someone else’s used car when you new car develops transmission trouble 6 months after you bought it. Or you house has a leaky roof so your warranty company moves you down the street to a similar house; okay maybe not that extreme but you still have no ideal what the previous owners were using it for or how they were using it.

Dwight

The Treo 650 works well, when it works. The concept is GREAT. E-mail & contacts fuction and the sound quality is better than most. It even does a good job of opening large "excel" files with the additional memory card installed.
Headset HELL: As Tony noted on 4/1/06 above; after a short period of time of using a 2.5mm headset (Plantronics #175 from Verizon) the phone has again (2nd phone, soon to be third!!) stopped working without the headset plugged in. It can be tricked by first dialing & then removing the headset, but it will still only work on speaker phone, not through the "normal" speaker/ microphone. It acts like a software issue, but it is clearly related to the use of the 2.5mm headset plug - Non headset counterparts do NOT have an issue. Palm & Verizon have said they have not heard of this before.
Good luck using a Treo 650 safely with a 2.5mm headset. You may get two hands on the wheel, but you will also have to carry your headset everywhere you go!

Hi, I got a new Treo 650 for these last 2 mths. I had sms saved on my sim card and when I put the sim in the treo, they showed up on the treo. However last week I saw that some of the sms were missing! Is there a way how can I stop it from loosing this sms? The message validity is set to maximum.
I too had the same problems of resetting..and when dialing...it drops the call!!! Expected a better handheld for the money I paid!
Thanks.

I just got this phone for my girlfriend...despite my hesitations. I have the Audiovox/UTstarcomm 6700 and i love it. I wanted her to get one so that all our programs are compatible and such...but because she's familiar with the Palm programs she wanted the Treo 650. Well needless to say...two days later and the first time she ever plugs in the headset ( the one that comes with the phone ) it is now in permanent headset mode. Go figure. After reading all these posts it is now conclusive. Palm sucks. Palm sucks badly. My PPC6700 can do everything the Palm does, but the software is actually user friendly, i mean it is Windows based after all. So if you can run your computer, you can run this phone. Watching movies and playing games on the PPC6700 is as easy as on your laptop, so why anyone would consider the Palm Treo anymore is beyond me.

For Stephen and Tony,

I’ll take your experiences with the headset problems as a stern warning and limit the use of the headset with the Treo. I really do not need the Treo as an mp3 player; I have 2 iPods and a Neuros 442. I use 442 to record video for my iPod and the kids PSP. Have either of you had any Problems with the use of a Bluetooth earpiece (other than the increased power drain on the battery)?

Dwight

I am on my 3rd treo 650 by cingular and they are junk.Cingular has hung up on me without resolving the problem.My treo freezes up on the keyboard.I was perfectly happy with a less expensive phone and with AT&T but wanted a phone with all the bells and whistles.All I got was aches and pain from the phone and from Cingular.I am going to cancel my contract,eat the difference,tell my friends about the service,tell my customers about poor service from Cingular and get on with my life,

I am on my 2nd treo 650. The first one died after a only a week. Today the second one, started reseting every time I receive a call.

Too many problems for an expensive phone

i just bought my treo havent even got it yet but hope i dont have many problems.. im think twice about getting insurance for it..email me with any good freeware or new firmware..

My Treo 650 has suddenly become extrememly SLOW when I use the keyboard to enter stuff on the calendar. The Calendar works fine with an external keyboard, and the email functions are fine with the handheld keyboard. Just the calendar. Anyone have any suggestions for help?

I had my Sprint Treo 650 for over a year with no problems (other than the headphone jack only sending sound to the right ear). Been running the same software for the year, including Pocket Tunes. Suddenly last week, the keyboard locked up and wouldn't do anything. I'd reboot, and it'd work for a minute or two then freeze up. I was able to turn off the auto-keyguard or else I'd never be able to turn it on because the button to turn off the autoguard would freeze and I couldn't press it!

I had insurance, and they sent me a new phone. The headphone jack works. But now the phone freezes after sitting idle for an hour or so. I can't turn it on without taking the battery out or pressing the reset button with my stylus. When it freezes, I don't receive calls or messages, even though the green light blinks. Been searching the web for common problems, and this seems to be one.

I read somewhere that taking the SD card out will stop this problem so I'm trying that as I type. We'll see if that "fixes" it, but I plan on stopping by the Sprint store tomorrow and asking for a replacement. Heck, that's what the insurance is for.

I bought an unlocked GSM Treo 650 last May from the Palm Store and had it shipped to me in Canada. I was having the same disconnection problem that Cliff was having whenever I bumped or even squeezed the phone too hard. Even picking it up would sometimes cause it to reset. It was very frustrating. I tried getting some help from Palm support but they didn’t have any useful suggestions. I finally had the idea that maybe my SIM card was a little loose. I pulled out the SIM card holder, removed the SIM card from it and placed two very small rectangles of masking tape, one on top of the other, on the inside surface of the SIM card holder. I replaced the SIM card and inserted the holder back into my phone. The disconnection problem never happened again. If only more of these high-tech problems could be solved this way.

The problem that I am having now, the one that caused me to stumble onto this web page, is that the audio jack appears to have some kind of loose connection. I first noticed the problem while listening to mp3 files. The vocal part of the songs had dropped out. My stereo headphones broke around the same time so I have only been able to test the phone with my 2.5/3.5mm adapter and my Apple headphones. The sound coming out of the phone's speaker is normal. This has me a little perplexed.

dave

I bought my Treo 650 loaded with programs needed for my job as nurse pracitioner through the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. Interestingly, the original phone was A USED PIECE WITH THE ORIGINAL OWNER'S NAME, PICTURES, ETC STILL ON IT!!!!! Ripped?? Would you say upset? The people to whom I returned it sent me unit #2, defective in memory, unable to accommodate the programs promised; imagine that...It was returned as well. Then #3 arrives, and so far no problem, but, I am not connected to the net with it, and probably will not considering the problems I have read about; I only have a frustration level that is so high and am afraid to blow a gasket.
For all of my problems, and a 6 wk delay in actually getting a fully usable piece (mind you they had my $650 6 wk ago...)I received a feeble "We are sorry.....".
Yeah, well, that does not cut it. I asked for a consolation of some sort, like additional memory, which I will need, as the program clearly lacks a critical component I will need to add, on top of hte already overpriced 650....I know...
I also suggested that perhaps an extension of the subscription to the programs be given, and htat was denied. All in all; do no order your Treo from the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. That outfit, to which I belong is shady, me thinks.
I am not sure I need to be a member any longer, either. Where is the ethos in this matter?
BEWARE!!

JL

I've had my Treo 650 for about 3 months, and I'm on my second Treo, I love the