Art and Me - Experiencing Palm Treo 750

	Palm Treo 750



My life is quite busy right now (studies, work) so I decided to get a business phone like Blackberry. I did some research and I realized that Blackberry is actually not the best solution for me, because they use their own operating system and most of the programs that I need to work on my phone, requires Symbian or Windows Mobile. The decision was simple: I already have a nice and lovely work horse Nokia N73, so I only needed Windows Mobile phone. I did some research again. There are a lot of these kind of phones from HTC, HP, Compaq, and of course Palm. For me, it was a little strange because Palm company have their own OS Palm. But markets forced Palm Company to cooperate with Windows. From long time ago, I was really impressed by Palm, because Palm PDA devices have a really long history and thousands of interesting programs. I heard that the company has a lot of problems and the sales are really going down right now. Actually, now I know why :) but I'll talk about this later. I then looked to some of Palm PDA's with Windows Mobile. The phone Treo 750 was quite qute so I decided to buy it. I then realized how wrong I was.. This phone works on 3G network, which means that you can get fast internet on it. I need it, because I do a lot of emailing. The phone was unlocked, so I go to the first shop and I bought 3 network sim card. They actually have a nice deal for internet users. They call it Add-ons, you pay only £2.50 and browse the internet for one week without limits. That sounded very cool for me. I put the sim in, and I started to use it for my daily use. First thing what started to annoy me immediately, was that when you check the emails, or browse the internet on this phone, the connection starts and stays until you manually disconnect it. For me this was a nightmare. I set up the phone to check the emails automatically every 15 minutes and the phone was online all the time! Another problem that I encountered is that the phone survives only about a day and then dies. That was a realy bad thing compared to my Nokia that lasts for 5 days. I checked this on the internet, and found out that a lot of people have the same problem. Luckily for me, I found out the solution. It's really funny. The solution is: registry edition hack :) :) Please find below few tips that I found: 1. You need to get some free registry editors. I'm using PHM Registry Editor. 2. Then go to HKLM\Comm\ConnMgr\Planner\Settings\ and edit. 3. Change CacheTime to: 5. 4. Rename the SuspendResume: ~GPRS (just add _tmp to look like this SuspendResume:_tmp: ~GPRS). 5. Create new registry and write the following: SuspendResume:GPRS_bye_if device_off 6. I also did this: VPNCacheTime: 5 Here is a link for more info And that’s it! No more problems with auto disconnecting. This hack should work with all WinCE PDA's.. So now, one problem is solved. Another terrible thing was 3G network. This was a really big problem. There were times when the phone didn't have signal at all or it was changing to roaming! in UK! just imagine! You are at home in London and then you are getting a message saying that the phone will now go to roaming and it will be extra cost! That was really annoying. I even go to 3 network shop and they said crappy things like how good their network is, and that their phones have 100 pieces which makes them unique. I could only say "Crap.." I felt like I needed to do something, so I did more research and found out that T-Mobile is giving similar deals with 3 network. The only difference, is that for £2.50 you are getting 5 days instead of 7. I decided to try T-Mobile and things started to get much better. The internet connection became more stable, the signal became stronger, no more crappy messages about roaming. I also found out that Palm provides upgrade from Windows Mobile 5 to Windows Mobile 6. That was a great discovery. I upgraded my Palm Treo and I am really happy with it. I will give you just one little tip: when you download the upgraded software, DON'T DELETE IT after you did the upgrade. Palm gives you only one copy to download! I don't know why, but that's what happend with me. Luckily I have my copy :). Ok... NOW it finaly works normally. Somehow, it was still not enough for me. I found out that even on T-Mobile the phone always trys to stay on 3G network but this is REALY eating the phone's battery life, so I looked closely in settings and found out how to turn this thing off. You just need to go to: Settings -> Phone -> Services -> Band selection -> and choose GSM instead of Auto and that’s it. For emails, GSM GPRS is more than enough. When I need fast internet I just switch to Auto and I browse with better speed. I don't really need this 3G feature. GPRS is really enough for me. Email was the only reason I bought this phone and I finally got it to work! I feel quite satisfied using this phone now. Just imagine how many people were annoyed by all these problems and I'm sure they are not so geeky like me, and they will definitely have problems with this phone. It's realy neither EASY nore SIMPLE but now I'm happy and I really enjoy it. I really like the keyboard. It's a pleasure for me to write an email on the go. The Mobile Office software packet is also great! It really helps me. There is another funny stuff with this phone. You would be surprised, but there is no switch off button. you can't turn this thing off! You need to take out the battery in order to turn it off. If you put the battery back in, it will the start working again. As I said before, it's not an easy phone. The Palm company did a lot of mistakes with this phone but after I learned so many things about it, it's a cool phone for me. Another thing I encountered, was that while I was keeping the phone from the side, it was pressing the screen somehow, that the applications started to open by themselves, like I was touching the screen, which I wasn't. I then opened it to take away some bad plastic :))) I know it sounds scary but the body of the phone is done from some strange plastic. It feels very nice but there is problem next to the screen when you hold phone in hands. The plastic bends and touches the screen, because the screen is touch screen and it then opens the applications. That’s really not what you want when you write an email! After I opened the phone, I cut with scalpel the plastic, and now is not bending anymore, and everything is OK :) This phone is really funny! What can I say, it kept me busy all the time! PS. A lot of WM software will not working on this phone because of the screen size so forget the games :(... PS. Finaly I get my T-Mobile G1 !!!