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Treo 650 Progress Report

treo 650-1
If you have been following my postings, by now you probably are familiar with my struggles in switching over to Cingular and getting the Treo 650. I have had my Treo 650 for a little over a week, and I have some pretty positive things to report.

The switch has definitely been worth it. The service and coverage on the Cingular side have been pretty solid. I have had very few (if any) dropped calls since my switch. The Edge data services are blazing fast for a phone. Still not exactly DSL speeds, but more than adequate for the type of stuff you would pull up over a small browser interface like on a smartphone.

The ride has been good so far, but not entirely without a few glitches. Let me start by making a very strong recommendation: BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA.

Did I get my point across? Yeah, there are definitely a few bugs still looming around in the firmware. Here is a valuable tip for you Palm / Treo Newbies. When you Hotsync, a backup of your configuration is created automatically. This is good, but it is also very bad. The Treo is a Palm device, but not exactly compatible with all Palm apps. If you happen to install a rogue app that throws your phone into the reboot loop from hell, you are toast. My advice is to get your phone loaded up into a virgin state and synced up with your data and most essential (and Treo 650 Certified) apps. Make sure to set up all your preferences and settings just the way you like them. Once you have completed this step, go ahead and sync up. Now go into your Palm folder and create an archive (zip file) of that user folder. Once you have completed this step, if you ever come across a problem, you can restore your phone to a state you know is stable (by overwriting the user folder with your archived copy), and won't have to reconfigure the phone from scratch. Upon doing a hard reset and wiping out the Treo, on your next sync, it will restore it based on that archived info.

More useful tips and tricks to come...

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Frank Bisono published on February 23, 2005 2:23 PM.

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