My old Sprint PCS phone is dying, and the digitizer is frequently wigging out on my Palm Vx. And the Treo 600 looks really cool, and I could get rid of one device in the pockets and still keep the same number.

There are at least a few people on this board who have the 600's. So let me ask a few questions.... How long have you had yours? How well has it held up? What kind of long-term things have you noticed about it?

Thanks for the input!

--Nathan

I am thinking about getting one of the treo 600 type of phones.

Do you know how long the 600 has been out.

I wonder how long it will take tmobile to support the 600.

Mine has the bugs it had when I got it, and no more:
a few bad pixels and bizarre side effects in the camera. At some point I'll get it fixed.

I'm a long time Palm user, and I live in GSM-land, so I bought an unlocked unit in Singapore at the end of November. It was great, and I was happier than a hungry bunny with a new bag of carrots. It installed and worked perfectly, and I think they've done a great job on the integration, and the usuability design. I gave both the P800 and the P900 a try out when they came out and I found them difficult to use, with a hard-to-decipher UI, and slooooooow. Treo is of course the familiar Palm screen, and you can tweak it as you would any regular Palm unit.

Phone usage and reception and SMS etc all great. Touch screen integration to the phone is good. There are some small irritating things (eg can't paste a phone number in from another app then edit part of it before dialling) which I'm sure will get fixed in future firmware upgrades. The camera really really sucks. It is appallingly bad. Given that 2MP camera phones are now out in Japan, there's no excuse for installing something slightly less effective than that smeary plastic magnifying glass you got in your Xmas cracker.

Now, you will have doubtlessly noticed my extensive use of the past tense in the above. That's because, about three weeks after buying it, the sound and touchscreen suddenly stopped working. No physical shock or damage, and the unit was not abused. It seems that this is an uncommon but not unique problem. Anyway, trying to rectify it along with Handspring tech support ended up with the machine in a reset death spiral that turned it into an attractive paperweight.

The tech support in Singapore was the worst, shoddiest, ill-informed and generally responsibility-evading that I have ever come across. Given that this distributor (C20 corp) has the product for the whole of SE Asia I would urge anyone thinking of picking up a cheap unlocked unit there to give it a miss unless they actually live there and can go round to the distributor's warehouse and paint abusive slogans on the door.

I eventually resorted to calling HS in the US and, er, lying when asked "is this a US-bought unit ?". They have now sent me a replacement, which I should have by the weekend. The advance replacement program is pretty good - they send you a new unit first, then you send the old one back in their packaging.

The best discussion board seems to be http://discussion.treocentral.com. Reading there indicates a high ratio of individual lemon units, ie there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the unit's design and build, and there are people using it 24 hours a day for all sorts of stuff with no problems whatsoever. But there are also lots of people on their second, third, and even fourth replacement because they are DOA or go wrong very quickly. This is compounded by the fact that it seems to be very popular and back ordered all over the place, so maybe they are overstretching their manufacturing lines and build quality is suffering in some cases. (Cartoon bubble - Salesman: "Yes sir, and as you can see this unit was built on the Monday midnight shift after a four day holiday weekend" Buyer: "Hmm - can I get an RMA to go with that ?"). Also, look for cheap OEM accessories at Dans Cellular store on ebay.

To answer your original question: should you get one ? Yes, definitely, if you are used to and happy with Palm as a PDA, it's great. It really does integrate well, and allows you to carry one fewer thing in your pocket. If you're not over eager to be an early adopter, I'd give it a couple more months for the supply shortages to ease as I believe that will reduce your chances of getting a DOA unit, and I'd also buy it from a local store with trustworthy warranty service.

Regards

Mark

i love mine. i have my exchange server thru business connect, i browse the web, i use Pdanet to connect my laptop to the internet, i use Dir Assist to do 411 lookup and pull addresses from my contacts into mapquest for directions, kinoma and mmplayer for video playback, pTunes for mp3 playback, have 3 versions of the bible on it, Noah Pro dictionary, and AIM thru Verichat.

had mine since it came out last october. did the "loyalty" upgrade from my treo300. its held up pretty well, though i think the screen heats up way too much. my form-fit case's plastic melted on the screen a bit. if i were to lose this phone and get another one, i would probably go with boxwave screen protector and egrips instead of the case. otherwise, its a tough cookie. i've brought it snowboarding, and it held up well in all my falls.

I 3rd the sentiment - I love my Treo 600. Get it, you won't be sorry.

- Jon

Thanks guys! I was concerned about how durable the unit is, and you've assuaged those fears.

--Nathan

A plus of the treo is that you get to use Palantir with it, too!

(since you brought it up)

How's that Windows CE / PocketPC version of Palantir coming along?

Limping and dragging itself along the ground with it's arms.

I wrote the IrDA code as a proof of concept, and now I have to get to the meat of the programming (UI and data access). Since this is my first time writing any kind of Windows code, I wanted to learn the basics first, so I bought the Charles Petzold book "Programming Windows" to learn win32 api programming. I guess I have to just take the plunge and get my environment set up to do some serious development. I did not like using Microsoft's Embedded Visual C IDE, so I need to set up my PC to let me use makefiles instead. I do not think many people use makefiles when writing windows programs.

Gotcha. Is that a good book? I'm a UNIX C/C++ guy who may some day need to fart around with some Windoze programming. I'm smart enough to port simple command-line stuff to compile under Win32 (did so with emphatic's lrctool) but havent' done a lot with the Win32 API.

Yeah, from the looks of things it's the win32 api bible. I got it used from an Amazon.com partner on the cheap. I'm coming from a primarily command-line programming aspect too, and it seems this is the best way to do it unless you really want to use MFC. MFC would be ok on a PC, but on a handheld it adds bloat and incompatibility between Pocket PC versions.

... have 3 versions of the bible on it...

Oooh, tempting. But I'll pass.

Went shopping for a 600 last weekend, and no one has them in stock. Started hearing rumors about a Treo 610, with a 320x320 screen, bluetooth, and maybe more memory. So I'm going to try and stick it out for another month or two to see what develops.

--Nathan

If there's a bluetooth version I know Sprint will resist carrying it.

FWIW people have recently figured out how to convert the CDMA version for other carriers, and how to unlock the GSM version.

Not that I need bluetooth especially, but maybe I try to switch carriers and/or move to GSM (which I hear the gsm phones have visibly better battery life.) wait and see, wait and see...

--Nathan

The CDMA Treo 600 has way better battery life than the Treo 300 did. Or do you mean a 610 GSM would have better than a 600 GSM?

What I've seen on websites and webboards is that the GSM Treo 600 has better battery life than the CDMA Treo 600, so it might actually be a plus (for me) to wait for a GSM Treo 610 instead of a CDMA 610, especially with the big hammer mentality Sprint seems to have in regards to limiting features.

--Nathan

I've heard the same rumors, and it makes me sick: I just got a new Palm PDA and a new color celphone for Christmas. Drat!

I just got a new Palm PDA and a new color celphone for Christmas. Drat!

Don't worry, be happy. That shiny new Trio 610 is going to cost a mint when it first comes out. The price won't be truly reasonable until there's something even better vying for you attention. I think of these things the same way I think about computers (and now, cameras). There's always something better coming. So, you wait if you can, but when you absolutely need something, you buy what's available and you don't worry about it.

Alternately, you pick the feature set you insist on having and the price point you're willing to pay. Then, you wait. I'd been waiting for a non-SLR digital camera with a raw mode and the option for an external flash. I sat out digital cameras for years because the SLR's were too expensive, and the point-and-shoots were too lame. Then, Canon released the G1. It didn't quite hit my price point, but it had everything I wanted and I was sick of waiting. I never regretted that purchase.

That shiny new Trio 610 is going to cost a mint when it first comes out. The price won't be truly reasonable until there's something even better vying for you attention.

Well, the fun thing is we're looking at replacing pagers at work with something, so maybe I can get work to buy me a Treo 610 to replace my 600 when that happens

If they do affinity again I will problem get one and upgrade my wife to the 600.

Well, the fun thing is we're looking at replacing pagers at work with something, so maybe I can get work to buy me a Treo 610 to replace my 600 when that happens.

That's my plan, too! I can't wait to stop carrying both a cell phone and pager. And get some cool features (and games), too!

-jk

So here's a dumb question. I want to use one of these with tmobile but it sounds like they have no idea when they will sell it. If I understand correctly I can get a GSM version (the non sprint one) of the phone and install a sim for tmobile.

What I don't understand is where do I get the sim ? Do I have to buy a tmobile phone and take it out or do they sell them seperate ?

Check PalmInfoCenter today, I think there was a TMobile Treo update.

Some of the GSM carriers lock the Treo; Apparently Cingular doesn't. However at the moment if you can find patched.zip (check TreoCentral) you can unlock any Treo, as long as you don't then take another firmware update until the unlock code for your unit is known or an unlock fix for the next version is available.

As far as SIM cards, I think, but do not know, that you should be able to buy a T-Mobile SIM card.

I read the info about unlocking I would probably try to get a cingular one but I don't know about the sim.

So how long until cell phones aren't so screwed up anyway.

I read about the march release date on the treo website but on treocentral I keep seeing reports about missed release dates so who knows if I will really come out then.

I should just get the color blackberry but it's "one of oprahs favorite things" so that makes it hard to like.

You should be able to get a Cingular and pop in a T-Mobile Sim card, and be in business.

But do they sell the sim cards ?

I bet google knows.

you would get the simcard from tmobile itself, if you don't have one already (you should if you already have a gsm phone). just pop it in, and you're fine.