New GSM Treo 650 and Sprint Firmware have arrived!

Just yesterday I was checking around to see if by chance the latest firmware for the Treo 650 had been released without me realizing it. I've been pretty busy lately, so haven't been as current on news as I would like. There were definitely rumors that it was going to happen soon, but nothing concrete. Oh well. This morning I woke up for some reason at 5am and couldn't fall back to sleep, so went to check email and I saw that Pa1mOne has finally released the long-awaited firmware update for the unlocked GSM Treo 650. There is also another update for the Sprint Treo 650, which is actually the second update for that phone. Unfortunately no update yet for the Cingular Treo 650, but hopefully that will be out before the end of the month.

TreoCentral recommended an alternate installation instruction for upgrading the firmware, and I decided to use this. The alternate version involves creating another user for your Treo just for temporarily installing the new firmware. Normally the upgrade requires 15MB of free memory on the Treo 650, which would normally involve deleting all but a few programs. Instead, I just hotsynched by Treo, thus backing up all the files, then did a hard reset and installed the new firmware by creating a new user. Everything went perfectly save for one thing. Somehow at least a couple of the applications I used to have were missing once I restored everything from the old user. It could be there are others that I just am not recalling. These programs were small ones, so I am just going to download them, email them to myself, and reinstall them on the go.

So far, it's been about 5 hours and I haven't had any resets, which was one of the major isssues that this was supposed to fix. The other issues listed are:

• "Optimizes memory handling and frees up more memory with non-volatile files system improvements" - I now have almost 15MB free whereas before the upgrade I had a about 9MB.
• "Updates VersaMail to heighten stability and add improvements" - I really don't care about this one since I use Marc Blank's excellent ChatterEmail.
• "Overall voice quality improvements and enhanced call clarity" - I've never had a big problem with voice clarity, so I'm not sure if this is going to be a big difference for me.
• "Latest carrier settings files" - not sure about this. I use T-Mobile and never had an issue.
• "Bluetooth Headset Volume Increased" - again, this has never been an issue for me with my Pa1mOne Jabra BT250. My biggest problem with it is that it's very sensitive to wind, and makes it impossible for the person on the other end to hear my voice if there's much of any wind. Even the AC in the car does this if it's pointed towards my head! Truly annoying. There's nothing about that here, so my assumption is this will continue to be a problem and is probably something inherent in the headset and has nothing to do with the Treo.
  

I have noticed a couple of items not mentioned in the Updater notes. First of all, the buttons, particularly the red phone on/off button seems to be much more responsive. One of my big annoyances with the phone other than its resets and memory issues has been this button, which sometimes would stubbornly not work unless I hit it several times. Now I hit it once, it comes on, I hit it again, it goes off. Whew! No more breaking my thumb in order to turn the phone on! The other improvement is the volume of the speakerphone. This has been an annoyance since day one. The volume of the other party on the speakerphone was so low that it really wasn't usable as a speakerphone! You had get your ear so close to it that you might as well just be using the non-speakerphone mode. After the update, the volume level seems to have increased by several times, thank goodness, so now it can be used as an actual speakerphone.

In all, I am very pleased with this update. While we can all hope for slick new functionality, all the niggly issues I had with this phone now seem to be gone, so at least now it works the way it should.

If you have an unlocked GSM Treo, go get this firmware NOW!

tags: phone  treo  firmware  mobile  smartphone  palmone  gadgets  treo 650  

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