Palm Treo 750 User reviews  

I bought a treo 750 on a plan last year when they first came out.
I experienced many problems, the worst of which was that I would only get one ring out of the thing before it went to voicemail.
I was told that Windows 6 would fix this, but windows 6 never seemed to be released.
So I started using an alternative phone.
Last week I was going to put it on EBay, but then decided to upgrade it to Windows 6 - which had been available for a while now.

It's a totally different phone now, and I love it. Everything works well, it's usable, and starts ringing immediately.
The threaded SMS and emails are a treat to use.

So if you've got a Win5 Treo lurking in a drawer, do yourself a favour and upgrade it.

Pros: Threaded SMS
Touchscreen
one hand operation

Cons: none when using Win6

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crap phone! when you really need it to work it freezes or switches off or does something you dont want it to!

Pros: emails.

Cons: freezes, doesnt ring or rings for 2secs than goes straight to voicemails, slow, buttons dont work or get stuck. inconvenient bulky phone.

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I am really disappointed with this phone. What's more - the sales rep for the company that sold it to me never returned e-mails or calls. My personla opinion is that it is not worth even considering - there are plenty of better brands/models out there.

Pros: None I can think of...it has been nothing but trouble. I'm only rating this a 1 because there is no zero on the scale

Cons: Too many to list but here are a few:
OS crashes at least 3-4 times a week;
phone often doesn't ring on in-coming call;
Keypad freezes - often I can see/hear an incoming call, but can't answer it because the entire keypad has frozen - only way to stop this is to do a soft reset;
Poor system for deleting text;
Editing text problematic;
Needs charging every day and a half;
Several keys are sticking (and not through dirt or other wear and tear) - makes for inconsistent typing;
Applications don't automatically stop when you close them - you have to delve into the system menu and manually close them - perhaps one of the causes of the regular OS crashes?

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Absolutley love the phone. I live in a rural area and great great coverage. NO wi-fi but if I am at home, why would I use this to log into my wifi network when I have laptops & desk pc's if it is needed for when I am out I just use telstra's internet on the phone. Great sound reception when in a car & I can hear much clearer than I did when I had a normal mobile. All works great, Love it.

Pros: Great coverage. Fantastic all in one performer. The keyboard is much easier to use that the normal mobile keypad. Great sound reception.

Cons: No Wi-fi - but I can live with that with no drama. I really would like an off button to turn the whole device off, does not make sense haveing an electronic item on 24/7.

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Hello,

I was recently issued a Palm Treo by the company that I work for. I would like to share some of my experiences with you.

Initially, I was fairly impressed. It was nice to be able to get my email on my handheld, I had reservations – it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s not as intuitive to use as a phone, but hey, the convenience of being able to access mail outweighed them by far. Over time however, the reservations began to outweigh the convenience, until eventually the Treo became an inconvenience, an annoyance, and a frustration. It reached the point where I told my boss that he could have the phone back, I’d rather be unable to receive email on my handheld than have to deal with the moment by moment frustrations.

I’ll give you a quick rundown of some the problems:

Initially, the interface is fairly consistent and familiar. It’s Windows, after all, and I know where most things are. Hiding messaging in the start menu seems a little silly, but I could live with it. I figured out how to set up custom ring tones, and do most of the things I take for granted with a cell phone. Then I installed Good. Geez, what a mistake that was. I couldn’t find anything anymore, Good had taken over. I tried for days to figure out how to set a custom ring tone, but eventually gave up when I realised that custom ring tones made the phone even slower to answer than normal. I’ve given up on almost everything about the thing now, but I will try to cover as many of my unfortunate experiences as I can...

I have to have the phone on silent. Permanently. Otherwise, by the time I hear or feel it start to ring the person on the other end is about to hang up or voicemail gets it. This situation is even worse with a custom tone. This is a completely unacceptable situation for a phone. My tiny little Nokia can ring straight away, it can play custom tones, also straight away. This so-called “Smart Phone” can’t. Custom tones are not a luxury, they are a necessity - they let me know it is my phone ringing and not someone else’s; they give me a hint who is calling and whether I have to answer it now or can call back later. It’s the 21st century and this is basic functionality. I was going to send the phone back as faulty because it was so slow in starting to ring, but the person who sits next to me did a google and found that this is a known issue in the support web site, there is no permanent cure but I can reset the phone when it starts to happen (which doesn’t help by the way) and if the problem persists I can do a hard reset. What an absolute joke. People who call me now routinely call me twice in a row because they know I can’t get to the phone fast enough the first time.

When I do eventually answer, it’s a few seconds before the phone connects through, leaving myself and the person on the other end feeling like idiots saying “Hello? Hello?” until the phone connects. Thanks for making a piece of equipment that makes me, my friends, and my business associates feel stupid, that is one of the things I put on the top of my list when I look for a phone.

On those occasions when I do get the phone answered before voicemail takes it or they hang up, the sound quality is the worst I have ever experienced in a cell phone. The sound quality is absolutely atrocious through the handset and the hands free kits are worse, I’ve had two different Palm hands free headsets and a Palm Bluetooth headset. Despite forking out good money after bad I can’t use any of them, in every case I have had so many problems being understood by the people I am talking to I have had to just use the handset. I can’t use the Treo on conference calls at all because it degrades the quality of the conference call for all of the other attendees.

Phone reception is also hopeless. I lose signal on the Treo in places where my little Nokia has a great signal from the same provider, and my Nokia can pick up a signal in a couple of seconds when it loses it in a tunnel, but the Treo can take minutes, if it can re-establish a connection at all. I have to routinely turn the phone function off on the Treo before I enter the car park on my way home, otherwise it will lose reception underground, go into a panic and be unable to reconnect until I reset it. On numerous occasions the phone function has turned itself off, I assume this happens because it gets itself into such a frenzied state trying to re-establish a connection after being underground that the phone attempts honerable hari kiri, resulting in turning itself off.

Initially I thought it was silly that the indicator light would flash to indicate no reception, but gave no indication of new messages, mail, missed calls, upcoming meetings etc, which would be very useful, leading to thoughts like, “Oh, my phone is flashing, there is something important it is trying to tell me, I had better check.” I mean, if I am in the country and have no reception, or I’m in a tunnel, I pretty much know and expect the phone not to be working. Having said all this, I’ve actually come to rely on the flashing indicator to inform me when the phone has decided to lose reception for no good reason, leading to me thinking to myself, “Hmmmm, stupid phone is having a panic attack again, I will have to reset it.”

The reminders just don’t work. Like an idiot, when I first received the phone I used it as an alarm clock. It didn’t go off at the time I set, and when I woke up on my own and looked at the phone to see the time, turning the phone on to illuminate the screen, the alarm went off. “D’oh,” I thought to myself, “I must have set the alarm wrong.” As it turns out, the alarm was set correctly, but the Treo, once it goes into power save mode does not wake up for silly things like alarms, or reminders, it will wake up for email and phone calls, so if I happen to get an email or phone call within a few minutes of an alarm or meeting reminder it will buzz, but it won’t buzz and remind me at the time it is supposed to. So I’d like to know, who decided to build in an alarm clock that doesn’t work? Who tested it? I suppose this is another known issue in the Treo KB, “Alarm clock does not ring at specified time, workaround: check phone regularly to see if alarms are waiting.” Yes, that’s a brilliant piece of engineering.

Similarly, when a song finishes in Media Player, it won’t start the next song unless you turn the phone back on. I wish my IPod could do that, I hate how it plays one song right after the other without me having to press a button, do you suppose Apple gets a lot of complaints about that?

I could go on for pages and pages with all of other issues, but I will cover a few highlights (lowlights?)...
• On one occasion I sent an SMS message, and twenty minutes later I received a notification that the message could not be sent. I clicked resend it and it worked. Why was there a twenty minute delay? And if it was retrying for twenty minutes, why did it succeed immediately when I resent it manually? Simple answer, because the phone is broken.
• It’s slow. Excruciatingly slow. Slow to ring, slow to answer, slow to hang up, slow to start software, slow to make a connection.
• The key lock is ridiculous. When the phone turns itself off and locks the keypad, I often find that when I turn it back on it immediately relocks itself, turns off, and then turns back on, but still locked.
• When it goes into the Good security lock mode I often find that it makes phone calls from within my pocket because it seems that when the security lock kicks in, the keyboard unlocks itself to make phone calls. The whole point of a keylock is to prevent accidental phone calls isn’t it? I guess not.
• In some places I press and hold a key to get a capital letter, and in others doing that results in the key repeating. A little consistency would be nice.

My new Blackberry should be delivered soon, and I can’t wait. I will greatly enjoy throwing the Treo in the bin and jumping up and down on it, squirting it with gas and setting it ablaze. Oh, that reminds me of a good thing about the Treo, it’s tough. It’s driven me to a rage on no few occasions and despite my bashing it against walls it goes right on working. I guess that’s because of the really old super tough technology it’s built with. The downside, of course, is that it’s heavy, and huge.

Overall, there is nothing Smart or Good about this phone. It starts off dumb and bad, and installing Goodlink makes it worse. I’ll be sending this message to as many review sites as I can find in the hopes that no one else, ever, has to go through all of the pain and frustration that I have gone through.

Pros: Tough, no matter how hard I try to break it when I am angry with it, I can't

Cons: Every single thing about this phone

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It is an evil, unreliable phone. We have around 50 in our organisation, and everyone complains about them all the time.

Pros: Dreadful phone, although access to emails is good.

Cons:
1. Phone often (70% of time) doesn't ring out, so I miss calls.
2. Phone doesn't tell me when I have missed a call, despite this being set.
3. Lose connection multiple times throughout call, even if standing still in good reception.
4. Screen freezes often.
5. Phone freezes during a call and cannot be turned off, so goes on for 40 minutes or so (sometimes I don't realise, so don't take battery out).
6. Can't be switched off! A nightmare on secure sites.
7. Alarms either don't work at all, or ring out at some random hour. Seems impossible to switch off all reminders, phone etc... except for wake up call, which is what you want to do in a hotel. When away on business I have to set a separate alarm clock, and take battery out of treo.
8. Often needs rebooting, either soft or hard.
9. Sometimes claims no reception, and cannot find service provider, even in an area with ok reception.
10. 3G doesn't work well through walls.
11. Heavy and bulky - can't carry in a pocket. Extra battery (needed because you can't turn the thing off, so it runs down even if not in use), is even bulkier.
12. Goes temporarily mad everytime you need a password reset.
13. Texts and emails apparently don't get sent at all sometimes, or not for many hours, despite being in good reception.
14. Sometimes resets timezone when crossing borders, sometimes doesn't, so it's hard to know what is happening. Sometimes it resets and the diary resets too, so you are still on the wrong schedule.

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I have designed a "PDA phone", which uses a new method for
"Typing",and I am quite sure of it's efficacious.
Where I have to present it?
Please guide me.

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What a waste of money. The entire time I've had this phone I've just wished that I bought the el cheapo Nokia prepaid instead. Endless problems with battery, OS locking up, phone not powering down correctly, randomly turning itself on in the middle of the night leaving me with a flat battery first thing in the morning. I could go on and on.

Pros: Smallish

Cons: Everything about this phone.

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The palm 750 is the worst phone - nay, piece of technology - that I have ever owned. It's cute exterior hides a multitude of shortcomings that started as soon as it was charged and ended with the phone refusing to charge 8 months later. I have put up with having to constantly reset when the phone won't ring, an incredibly annoying delay in answering calls, the phone locking up because it just can't cope and now the thing won't charge and nobody seems to stock batteries or chargers for it in a 10 km radius. I hate this phone and would only wish it on my worst enemy.

Pros: Cute looking... Although the silver is diminishing around the central buttons.. guess thats a con.

Cons: The biggest con was the shop who sold it to me as better than a blackberry pffffft.

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Great PDA! The best I ever had. But why in the world would anyone build anything electrical that you can't switch off?

Pros: Reliable, fair priced, good software, nice sync with Outlook, excellent call quality, fast internet, super keyboard, slick design, robust stylus, HUGE touchscreen

Cons: Battery sucks (got a 2nd one), PALM would have to have the worst Customer Service ever, it choses the EDGE network instead of 3G for whatever reason

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