keep me from killing my treo phone

March 30, 2006 12:29 PM

Does your Treo's phone quality suck?

I recently went to the Verizon Treo 700w and I have had about a dozen people say the the voice quality is terrible. It seems to do ok if I am stationary, but when i am in the car, fuggetaboudit....

Any one else had this and what can i do (other then get a Blackberry)?

posted by keep it tight to technology (10 comments total)

I just got a Treo 650 last week and that was the first thing I noticed. Very frustrating.

I immediately installed Volume Care and it helped a ton. It allows you to tweak the volume on individual apps and most importantly boosts the phone speaker volume by about 200%.
posted by evoo at 12:49 PM on March 30, 2006

I had a 600 and upgraded to the 650 recently. The quality's so bad that I don't even use it for a phone. I bought a RAZR instead.
posted by MeetMegan at 12:56 PM on March 30, 2006

The 650 had an issue like this but a patch to the latest ROM makes it all better. The 700w is turning out ot be quite a lemon though.
posted by ernie at 12:59 PM on March 30, 2006

Have a 600, as a PDA/mp3 player it's great, as a phone it sucks. Mrs. Plinth's el-cheapo free-with contract Samsung gets better reception, holds a signal better in adverse conditions, and the battery lasts way longer. The quickest way to deplete the 600 battery is to make a call - you can almost watch the battery level dropping.
posted by plinth at 2:52 PM on March 30, 2006

Hope this isn't a derail, but I have the 600 and I find the phone quality to be excellent, or at least very good and the best I've had in a cellular phone.

Am I correct in interpreting these posts to suggest that the 650 and the 700w is >worse< than the 600 was? Or alternatively that they are equivalent to the 600, but (to you) it was pretty bad in the first place?
posted by mikel at 2:53 PM on March 30, 2006

I have a Treo 600, and have had quality issues.

I doubt this really relevant to you, but for the sake of people who run into the thread at later time, I'll detail/derail it.

The cable from the battery to the board inside of the Treo after a while can start producing interference during calls. You can test this by making a call while charging instead of off the battery, and if the call is magically clearer, then it's definitely the battery cable.

There are many different places you can find by searching google that detail opening your treo and wrapping tin foil around the battery cable, or simply twisting it.

I did the twist and the tin foil, and it worked flawlessly.

FWIW, the moreimportantguys at work all are issued 650s and I've heard quite a few complain about call quality.
posted by cellphone at 2:55 PM on March 30, 2006

I just looked at ernie's link - one thing it dings the device for only having 24M for apps - that's by Microsoft design and not the Treo's fault. Windows Mobile is based on Windows CE, which can only address 32M, period. 8M of rom/OS and that's all you're left with.
posted by plinth at 2:55 PM on March 30, 2006

My 650 has a distorting (clipping, sounds overdriven at any volume) speaker. Don't think it came that way. It appears to be a problem for other people as well, and I know of no solution besides replacement of the phone.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 4:39 PM on March 30, 2006

I supported these for a company in the US these are terrible devices, and sound like walkie talkies
posted by Deep Dish at 5:49 PM on March 30, 2006

I have had the 600 and 650 and the phone quality was terrible. I switched to a cheapo mike/earphone and things worked great. Of course the mike input broke. Three times.
posted by shothotbot at 5:59 PM on March 30, 2006