The Syncing Apple

Blackberry vs. Treo

Lil Red Spider- Time Message Pad (TMP)–

A New version of TMP with lots of new enhancments is out, some are Treo650 specific.

Treonauts
has some in-the-hand experience with the Black Berry Connect for Palm. I was very excited about this a year ago when it was announced, as I had just switched from a Blackberry Nextel phone to my new Sprint Treo650. While ChatterMail has been very good to me, I would still run Connect if it made sense, and if it syncs OTA calendar and contacts.

And speaking of OTA PIM and email suites, I’ve recently been using Zimbra as my primary email server, after deploying the free version on my own linux server. They promise syncing to the Treo soon (in the coming months) for the paid version, which would make it very compelling. Their web-based 100% ajaxified client is impressive and has replaced Thunderbird for me.

And, even further afield, the SE M600 Phone looks very interesting. The news I’ve read about it mentions that it may have Blackberry Connect.

Thanks to the work of Matthew Mastracci, this amazing news is all over the net, but I want to mention it here.

Matthew Mastracci has booted a Linux kernel on his Treo. His site has the current status, and he has setup a Treo650 page on the Handhelds.org Wiki site.

My Treo 650 (from Sprint) has been working fine for me. The only real issue I have is the Sprint Service in West Philadelphia. I want to use it as my primary phone (and do, and just put up with the missed calls), but there are still issues of service coverage while inside my house. These super thick brick walls are just not nice to the Sprint signals. Other than that ChatterEmail has been superb, and I use it most of the day to keep me on top of my email, when I’m not in front of a computer. In that respect the Treo has been near flawless. I have no plans to flash Linux onto it, but I can see how it could become very interesting on the 650: with the keyboard, built in connectivity and a decently rezed screen.

This great review of the new TomTom 5 for the Treo 650 at EverythingTreo reminded me how nice version 5 is. Despite the fact that I can’t load any voices on the Treo (support from the Belgians is not so hot), the interface in 5 is mostly the same as 4, is a bit cleaned up. It supports the Treo 650 now (even with BT GPS receivers) and there is a Macintosh Installer! That saved me lots of time. They have a compass rose now on the display, which was sorely missing from version 4. Their route interface is much more sophisticated and more functional- they really pack a lot of options and power into this software. The review goes over all the goodies, this is one of the coolest things to have on your Treo 650 if you drive. I haven’t had to use Google directions since I’ve had this.

I’m always on the lookout for the best viewer application to see my appointments and tasks. For a long time I was happy with Agendus, but since was casing way too many problems on the Treo with chattermail, I’ve done away with it. I came across the best looking app I’ve seen for the Palm- TMP. Time Manager Pad is a wonderful little app from lil’ Redspider. It’s only $14.95. After installing it gives a very clear and concise view of the days agenda, and has a cool pop-up showing tasks and a calendar view. It supports the new calendar database in the recent Palms.

Marc at ChatterEmail has posted 1.0.7rc1 which fixes an issue with ChatterEmail and the new firmware update from PalmOne for Sprint phones. This version will be released soon as 1.0.7 stable. I’ve installed it and not had any problems so far.

Marc also seems to have an OTA updater!: http://update.chatteremail.com

I had problems with the Treo650 rebooting all the time- and it’s not a secret why it was doing it. There were two issues. First, accessing the data connection when the phone has low signal strength just reboots it. There doesn’t seem to be anything to do for this, short of some firmware from Palm addressing this issue. But that isn’t so bad. The other aspect is alarms and Email. I use Chatter mail to keep a constant data connection to my email server (via IMAP) so that I have instant email on the Treo. For whatever reason, alarms conflict and confuse Chatter - at least, alarms from 3rd party date managers.
I had Agendus Pro (and later datebook 5) installed since I’ve owned the Treo. For whatever reason, alarms from 3rd party apps make the Treo reboot. When I finally had enough of the reboots I hard-reset the Treo and built it back from scratch (rather than just syncing back all the data and apps). I only installed the apps I absolutely need: Splash ID & Photo, Chatter and TomTom navigator. Since then, my reboots only occur when the signal strenth is very low. Since Chatter starts up automatically, I hardly ever notice the reboots.

Now, regarding resets. As anyone that owns a Palm knows there are two resets: soft and hard. Soft is something you can do for fun. Hard wipes the Palm clean as if you just purchased it. However, the Treo 650 actually has three resets. Since it has NVRAM, the traditional Hard reset doesn’t go all the way. There is the Super Hard Reset, which I wasn’t aware of and neglected to use the first months of my Treoship. If you are interested, here is the link to the PalmOne support page explaining how to access it.

Note: the Power Button on the Treo650 is the RED button (Hangup). I know this is obvious, but I thought it was the GREEN button for some reason, and this won’t work unless you use the RED button.

Finally they made good on their promise. Palm One has the Treo 650 Updater 1.12 for sprint, which will enable Bluetooth DUN. As well as get rid of the annoying delay in dialing the phone. I’m about to take the plunge. Back in January I tried the hack for this, and it totally messed up my Treo. I’m hoping this works better.

Palm One Updater Page.

Now if they will allow the Apple Address book to bind with the Treo 650 via BT, then we will finally get getting somewhere.

Update: the firmware update installed ok. The only issue was that after I re-synced all my PIM data, the data didn’t sync from the backups into the Treo- it wanted to delete all my PIM data on iSync. I fixed this by forcing a reset of the Palm from within iSync itself, then re-synced. I use Missing Sync to sync with my Mac.

Here is a page on how to setup the BT DUN for the mac. I haven’t tried this yet, as DUN won’t share the data connection- you have to quit any other apps that use it, as my Chatter email app does. So I can’t run them both at the same time.

My Seido G2100S finally arrived this week. The G2100 is like the G2500 in that it has a GPS serial input, but it has no speaker phone for the Treo. It charges the phone and the GPS receiver. The latest update from TomTom fixes the T650, and the serial TomTom GPS receiver works fine with the G2100. Its nice to be able to use the T650 as a GPS again in the car.

• Agendus 9.03
• ChatterEmail 1.0.3.1
• TomTom 2004 [Support for T650]
• Hand/RSS is now QuickNews

So Sprint has a big problem with replacement phones… namely, their replacement service sucks. You can spend $450 on a brand new Treo 650 and if it breaks the next day, you get a replacement Refurbed phone… not a new one. Not to mention that you wait about 2 days (unless you are willing to do the leg work yourself). And there is no way to forward a Sprint number except from the phone itself! (If you have use of your cell phone buttons, its *72) But all that is another story, which I’ll tell soon. Others have Sprint horror stories…

Now I know why people with SIM cards laugh at all the idiots that bought into the bullshit of CDMA non-sim phones. You are screwed if your phone is kaput. I came this close to walking over to the Cingular store and getting a Treo 650 with a SIM… It was only the unexpected intervention of a Sprint Store Manager that treated me like a human, instead of a annoying customer that saved my account at Sprint.

Meanwhile, anyone that has a 650 knows about the key-guard. Any button that turns on the Treo does so only for a few moments, unless you press the big button in the middle of the nav group. So what happens when that stops working? You can’t do crap with your Treo for one. One day this week that button stopped working. Then all the hardware buttons stopped working. Then they came back, then stopped again. I needed a new phone. I hadn’t done anything to it, other than keep it with me and use it. After mucking around with Sprint Tech support, dropping off the phone and finally chasing down a replacement in Philly, I got a refurbed phone. Which, at that point I was very happy to take.

But now I’m worried: is this Treo going to lose its buttons too? Is this a defect with these things, or did I just get an unluckly Treo? I guess I’ll know in another month. Meanwhile I suppose I should start researching the Blackberry 71XX on T-Mobile, just in case.

I hope this turns out to be true.

I’m sick of reading about the Tivo Deathwatch… I love my Tivo and I’m not ready to invest the time and energy in Myth TV. Apple will do it right, and they should be flush with cash by now, after making their 40% on all the ipod shuffles they’ll sell.

Om Malik discusses how to save Tivo.

This is a little stale, but Chatter Email is now 1.0 and already surging ahead to 1.1. Not only is it all fancy with hirez icons, it’s now rock solid and the absolute #2 app on my Treo 650. The number one app of course is the phone….

There is a whole new website, www.chatteremail.com which is a huge improvement over the old site. This has great forums, so now there is no more hopping around from mytreo and treocentral forums to get the latest skinny on Chatter.

It’s now just $32, which is a steal compared to some other more bloated packages out there….

The coolest thing you can do with Chatter is read an email, realize you need to contact the sender, see that their email sig has a phone number, double tap on the phone number and have the Treo dial the number. It’s Newtonesque.

If you were wondering (like me) if this is ever going to pan out, I got a new hit today on google regarding this. This was introduced back in May of 2004.

PalmSource Mail for BlackBerry Connect Overview

PalmSource Mail for BlackBerry Connect is the standard email client for Palm OS Garnet to connect to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server™ or BlackBerry Internet Email Service™*. The mail client provides end-to-end secure access to corporate mail servers and seamlessly integrates with existing BlackBerry Enterprise Server installations.

This looks very interesting. (Less so I should say, since I’ve found ChatterEmail and Chatter has gone 1.0.) However, reading more about this I see a strange thing in the suppport details: it’s only going to work on GPRS networks? What? So Blackberry Connect is only going to work with the GSM Treo’s- like on Cingular? I just got my 650 from Sprint, and Verizon would be my second choice. How can this only work on GPRS?

The authoritative how-to is at Trevor Harmon’s site. Thanks Trevor.

Update on Feb 23 ‘05 - I only ever used this once. It wacked the hell outta the T650. Nothing permanent, just massive reboots and it never worked. I’ll wait for PalmOne/Sprint to do the right thing…

I really enjoyed my T|C while I had it. The most useful application I had was certainly TomTom Navigator 2004, which I used all the time in my car. I had been debating on getting a GPS device, but the options are so limited on them, and the ram is always an issue. It made sense to use my Palm as the device. It took some digging to get an adapter that works on the T|C, but TomTom produces a nice kit which I purchased (from Mobile Planet: “Palm Tungsten C GPS Kit“). The software was great, but there were two issues with the hardware.

• One- they had no specific car holder for the T|C, so my kit came with the Universal Holder, which as its name implies, will hold virtually any PDA.
  
  However, the problem is that it clamps down from the sides to squeeze a PDA of any width, and as you may know, the power button on the T|C is on the side, so every time you clamped it into the holder it would either turn on or off.

• Two- the nasty Palm V connector. The type V connector totally sucks.
  
  The little tiny hooks that keep the connector in the Palm are so tiny that you are certain of problems eventually. Sure enough, after about a month of use the connector stopped grabbing on one side. I was going to have to get a replacement, but I’ve since sold the T|C and now I use the Treo 650.

I’m glad to say that TomTom Navigator works fine on the Treo 650… but running the application is just the easy part. I have to accomplish two more things:

• Get either a BT or serial connection from the GPS receiver to the T650
• Get a holder for the car

I already have the universal holder, and i can use that but its big, bulky and very ugly. Besides it provides no integrated power or serial connection for the Treo: I’ll have to have a tangle of wires to keep the Treo powered and get the GPS signal into it.

BT seems the perfect solution… I should mention that I actually have two TomTom kits, one with the serial GPS that I got for the T|C, and then a second one that I purchased for my wife and her Ipaq PocketPC. The second one is the Bluetooth GPS receiver. She rarely uses hers, so I have the choice between serial and BT GPS receivers.

However, the Treo650 doesn’t seem to have a serial profile which would enable me to bond it to the BT GPS. I’m still investigating this.

The point of this post, and the solution to all these problems is the just-about-to-be-released Seidio G2500 Car Kit for Treo 650 which looks amazing. Not only is this a perfect fit for the T650, the 2500 model includes so many features that its hard to list them all. There is a port for my serial GPS, amplified speaker for hands-free talking (as well as a microphone), power from the cigarette lighter or directly wire it to your cars power, volume control on the speaker. All this for $129. I’m getting this as soon as its available, which should be any day now.

For Christmas I got the cool Boxwave DirectSync Bundle for the T650. You get a sync/charge cable, a car adapter, a mains adapter and a battery (4 AA) charging module. This is some cool kit as the cable provides syncing and charging off your USB port. I don’t understand why PalmOne (or Sprint) can’t include a cable like this. They give you a USB sync cable with a weird pass-thru for a separate mains charger…. I guess if you don’t have a computer you need the mains adapter. The AA charger is nice for a last ditch charge: keep it in my bag, and if there is no other means to charge it I can use the batteries in this to charge up the 650. The DirectSync cable also has a nice button on it for HotSyncing.

The one thing the Treo 650 has to do is email. It’s replacing my BlackBerry 7XXX, so it got to do email– very well. The three main functions for a smartphone are: email, phone and schedule (synced with my Mac). The last thing was impossible with the BB. The BB did email very well, it also did the phone thing very well and it sync’ed — with Outlook and our local Exchange Server. Which did me no good on the Mac. The Treo needs to do all that, plus work well as a Palm Device, that is, run the Palm apps that I’ve come to rely on, number one being SplashID.

So for email I’ve spent some time with VersaMail 3 (free with the 650, in ROM), SnapperMail ($60, Enterprise version) and finally ChatterEmail ($25).

I’m only interested in IMAP clients, as I need to be able to download only a portion of the email and am not interested in POP access. I use a Cyrus IMAP server on linux as my mail host.

Without a doubt, Chatter Email is a clear winner for a number of reasons. While it doesn’t have some of the features of SnapperMail (namely the ability to store older messages to a Storage Card) it has some amazing syncing features that keep your email on the Treo exactly the same as on your chosen IMAP Inbox (and other folders if you choose). Of all three, only Chatter tries to sync all the status types from Treo to server and vice versa (read, deleted etc…)

While Chatter needs to add some support to better utilize the higher-rez screen of the 650, it fully supports the 5 Way Nav Pad very well, and moving around the application is easy with one hand. Chatter has a mode called Sync, where it stays connected to the IMAP server all the time, and changes are propagated down to the device nearly instantly. Of course, this sucks the battery dry in a day, as it keeps the data connection to Sprint up and in use all the time. A more realistic mode is QuickSync, where Chatter will connect and sync up in a given time period, say every 30 minutes.

There are two forums (TreoCentral &MyTreo) where the Chatter author provides support, and an email list for annoucements is available at the Chatter website.