palmOne Treo 650 PDA Phone (Verizon Wireless)

What a contraption of garbage. Aside from VersaMail and the Web, this is as useless as they come. And this one comes right after your wallet.1. Documents to Go (D2G)I paid hundreds for this phone brand new from Verizon. Within a month or two, the D2G just doesn't even work anymore. Not whatsoever. In fact it restarts the phone if I want to open it.2. MediaI was hot-sync'ing pics and movies to my harddrive and there was a problem with "023" which did not even exist on the card/device. So I could not sync anything. Then I deleted pics from the hard drive and it deleted everything on the card as well, all on its own free will. I'm talking vacation pics. What a sorry deal this device really is. The camera doesn't even take good pictures. Everything is too dark and looks like quality from an old camera from the 50's. The camcorder doesn't save anything longer than about 50 seconds. Anything longer than this and it simply does not save and will not even give you the option to do so. Hundreds of dollars for this so far? I don't think so.3. ConnectionYou're lucky if you get a signal with this standing next to the tower itself. The sound is too quiet coming from the ear piece and from the phone itself, even on speaker phone the sound is just an inaudible din. I cannot even tell you how many times this thing has just lost connection and then blared that "DINT!" sound that it plays when the phone messes up.4. That "DINT!" soundThe phone makes an annoying loud sound when it is messing up. Whether that means it has no connection, is struggling to find a signal even when you're not on the phone, or the phone itself is just too slow to process simplist things. The only option you have for not hearing this pestering sound is to just turn off the sounds completely. You cannot hide from its authority unless you mute the whole thing. Pathetic.There are many more problems.It is not even worth talking about anything positive from this phone since its vaporized by the incredible disappointments that stack up just with every single use. It looks cool, has neat capabilities, but its a facade. The man behind the curtain is worth maybe $50 for what you really get and put up with. Oh my, what's that? My phone just "DINT!"'d 2 more times as I just typed that. I think it agrees that its worth $50 I guess.Don't buy this. I mean it. Don't! I have one right now and am cancelling the phone/net plan and am selling it on ebay. I spent alot on this phone and got nothing my A670 couldn't give me already.A child once asked me if when a Treo 650 dies if it goes to hell. The answer is yes. They go to hell for ever and ever.Fin.

I must have called Verizon ten times in four months, nagging them to offer the Treo 650 on their network. I almost deserted them to get the phone, but in mid-June, I finally got my Verizon branded Treo 650. It has not been a great experience.First the positives. It is very cool to have all my contacts, all my appointments and todo items on my phone. While the phone is large by today's cell phone standards, it is a great looking unit and functions well. It is easy to set up email and web access and it is great to be able to stay in touch with the normal too-much-email office when I am traveling.However, it is not all great news. First, I have had a heck of a time keeping the unit synchronized with my office Outlook. I get duplicates by the tons and, worse, deleted contacts. The dupes are somewhat tolerable to deal with, but losing contacts, which slip into my deleted Outlook folder is not acceptable. No one has been able to tell my why this is happening.Second, the reception and volume of the phone are horrible. Where my old Motorola TC30 could get calls in awful reception areas, the Treo is spotty inside my own house. I lose calls in transit and while sitting still. Worse, the volume is very faint. I purchased a software tweak called VolumeCare which slightly amplifies the wimpy sound from the phone, but distorts it as well. About the only acceptable solution is to use a headset and plant that sound right in your ear! Not a convenient or very affordable solution.All-in-all, I'm disappointed in the Treo. It has some nice features, but it is very disappointing as a phone.

I just recieved my Treo 650 four days ago and am happy so far. I bought it just to be an organizer, phone, mp3 player--in that order--so I can't speak to other features such as web access (currently an expensive $45 from Verizon).Two pieces of advice:1. Budget several hours to set up. It's nearly like buying a new computer. I had to transfer my calendar and contacts from my old Clié and found that some of my old Palm applications caused the Treo to restart (I promptly deleted them). Generally it was just tedious software stuff, including a tricky firmware update from the Palm website, but don't expect to be ready out the door.2. Before you buy, budget for accessories. After purchasing the following: case ($20), SD card reader ($10; for the easiest transfer of files to the SD card), 2GB SD card ($150), 2.5MM-compatible headphones ($17), 2.5MM>3.5MM headphone adapter ($10), extra sync cable ($13), mp3 player application ($15; the RealPlayer is clunky and doesn't have a graphic equalizer), I have nearly spent as much as the device itself! Assuming the Treo gives me years of service, It'll be worth it but I'm going to have to live with the fear that the accessories will not be useful for my next smartphone (I rarely have replaced my cell phones because they got too old, it's normally because they stop working).