Thursday, February 7, 2008

Bad Lockup? Or Good Energy Saver?

I have noticed lately that one of the good but misunderstood features in the Treo 680 is the energy saving features. With the new features the Treo has a great knack of turning the screen off when it's doing something that you can't affect. An Example is when the system restarts and the phone is turning on and searching for signal. The system would normally be unresponsive at this time, but the screen would be on. Now at times like these the screen goes black!

The problem with the nice feature is that it took me 3 months to realize this was happening. Instead every time this happened and the system seemed unresponsive I would get impatient and do a reset. DOH!

Now that I am aware of how the system is trying to save energy I am more patient and have noticed many areas where it is doing so. It does this now when I am updating Quick News in the morning or when I am doing a long backup. The old 650 would stop syncing quick news when I turned off (or it automatically) the screen.

So needless to say this is a very nice little power saving feature that a newbie to a 680 may not recognize as such right off the bat.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Hidden Gems

One of the thing I LOVE about the Treo680 is that I keep finding LITTLE things that annoyed me with my 650 that I didn't realize the FIXED in the 680.

One perfect example is the ringer to the headphone out. On the 650 whenever I would use my highend headphones to listen to my music and someone would call my eardrums would get blown out (figuratively of course). The ringtone would shoot into the headset at RINGTONE volume, not music volume and BAM.

Well with the 680 last week I noticed that when I got a call while listening to music with my headphones, the ringtone no longer go to the headphones just the external speaker.

HOW WONDERFULLY FANTASTIC.

Another little hidden suprise I have found after 5 months owning the Treo.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

I never LEARN. Giving Java another chance!

So it's that time again. Where I set myself up for a "why did I do this AGAIN" moment.

Java has been available for my past Treo 600 and 650 devices. On each device I had installed Java multiple times in hopes of some great new revelation I guess. Each time the only thing I realized was there were no apps I NEEDED Java for, it took up TOO MUCH space and frequently crashed my device. Of course later on there would be a release of a Java app that would make me do it all over again. I also found that the only way to completely get RID of Java's influences on my device was to do a Hard Reset.

Now I have a Treo 680 and a new version of Opera is out and a Gmail app (now mind you I use Xpress mail for my gmail and DON'T NEED a gmail app ... but why not. And Blazer on the 680 works fine for almost all of my purposes)

Well I was able to JUSTIFY installing Java again to try these new apps, because my 680 has 3 times the internal space, adn because I HAVEN'T TRIED IT YET on my 680.

The short of it is ... for a Tweaker I like having it. It opens up a different world of things to try and get working. Also I REALLY like the new version of Opera Mini for the Treo. It's a nice browser with nice features. The Gmail app does little for me, but I keep it on the device anyway for now. I have TRIED to get some Java Games (like SIMS 2 and others) that weren't necessarily made for the Treo680 to work ... and I was mostly unsuccessful.

For now unless something changes and the Java App seems to be negatively affecting my Treo I will keep it on the device and keep playing with it. I'll let you know if anything changes.

Monday, December 3, 2007

When MORE space is BAD!

So I have had the Treo 680 for a little while now and have discovered an unexpected issue.
My main tool in troubleshooting crashes is locking things in memory. Well when I had most of my apps running their parts off of the SD card the files IN memory were smaller. This allowed me to lock more troublesome and conflicting apps. However NOW that I have almost everything running in memory and extra add on features for apps like Agendus also installed that app size in main memory is MUCH larger. For example Agendus has changed from about 1MB to almost 3MB.
The reason this is such a problem is the Rlock only lets you lock up to 4MB with of apps in memory. So nowI have Agendus, Lightwav, and my small hobbyist apps locked and am out of room to lock more apps. This is definitely an unforeseen problem with actually having MORE memory. I have been looking at how I store my apps and their data and seeing if I can pair down even though it's not necessary for the sake of free RAM.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Sometimes it's the small things that count!

Ever since the Treo 680 was released I have had a yearning for a new Treo. But like many others I found the mediocre spec increase of the 680 not enough to make me want to switch up.

Well being a gadget-head and always pining over the newest cool thing, I couldn't take having my older 650 after I bought my wife a new I-Phone. While the I-Phone is a fantastic device and perfect for my WIFE (especially after I hacked it), it just isn't right for me.

So having AT&T and refusing to use a Windows Mobile device, I took another look at the Treo 680. Here's what I liked superficially:
  1. Color ... I wanted a Copper, but would be almost as happy with a Crimson.
  2. 3 Times the internal memory
  3. Better Data Network functionality
  4. Upgraded Bluetooth
  5. Slightly Smaller Form Factor
  6. No Antenna
Here's the Bad I had heard:
  1. HORRIBLE ... not bad, but HORRIBLE battery life. (less than half the power output of the 650 battery)
  2. Worse Cell reception than the 650
So I found a great deal, decided like usual I could buy the 680, sell my 650 and make out either even or slightly ahead ... so why not.

Here is what I found
  1. Loved the colored phone, but it made it more difficult to choose cases
  2. The greater memory is fantastic. All of the apps that I had running off the card with Zlauncher could now be in main memory. Also I could now install all of the extra icons I have for Agendus.
  3. Better Data Network functionality. The data network is night and day compared to the 650
  4. The Bluetooth on this is improved ten fold over the 650.
  5. The clarity on a headset, speed of connection/pairing, and
  6. My bluetooth stereo headphones work GREAT now with Audio Gateway
  7. (before it was really touch and go).
  8. Also a far better bluetooth hotsync speed.
  9. While the form factor is smaller, I almost find this a problem. The lack of bulk makes it a little harder to hold on to.
  10. No Antenna is actually very nice ... it does lose a bit of the classic TREO look though.
  11. PERSONALLY I use the phone quite a lot and have no issues with the battery. I charge it every night and some nights it's at 20%, others it's at 75%. It's a smaller battery ... I can except that.
  12. My cell reception has been FAR BETTER than with my 650. I get perfect reception everywhere I used to with my 650 AND places I NEVER had reception with my 650.
  13. Because of the increased RAM size Tom Tom works better than ever
  14. Unexpected but the change that made the switch TOTALLY worth it was a GREATLY
  15. improved signal to noise level on the audio output. The Treo650 is horribly noisy, especially
  16. when listening with headphones. The 680 is crystal clear.
The Not So Good:
  1. 1. Slower OS speeds. Changing catatgories, rebooting, touchscreen responsiveness are ALL noticeably slower. This is a fine trade off to me for what has been improved even if it's a bit curious.
  2. SD Card door is kinda flimsy. I use Card Export II for my transfers to my 8 GB SD card more now so I am not constantly opening and closing the flimsy little side door for the SD Card.
  3. Really wish they would have upgraded the camera still, but the quality still seems a bit better than the 650 especially in lower light.
Well that's about it. Loving the new Treo680 and finding I made a wise switch.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

psyslaunchDB

I have posted several times about the battle with the Treo650 crashes. I have been able to install TON's of apps that shouldn't be together by keeping some on the SD Card, Locking some in memory, and most importantly getting rid of and finding workable apps for the really troublesome ones.

A major tool I have mentioned I use is a Crash Logger. I specifically use the one build into Reset Doctor by Hobbyist Software (one of my favorite developers). This technique works GREAT unless you start getting "Application" as the primary culprit. This is what has started happening to me.

Well the good news is that it has told me one good piece of info. If Application is causing the crash, then a SPECIFIC app is NOT. However finding what part of the system itself was causing the problem took some time and some stumbling upon.

I ended up finding the problem by looking at my Resco Backup Logs. What I found was the "psyslaunchDB" was getting corrupt every couple days. My quick solution for this was to reach back to one of my previous 4 days worth of backups and find the newest one that was NOT corrupt and replace the corrupt one currently in memory. Viola all is good.

The moral I guess ... use all of the tools at your disposal. You never know which one will help you solve the problem.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Goodbye Dear Friend ... I Miss you already!

As many of you may know already SplashBlog (which was bought by Six Apart, creators of Vox Blog Site) is being shut down by it's new owners. This is forcing many old Splashblog users over to Vox as the closest "ALTERNATIVE". The nice part is Vox offers MORE. It offers video, Audio, Text, and Photos. However this also offers a more cluttered site and more from your visitors.

Vox does include a software app for Palms built off of the Splashblog app.

At first I found the Vox app annoying because it would automatically post each image as a separate blog entry. A small work around is to set your Vox app on your Treo to submit photos to the library and NOT a new Post. This allows you to then login to the site and quickly create a blog entry including all of the photos you have uploaded to the library.

While Vox is a workable alternative, Splashblog was a GREAT and Unique site/service that just hasn't been successfully replicated by anyone else yet.

Farewell my good friend. I WILL miss you!