General Treo 650 Questions for a Careful Shopper

[mbartels]

Hi all! I am looking forward to purchasing a Treo 650 soon but have a few general questions I'm hoping you can help with.

I have service with Sprint but my contract is up. From the sounds of it I can pay full price (about $599) for an unlocked phone and I won't have to sign up for a new service plan. Also, it sounds like an extra $15.00 per month gets me unlimited internet, email, data time. Is this accurate? Is the speed on this comparable to dial-up?

My biggest concern is I don't want to get nickeled and dimed after the purchase. Will I need to purchase special software to receive my work emails, tasks, calendar, etc... on the Treo? We use a business version of Microsoft Outlook. I've noticed that many people mention different email programs they've purchased and I'm hoping that's not necessary for me. Any other "can't live without" software or subscriptions I need to look out for?

Thanks in advance for all of your help! I hope to have a Treo by the end of the month if I won't have to pay for a lot of extras.

[Jmtyra]

Hello there! I'll try to answer some of your questions.

You can purchase an unlocked phone, or your can eBay/etc and find a phone for Sprint. I believe there are even cheaper prices for unlocked phones on eBay. (I just got my Treo off of there myself.)

Be -SURE- that it's CDMA and not GSM, even if it's unlocked.

I checked on Sprint's website, and their 40MB 'PCS Vision' is $40, and the unlimited is $80 per month. There may be other packages available, but I'm not a customer of Sprint so I'm not 100% sure.

As for applications, there are plenty of free ones out there, but there are also a few 'must have' apps that are a cost if you want the higher quality/more capable applications.

Hope this helps you!

[alex_mathews]

I have service with Sprint but my contract is up. From the sounds of it I can pay full price (about $599) for an unlocked phone and I won't have to sign up for a new service plan. Also, it sounds like an extra $15.00 per month gets me unlimited internet, email, data time. Is this accurate? Is the speed on this comparable to dial-up?

The lowest data option is $10, which is the Sprint PCS Vision Access Pack. That doesn't include Picture/Video Mail, but that's not really necessary because you can do email with this option. Therefore, you can attach pictures/video to email and send to whomever you like. The speed is comparable to dial-up.

My biggest concern is I don't want to get nickeled and dimed after the purchase. Will I need to purchase special software to receive my work emails, tasks, calendar, etc... on the Treo? We use a business version of Microsoft Outlook. I've noticed that many people mention different email programs they've purchased and I'm hoping that's not necessary for me. Any other "can't live without" software or subscriptions I need to look out for?

It depends on what kind of access you have to your company email outside of your office network. Do you have the ability to remotely check your email now? It maybe as simple as using Versamail (it's included) to check your email, but that depends on what type of access you have to your company's email server. Another option is Sprint Business Connect, which is basically a email redirector application. It runs on your office PC (which requires it to be on to receive email), and when you receive company email, it relays it to the application that's running on your Treo. There are other similar solutions available. There are also some better email clients available, such as Snappermail and Chatteremail if you have direct access to your company's email server.

[tcbracing]

The lowest data option is $10, which is the Sprint PCS Vision Access Pack. That doesn't include Picture/Video Mail, but that's not really necessary because you can do email with this option. Therefore, you can attach pictures/video to email and send to whomever you like. The speed is comparable to dial-up.


It depends on what kind of access you have to your company email outside of your office network. Do you have the ability to remotely check your email now? It maybe as simple as using Versamail (it's included) to check your email, but that depends on what type of access you have to your company's email server. Another option is Sprint Business Connect, which is basically a email redirector application. It runs on your office PC (which requires it to be on to receive email), and when you receive company email, it relays it to the application that's running on your Treo. There are other similar solutions available. There are also some better email clients available, such as Snappermail and Chatteremail if you have direct access to your company's email server.

I've used both the Sprint Business Connect and just recently switched to Versamail (version 3.18). Business Connect was true "push" email but it required that I leave my PC on. It got to be a pain, so I switched to the "get my email every hour" option with Versamail. I can also sync my email manually if I want to check between every hour runs.

My company uses Microsoft Exchange and we have Outlook Web Access (OWA) which is a web browser interface to our email. With my 650 it gives me 2 ways to access email:

1) Blazer browse to the website and login that way or
2) Versamail directly through the smtp server

All of this is done using the $15 data plan.

Anything else, let me know.

Hope this helps.

Tom

[mbartels]

The lowest data option is $10, which is the Sprint PCS Vision Access Pack. That doesn't include Picture/Video Mail, but that's not really necessary because you can do email with this option. Therefore, you can attach pictures/video to email and send to whomever you like. The speed is comparable to dial-up.


It depends on what kind of access you have to your company email outside of your office network. Do you have the ability to remotely check your email now? It maybe as simple as using Versamail (it's included) to check your email, but that depends on what type of access you have to your company's email server. Another option is Sprint Business Connect, which is basically a email redirector application. It runs on your office PC (which requires it to be on to receive email), and when you receive company email, it relays it to the application that's running on your Treo. There are other similar solutions available. There are also some better email clients available, such as Snappermail and Chatteremail if you have direct access to your company's email server.

Thanks for the information! I can access my email remotely and I think we have a pretty sophisticated Microsoft email server so I'm hoping the provided software will do what I need it to. Thanks again!

[Antoine of MMM]

BIG FYI
The only unlocked phones that you can buy are those that work on Cingular/TMobile/Orange/Rogers and other GSM carriers.

Sprint and Verizon use CDMA and you CANNOT have an unlocked Treo with these items as they will ALWAYS BE LOCKED to Sprint or Verizon because of carrier specific software within the Treo. You might (given a lot of work) be able to go from Sprint to Verizon or vice versa, but it is NOT the same process as exchanging a SIM card is with GSM phones.

[alex_mathews]

BIG FYI
The only unlocked phones that you can buy are those that work on Cingular/TMobile/Orange/Rogers and other GSM carriers.

Sprint and Verizon use CDMA and you CANNOT have an unlocked Treo with these items as they will ALWAYS BE LOCKED to Sprint or Verizon because of carrier specific software within the Treo. You might (given a lot of work) be able to go from Sprint to Verizon or vice versa, but it is NOT the same process as exchanging a SIM card is with GSM phones.

That's a good point. People have been able to go from Sprint to Verizon, but not the other way around, because Sprint will only activate phones that they already have the ESN for.