Having troubles with your Treo 750v? Read this.

[Guest EN4CER666]

Nice little find i want to share with you all. Enjoy.

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Hiya,

I notice that a few people have been reporting issues with their Treo 750v currently exclusive to Vodafone. I've noticed that some of these troubles can be resolved or explained quite easily.

Below are some common complaints and solutions or explanations. Of course some of the solutions might not be desirable but they all work.

My battery life is terrible.

One word. UMTS. Actually I suppose this is an acronym but anyway...

It is a common misconception that 3G phones suck the battery dry. They don't. Although the power needs of a UMTS transmitter are slightly higher than a GMS one, it's not enough to cause the battery loss you see in most 3G phones.

The power draining is really caused by the constant flipping between a UMTS and a GSM signal that most 3G phones in this country are forced to do thanks to the somewhat poor rollout of UMTS in the UK. It takes a lot of power for to change transmission modes.

You can cut this out and extend your battery life immensely by simply telling your Treo to use GSM & GPRS and not to use UMTS at all. This will cut out all the extra work and power consumption the transmitter does having to flip between the carrier bands every time it detects/loses its UMTS signal.

To do this, click on "Menu" (Your right selection key above the OK button) and then go into "Preferences" and then "Phone settings". Go into the "Services" tab on the new screen that appears and in the list where you are asked to choose your network type, select "GSM". Leave the bottom field where your asked to select the band set to Auto.

Now press OK to everything. Depending on the type of signal you have at this particular moment in time and the applications you have open the phone may or may not reset itself. Either way you will now see it constantly has a GPRS signal.

Now if you use your Treo for a lot of heavy data applications, this might not be ideal having to use it at GPRS speeds. However if your in an area where the UMTS signal is really flaky it really doesn't make much of a difference. For light data usage such as email and MSN/Yahoo its fine (Yes there is a official MSN client available, go and get the PPC 2003 client from the Windows mobile website, it is compatible).

The above information is also true for any other 3G device you might own not just the Treo. Look in your manual for how to set a fixed band if your 3G device supports it and watch your battery life improve.

The next step is to lower the screens brightness if you have not already done so. From default the device runs at a slightly increased brightness setting which isn't required for most people. To change it go into the Start menu, then choose "Settings". Go into the "System" tab and choose "Brightness" from the icons.

You will see a colour grid from black to white and a slider that allows you to alter your brightness settings. From factory default the phone is set to use a setting towards a brighter screen. You can drastically alter battery consumption by lowering this to the middle setting (The point where the dark grey box meets the light grey box). I personally use a setting 4 marks up from the dimmest setting and it's still readable in moderate sunlight (I defy anyone to read an LCD screen in strong sunlight without trouble no matter how bright the screen is).

Press OK and then go into the icon next to it, "Backlight". The backlight is where you can really make some power savings so we want this to be on as little as possible. Turning off the backlight if the device is not used for 30 seconds is an almost perfect setting to use as it gets the right mix between you turning your attention away from the device momentarily (Say to look for a scribbled number to type) where you would prefer the backlight to remain on and to actually finishing with the device where you want it to go off as soon as possible. You can if you want set this to 10 seconds but I personally found it to be annoying.

IMPORTANT. Leave the box that says "Turn on backlight when a button is pressed or the screen is tapped" ticked. The device becomes near unusable if you try to use it without the backlight.

Press OK and go to the "Power" icon. Then go to the "Advanced" tab. You can now select how long you want the device to remain on for. I personally have it set to power off after 2 minutes. You can choose to have it go off after 1 minute but depending on how quickly or slowly you use the Treo it can be annoying for some people. Press ok when your done.

Turning off Bluetooth will also extend your battery life by a great deal. You will have to weigh this against how often you send/receive files via Bluetooth and how irksome you will find it having to turn it on/off.

You should now have extended your battery life considerably. However you might want to consider the following to further extend it...

Enabling ClearType to smooth your fonts on the devices is said to conserve power due to the way it displays the pixels on the screen but I have my doubts as to how valid this claim is. Either way it makes your screen look nicer.

Turning off sounds that are quite frankly unnecessary will save a little bit of battery life.

Killing your unused programs active in the memory will also extend battery life as this reduces how busy the processor needs to be. To do this go into the settings from the Start menu and then go to the "Memory" icon. Go to the "Running programs" tab.

Simply remembering to switch the device off when your done with it by pressing the end call key will save power.

Finally if your Treo is still pretty new, allowing it the battery to drain almost entirely before recharging it a few times (Also known as trickle cycling) will optimize your battery life, almost like exercising it.

Please remember that ultimately how long the battery lasts on the device depends heavily on how you use it. If your constantly making/receiving calls and using data transfer, or applications that make demands on the screen and processor your battery is going to drain a lot quicker than a device that just sits on standby.

This means I can't say "Your battery will now last x many days" but I can say that following all of the above will make your device last a heck of a lot longer than it otherwise would. As an example, I usually make about 4 to 5 calls a day and probably receive about as many. They usually last about 10 minutes at the most. I use MSN and mobile web for around an hour or so a day (Usually spread out over the day not all at once) and I also use it as my primary PDA these days. My battery lasts roughly 2 to 3 days before I recharge it although I suspect I could get 4. I employ all of the above to conserve my battery.

My Treo 750v struggles to get a 3G signal but other phones have no problem

There are two important things to remember here. The first is that most cellular phone devices have similar antenna equipment due to conformity and safety requirements.

The other is that in a strange contrast, not all signal indicators on phone/pda devices are born equal. What can be showing as a moderately ok signal on one device can be a fine signal to another.

This particularly comes into play when a UMTS (Or 3G) signal gets involved. One device could be showing a fairly decent 3G signal whereas the Treo 750v is struggling to get one. It all boils down to where the manufacturer has set the bar for using UMTS or falling back to GSM. You will usually only see this happening where the UMTS signal is not solid.

Windows Mobile 5.0 in general gives no quarter in deciding whether an available UMTS band signal is usable or not. Symbian phones (Particularly Nokia's) tend to be a little bit more forgiving in deciding how strong the signal is and whether it is usable but really the end result is the same in that what tends to happen to me is my Nokia N70 can be showing 3 bar 3G signal but my Treo 750 will remain in GSM/GPRS mode when I purposely put it into UMTS mode (As I mentioned above I usually keep it in GSM mode to save the battery). However if I try to download anything via the N70 it will instantly fall back to GSM and GPRS so which device was telling the truth??

It would be unfair to say that the Treo has poor 3G performance. It's 3G performance is fine, it merely insists on having a usable 3G signal before it will try to actually make use of 3G data speeds.

My Treo 750v does not alert me to missed phone calls or text messages

If you are suffering from missed phone calls that went straight to voicemail despite the fact the handset is on and has a signal then you are suffering from 3G lockout. This is caused by the phone call arriving as the phone is converting its signal from GSM to UMTS or vice versa. My N70 handset does this to me almost constantly where I live. It's caused by a flaky UMTS signal. You can resolve the problem by putting the phone in GSM mode. You will notice that the problem will stop.

It is not a fault of the Treo but of the poor implementation of UMTS in your particular area and can affect pretty much any 3G phone.

I can't send or receive items via Bluetooth

You can, it's just referred to as "Beaming". Go into the Start menu and into "Settings". Go into the "Connections" tab and select the "Beam" icon. Make sure "Receive all incoming beams" is ticked. Press OK and now go into the Bluetooth icon. Make sure Bluetooth is turned on and that the option to allow other devices to discover it is ticked. You might also wish to enable security by going to the security tab and ticking "Authentication (Passkey) required.

Press OK and now devices should be able to find you and send you files. To send a file you need to choose "Beam file..." from the context menu, selecting "Send" actually tries to email it (Confusing I know).

[Guest cerij]

Nice little find i want to share with you all. Enjoy.

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Finally if your Treo is still pretty new, allowing it the battery to drain almost entirely before recharging it a few times (Also known as trickle cycling) will optimize your battery life, almost like exercising it.

I disagree - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery

Unlike NiCad batteries, lithium-ion batteries should be charged early and often. However, if they are not used for a longer time, they should be brought to a charge level of around 40%. Lithium-ion batteries should never be "deep-cycled" like NiCd batteries.

[Guest fire007]

Nice little find i want to share with you all. Enjoy.

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If you are suffering from missed phone calls that went straight to voicemail despite the fact the handset is on and has a signal then you are suffering from 3G lockout. This is caused by the phone call arriving as the ophone is converting its signal from GSM to UMTS or vice versa. My N70 handset does this to me almost constantly where I live. It's caused by a flaky UMTS signal. You can resolve the problem by putting the phone in GSM mode. You will notice that the problem will stop.

Thank you for this !!

But - what about reception going down and completely off and the automatic reception renewal does not start after lost signal?

[Guest BubMC]

If you are suffering from missed phone calls that went straight to voicemail despite the fact the handset is on and has a signal then you are suffering from 3G lockout. This is caused by the phone call arriving as the phone is converting its signal from GSM to UMTS or vice versa. My N70 handset does this to me almost constantly where I live. It's caused by a flaky UMTS signal. You can resolve the problem by putting the phone in GSM mode. You will notice that the problem will stop.

It is not a fault of the Treo but of the poor implementation of UMTS in your particular area and can affect pretty much any 3G phone.

I set my phone to UMTS only as UMTS coverage is 100% where I live, but suffer from calls that are disconnected in the middle of a call. When it disconnects I notice sometimes that an e-mail is coming in. Can't remember I had this problem before I switched to UMTS only.