Treo Tech

This photo of the upcoming device from Palm has been leaked to the blogosphere. Form factor seems to be smaller than the Treo series and it is supposed to run EVDO from Sprint (US). It should retail at about US$99, after signing up for a new line contract. According to Palm executives, “There is a bigger story and we would love to brief you on the specifics closer to the actual launch timing.”

Will update when more news is available.

I had used Avantgo to read news on my Palm devices before the advent of RSS feeds and recently I discovered Quick News for Palm OS and so far… its been great. Its easy to use and comes with many pre loaded feeds such as CBS Financial, BBC news and Engadget etc….

Go to Stand Alone Inc to buy or try out the software.

You can either get the feeds through Hotsync or you can use GPRS to connect to the internet and download the feeds wirelessly. Make sure you have a data plan for your GPRS that suits your usage, otherwise the charges will kill you!

It can even be programmed to update the feeds at regular intervals.

When updating manually, you can either update all feeds at once or individually, which I find is useful especially when you may not have the time to read your 50 feeds!

The feeds are stored on the RAM, not on the expansion card, so thats a bummer!

My earlier information was wrong, QuickNews can store your feeds in your SD card!

Overall, its easy to use and very intuitive.

I have finally done it… My Treo 650 simply did have the memory capacity to handle what I need for my day to day use. Using it with my Garmin 10x usually hangs it, also due to Mobile XT I hardly have any programs to use with my Treo 650. I decided to upgrade to the Treo 680, as it has much more memory, 70MB usable compared to 22MB of the Treo 650.

So far so good, I’ll complain about its deficiencies in other posts. Main gripe? Battery life sux big time! I have tried to “reset” the battery meter as per suggestion in many forums such as Mytreo.net and Treocentral, but does not really seem to work.

Finally got my hands on the S9, from MobileSquare at Far East Plaza and cost me S$150, quite close to my estimate of getting from overseas.. so I can save the trouble. Probably a buyer who got the RokerZ6 did not want the S9… All the better for me then! It was an all black version and it works as advertised… so far so good. Its definitely smaller and lighter than I imagined it would be and its not really meant to be worn with spectacles, but after some adjustments you should be able to get used to it. The sound is crisp and clear and there are no problems working with Softick Audio Gateway.

Will trying running with it tomorrow… woohoo!

Apple has announced that it will start retail sales of its iPhone on the 29th June 2007 in the US, which was revealed to the public by CEO Steve Jobs this January. The iPhone will be sold in conjunction with mobile giant AT&T.

Motorola has just launched its latest BT headset,targeting those with an active lifestyle. They should work great with the Treo 650 and I am dying to get my hands on one of this babies.

The S9 wraps around the lower back of your head and can be used to listen to your favourite tunes as well as take calls from your Treo. It supports the A2DP and AVRCP profiles, you probably have to use Softick Audio Gateway as the Treo 650 itself does not support A2DP. You will be able to listen to your tunes in stereo but taking of calls will only be on the left side, where the call button and volume control is. The right side has the play/pause, forward/reverse buttons. Charging is via USB located at the rounded portion of the headset where the on/off button is as well. It also comes with 3 sizes of earbuds to match your ears. Each charge enables you to enjoy 6 hrs of listening to music.

The S9 weighs only 36 grams and feedback from the internet has been very positive.

I’ll post my comments if I manage to get my hands one 1 set.

In Singapore, its currently bundled free with any purchase of a Motorola Rokr Z6 mobile phone and they do not sell it separately. Based on searches on Ebay, might cost up to S$140 or more after taking into account foreign exchange.

Have you ever tried to delete some applications from your Treo 650 but they still appear.

The three things that PalmOS uses the main memory for are uncompressed ROM files, DBCache and dynamic RAM.

The size of the uncompressed ROM files is a fixed number that varies only by ROM contents. The size of dynamic RAM is fixed, but varies slightly according to the version of PalmOS that is loaded. The end result of this is that DBCache is calculated as the remaining memory once the ROM is uncompress and dynamic RAM is allocated. Please read from here, if you are interested to know more.

The Treo 650 has about 30MB of RAM but only about 22MB is usable and this limits the amount of applications that you can store inside the RAM, and some applications can only be launched properly from the RAM itself, eg Agendus. For the Treo 650 Blue Limited Edition, which has the CJKOS, Chinese OS in built into the ROM, reducing the amount of ROM for DB Cache, which is space available for swapping of files. That may be the reason why many Treo 650 Blue users get the DB Cache not sufficient message when they run memory intensive applications such as Mobile XT by Garmin, as I have mentioned in my previous post.

Note: Adding or removing files from your ROM will not free up the amount of free space. What you can do is either free up space on your ROM so that you can have more DB Cache or you can add applications that you use often into the ROM to free up RAM space. My recommendation is to free up more DB Cache because you never know when you might encounter a memory hog application.

So how to customise your Treo 650 ROM:

1. Download the ROMTool from here.

2. Install the USB Bootloader driver from the package in order to start the customiser

3. Connect the Hotsync cable between the Treo and your PC, hold the hotsync button while you press the reset button with your stylus. (Quite a feat, if you ask me) Best to have someone help you. When you see a rainbow coloured screen, that means you have entered the bootloader. Windows should now start detecting a device without any drivers. Select the .inf file included in the driver zip as your driver to continue. When you start the ROM tool, it will automatically find and connect to your device.

4. Finally, refer to this thread from treocentral’s forum on how to use the ROM Tool.

Decide what you really want or do not want in your ROM and you are on your way to ROM customisation.

FYI, I tried putting Agendus and pTunes into my ROM, doesn’t work!

WARNING: Customising your ROM can lead to problems with your Treo. But ROM Tool is so far the safest way I have encountered.

Palm’s 3rd line of product was launched last week amid rumours of a Linux based Treo, which was not the case. The Foleo is a sub compact notebook sized device that syncs with your smartphone (eg, Treo… duh!) for email etc. Its operating system is a watered down Linux version and like the Palm OS, it will have SDKs for developers to develop software for the Foleo. It also has WiFi capabilities for web browsing, utilising the Opera browser and MS Office for word processing. Its processor will not be able to support video such as YouTube, which is a big disappointment. For now, details are still sketchy as we do not know what processor the Foleo uses.

So far I have heard more negatives than positives.

Palm has priced the Foleo at US$599 ( less US$100 mail in rebate ), not too bad a price but apparently a lot of people are not willing to pay such a price for a product of its capabilities.

I will be updating here as more information is known.

A colleague of mine recently got a Garmin 10x Bluetooth GPS to use in conjunction with his Treo 650 (Grey edition) and its great. He has also given 1 to me as I am leaving the organisation, he’s such a nice guy! The Garmin 10x works with Palm OS, Windows Mobile and BT enabled laptops as well.

I shall discuss more about setting up the Garmin 10x on the Treo 650.

The Garmin 10x is a small device that can be paired BT enabled Palm OS, windows Mobile and laptops. You will need to download the Garmin Mobile XT from the Garmin site ( make sure its the version for the OS you are using ) the laptop software comes with the DVD if you purchase the maps. Installing the software on your Treo is simple enough, copy the program into the palm/launcher folder in your SD card and it will install automatically once the Treo detects it.

Note: If your Tre0 650 is a Blue limited edition, you will encounter a problem of it saying that there is not enough memory to run Mobile XT. The reason is that this edition has the CJKOS installed in the ROM, taking up too much ROM and causing Mobile XT not to run.

What I had done to get around this problem is that I customised my ROM to remove the CJKOS and Mobile XT works. Another potential problem is that Mobile XT takes up 8

-9 MB of RAM space in your Treo, which is substantial since the Treo 650 only has about 22 MB of usable RAM.

I am currently using user created maps downloaded from Malsing, a group of GPS users that have banded together to create Singapore and Malaysia maps for GPS users.

Some salient features of the Garmin 10x:

1. Voice prompts

2. 3D maps

3. Trip recording

4. Highly detailed maps

5. Points of Interests

I have not gotten into more details about the installation of the Mobile XT but I will be posting the details of how to go about customising the ROM, whether it be for the Garmin 10x or for other purposes.

To prevent your screen from turning off, you can use NoAutoOff, which allows you to toggle the screen’s auto off feature. Its freeware.

Got my case from foofshop, a really funky website retailer that makes fabric cases for Apple Macs, iPods, Nokia N series phones and Palm/Treo PDAs. The fabric that I chose, BlueBone, 100% wool Irish Tweed is nice, but I found it slightly thick,but its ok…. I still like it. However, take note that the wool will “hairy” after some usage…..

The inner lining, I think its vinyl… works as a screen cleaner as i slide the Treo in and out… Love it!

I got my wife the pink corduroy case for her iPod, its ver y noce and thats her fav colour too. Its thinner too….