Sprint palmOne Treo 650 Update

Posted By: Ryan Tuesday, March 22, 2005 1:55:03 PM

palmOne has released a v1.08 update for the Sprint Treo 650 smartphone. The new update features improvements to voice quality and improves the memory management of the NVFS file storage.

The updater provides a number of performance and reliability enhancements including:

  • Overall voice quality improvements, including fix for voice "choppiness" some Sprint PCS customers experienced
  • Internal setting modification to allow correct access to Sprint Affiliate roaming partner networks (previously released as Sprint PCS Treo 650 Roaming Patch)
  • Non-Volatile File System improvements that optimize memory handling and free up more memory
  • TTY (also known as TDD or Text Telephone) optimizations and improvements
  • Optimizations for data calls
  • Includes VersaMail 3.0c which provides greater stability and improvements
  • Bluetooth Carkit drivers are now included in ROM (previously released as Carkit Update for Treo 650)

Improved NVFS
The improved memory management includes non-volatile file system (NVFS) improvements that optimize memory handling and free up more memory.  palmOne implemented a NVFS system in the new Treo 650 because of the strong benefits it provides: preserving data and applications if the battery runs down, and the ability to change the battery on the fly.  In the original implementation, NVFS stored each record in 512 byte blocks.

This software update reduces the overhead of storing database records in the file system. It does so by compacting more than one record into a single 512 byte block.  In effect, each 512 block is divided into 16 32 byte subblocks, which allows small and large records to be stored more efficiently.

Bluetooth DUN
The update does not include a feature many users have been waiting for, speciacally Bluetooth Dial Up Networking. A Sprint represenative stated, "We have heard from many of you that Bluetooth Dial Up Networking (DUN) is important.  Although Bluetooth DUN is not addressed in the current software update, we will be delivering this capability in a future update later this year.  With the current software release, we are immediately able to address two important user issues while continuing to test our DUN implementation."

The Sprint v1.08 update and more details are available at palmOne support.

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How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?

Frenchie @ 3/22/2005 6:07:43 PM # Q
Just curious. Is it now at 256 bytes or completely removed? I hope that the Verizon t-650 has BT DUN enabled by default.

The world will end in 2006. Just as it was predicted in the bible along with the release of Microsoft Longhorn.... :p
RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
Wollombi @ 3/22/2005 6:25:22 PM # Q
The article says it now writes into 32 byte "sub-blocks". It sounds to me like the minimum size is now 32 bytes instead of 512.

_________________
Sean

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
rkevwill @ 3/22/2005 8:03:46 PM # Q
Frenchie:

No chance on Dun with Verizon. They hate bluetooth in all forms. I would not be suprised if bluetooth is totally disabled in the 650, or enabled for just headsets and cars at the most. My guess is that is why Verizon doesn't even have their 650 out yet, they want a crippled one!

RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
hkklife @ 3/22/2005 9:44:19 PM # Q
This update just goes to show how dammed slow Verizon is to pick up the latest hardware. They had hardly begun stocking the Treo 600 when Sprint announced the 650!! Now Sprint has their first 650 ROM update out and it'll be end of May/early June at the earliest before Verizon has their 650--with all indicators basically pointing to a fall launch by the time it's all said and done.

You gotta give props to Sprint & P1 for handling what could have been a huge nightmare with the 650 by issuing first a band-aid (the free 128mb SD card) and then by actually following it up with a real fix that works (this update). I just hope the DUN patch doesn't become AWOL over the next couple months...

I lost magnitudes of faith in Verizon for their outright lies and crookedness during the V710 Bluetooth fiasco. I've been trying to get my 710 flashed for a month now and the store tech keeps telling me there's a 50/50 chance it'll fry my phone and they have no new units in stock or en route to replace it with (new, refurb or otherwise). What a pathetic situation.

Once the major wrinkles in the Sprint/Nextel merger are ironed out I may just jump ship OR take another look at GSM. With Verizon rapidly phasing out AMPS in their latest handsets, one of the main reasons I stuck with them in the past is becoming a moot point.

RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
AdamaDBrown @ 3/22/2005 10:51:12 PM # Q
You gotta give props to Sprint & P1 for handling what could have been a huge nightmare with the 650 by issuing first a band-aid (the free 128mb SD card) and then by actually following it up with a real fix that works (this update).

I do? In my opinion, they never should have shipped the 650 that way in the first place. If a bunch of people bought a new refridgerator, only to find out that it doesn't come with any shelves, should they be grateful to the company when some of the customers get free shelves 3+ months later? It's not like P1 didn't know this was going to be a problem. The least they could have done was bump the 650 up to 64 MB, which would make it, while still an annoyance, a relatively minor one.

RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
hkklife @ 3/23/2005 9:23:10 AM # Q
We've come to expect buggy, behind-the-times hardware from P1. Look at the T|T fiasco. They never issued any sort of fix other than a half-hearted memory-hogging RAM patch. Then there have been the other half-baked hardware releases over the past couple years. Look at their response to the peeling Zire 72 or the T3's lost screws. Silence whilst feigning ignorance and just quietly discontinuing the older models!

In my comments yesterday I criticized Verizon for its (non) handling of the V710 bugs & Bluetooth issues. That's why I am so pleasantly that both P1 AND Sprint have taken steps to do as much damage control as possible to a problem that never should have occured in the first place. In this day and age, I really wouldn't be surprised to have seen P1 ignore the issue while Sprint just points the finger at P1. Yes, the Treo 650 is their flagship product but LOOK at their recent history. They obviously don't have the resources to do decent quality control in-house so they let the early adopters be the beta testers (Gekko's right) but at least they resolved this situation within a reasonable timeframe AND promised a DUN update in the near future. That's a better solution that P1/Palm Inc. has provided in years to a problem (M505 SUDS, M130 color depth, numerous T|T woes, T3 SD card corruption etc).

RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
rogerkang @ 3/23/2005 11:52:17 AM # Q
The verizon Treo 650 isn't out yet b/c when it does come out, it should have ev-do capability. That's my guess as to why it's taking long....if you can't wait, then just hack a Sprint Treo 650 to work on Verizon.

RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
pmjoe @ 3/23/2005 3:14:19 PM # Q
> The verizon Treo 650 isn't out yet b/c when it does come out,
> it should have ev-do capability. That's my guess as to why it's
> taking long

You apparently don't know verizon too well. There is no way it'd have new hardware. I'm sure they are actively working right now to cripple the 650's features. They spend about a year testing a phone before you'd ever see it from Verizon. I'd be amazed if it appears before fall. IMHO, the whole problems with the bugginess in the v710 was because Verizon made Motorola cripple so many features.

RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
hkklife @ 3/23/2005 3:25:10 PM # Q
Yup. I used an Alltel V710 briefly and it was smooth as silk. THe only complaints I had with it were native to the phone's hardware itself and not to the butchered software that VZW insists upon. However, I *do* think the VZW Treo 650 will be EVDO-enabled. The questions are when it'll finally ship and how pared-down will BT be. I predict support for headsets/some car kits and nothing else, not even DUN. Rumor has it that the upcoming E815 has its BT features even more neutered than the V710's.



RE: How much has the 512-byte overhead been reduced?
acidreflux @ 3/27/2005 2:56:08 AM # Q
it has been confirmed from PalmOne that it will be ev-do capable.
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Thank You, Beta Testers!

Gekko @ 3/22/2005 6:48:04 PM # Q

Your time and your $699 is appreciated!

Love,

palmOne

p.s. Our prediction? MORE PAIN.



RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
viqsi @ 3/22/2005 7:26:22 PM # Q
plz to **** with teh trolling kthx

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
jeg815 @ 3/22/2005 7:30:16 PM # Q
I for one am VERY VERY HAPPY with PalmOne today. Not only did they do what they said they would do with this update, it was PAINLESS for me. After the update I gained 2.5 megs of ram on my 650, my volume is alot louder than bfore, and my calls are clearer. PalmOne has made me an even happier treo 650 owner today with this GREAT update. I still can't believe that I got that much more ram, other users are reporting over 5 meg increases. GREAT JOB PalmOne.

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
rsc1000 @ 3/22/2005 8:48:26 PM # Q
Gee Gekko - thats for the brilliant insight. Maybe you should get your own site so that you enlighten more people with your astute commentary and and mind-bending analytical skills. You really brought something to the discussion here.

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
Tuckermaclain @ 3/22/2005 11:08:17 PM # Q
I agree with Gekko. I wasted about 30 hours trying to get my 650 to work. Data mangler patch was the problem. I was hotter than when I preordered my 505. I've always been one of the first to get the newest palm, but after T3 digitizer issues, Z-72 paint jobs (not a big deal but it was amazing how Palm issued a silver one w/o admitting something was bad) and, the worst, the Treo 650 data manager patch. Hard reset even when i beamed an address from another palm's datebook app. Unacceptable. I'm not going to be a beta tester any more either. What a poor product.

Visor Deluxe->Vx->m500->m505->T1->T2->SJ33->Z71->T3->Z72->650->Z72

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
big_raji @ 3/23/2005 9:50:05 AM # Q
I, for one, would like to thank PalmOne for everything they've done with the Treo 650.

One of my clients, against my advice, ordered Treo 650's as upgrades for all their employees.

I made TONS of money trying to help all of them with their problems during their 'Upgrades' from other Palm devices.

Thanks PalmOne! :)

---
http://www.d2kin.ca

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
margerum @ 3/23/2005 10:03:37 AM # Q
wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Quit your bellyachin. The 650 is a hell of a nice device. We have almost 1,000 of them in the field with very few problems. The m$ crap phones cause us nothing but grief. Aside from the NVFS issue the phone is dar near perfect and now they have even fixed that.

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
relyons @ 3/23/2005 12:25:11 PM # Q
Gekko,

Read the replies to your post.

The community is wise to you.

We didn't need you in the past.

We don't need you in the present.

We don't need you in the future.

Shut up and go away.

----------------------

9:40AM palmOne extends yesterday's upward momentum to the top of its 5-week range (PLMO) 24.96 +0.57: -- Technical -- It is also currently testing its 50-day exponential moving aveage at 25.15.

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
big_raji @ 3/23/2005 1:34:48 PM # Q
Wow, no elitists here.

Good to see we're such a friendly, welcoming "Community"



---
http://www.d2kin.ca

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
rsc1000 @ 3/23/2005 10:03:17 PM # Q
>>big_raji @ 3/23/2005 1:34:48 PM

>>Wow, no elitists here.

>>Good to see we're such a friendly, welcoming "Community"

big_raji - most here are welcoming of real input including constructive critisism backed up by real-life anecdotes (such as your post which offered the real-life scenario of support problems with treo 650 units). The problem i believe most have is with Gekko and if you read through his posts in the last few months (and he posts about everything) you will find at least %50 of these posts are gratuitous BS rants the are are frequently off topic, absurdly negative, unfounded and designed to simply provoke. I suggest to search he posts.

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
Gekko @ 3/23/2005 10:40:21 PM # Q
>big_raji - most here are welcoming of real input including constructive critisism backed up by real-life anecdotes (such as your post which offered the real-life scenario of support problems with treo 650 units). The problem i believe most have is with Gekko and if you read through his posts in the last few months (and he posts about everything) you will find at least %50 of these posts are gratuitous BS rants the are are frequently off topic, absurdly negative, unfounded and designed to simply provoke. I suggest to search he posts.

hey a$$hole - I've owned a Palm III, IIIx, V, m505, m515, T1, T3, Treo 600 (Returned) and a T5 (Returned). I have plenty of real-life experience and I call it the way I see it. So you can go pound sand if you don't like it you big whining BORING baby.

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
rsc1000 @ 3/24/2005 1:44:06 PM # Q
>>hey a$$hole - I've owned a Palm III, IIIx, V, m505, m515, T1, T3, Treo 600 (Returned) and a T5 (Returned). I have plenty of real-life experience and I call it the way I see it. So you can go pound sand if you don't like it you big whining BORING baby.

Excellent! I struck a nerve! In addition to owning 6 different models by Palm, 1 Sony, 3 different models of iPaqs, a Sony-Ericsson p900, and a couple of Blackberrys, I have access to even more devices as I am a project manager at company that makes software for all of the above OSs. I have written code for Palm OS, PPC, MS smartphone and symbian. So i too speak from experience, and i can honestly say pretty much every single one these devices have issues. They really all suck as far as I am concerned with one differentiating fact still remaining: at least the Palms have a decent, well thought out interface that actually makes the devices usable. Cannot same the same about any of the others. My question to you, my sensetive little friend, is why are you obesessed with singling out palm and why do you feel the need to chime in with useless negative comments about EVERY news story on this site? yeah - you owned some bad palms and got burned - so now you feel justified in ranting about how palm is out screw everybody (intentionally no less!!! its a consiracy on the part of p1/PS management according to you) every bloody day on this site. Wouldn't be so bad if you actually were not a complete broken record saying the exact same , lame thing everytime - no matter how off topic. THATS boring.

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
Tuckermaclain @ 3/25/2005 5:57:23 PM # Q
Although I'm disappointed in the Treo 650 bugs, I would never for a moment consider switching platforms. Palms are awesome little devices--the Treo still has some problems that IMHO (as a user) should have been worked out. Nice to know that somebody who is familiar with other platforms can tell me that the grass is no greener elsewhere. My Zire 72 is good enough to soldier on for years.

RE: Thank You, Beta Testers!
newsguy @ 3/26/2005 12:45:28 AM # Q
We ARE Beta testers. I just updated my Sprint 650 with the 1.08 updater and it has killed my handsfree link bluetooth connectivity. There were some real issues with this when the 650 first came out...but the car kit patch fixed most of the problems. The car kit patch is supposed to be part of the 1.08 updater...but after applying the udpate today...none of my handsfree link devices, including my Acura TL can no longer see this phone...and vice versa.
Granted, I've got more memory on the device...but this "update" has rendered my bluetooth accessories useless.
So, don't jump this dude's (Gekko) caboose for calling us Beta Testers...Palm forces us into that position everytime it issues a "product improvement."

Reply to this comment

When will 1.08 updates be available for other Treo models?

asiayeah @ 3/22/2005 10:26:23 PM # Q
It seems Sprint always get the latest Treo 650 and firmwares.

When will the updates be available for the Unlocked GSM models?

The file system improvement is a must for every Treo users.

--
With great power comes great responsiblity.

RE: When will 1.08 updates be available for other Treo models?
vesther @ 3/24/2005 1:36:02 PM # Q
I have to agree here--this is totally suspect to know that Sprint PCS is always the first one with the latest Treo updates!!!

Powered by Palm OS since March 2002
RE: When will 1.08 updates be available for other Treo models?
razorpit @ 3/24/2005 4:56:50 PM # Q
Because Sprint subsidizes the development of the Treos. If Verizon or any other company was contributing as much money, (excuse me I, I meant to say more than Sprint) to the development of the Treo's then they would have the excelusitivity.

Reply to this comment

T5?

xpan @ 3/23/2005 2:03:39 PM # Q
hey, does any1 know or can estimate when patches like this will be available for T5, too?

Much has been said about the NVFS-leak problem!

any ideas?



---
"home is where my computer is..."

RE: T5?
hkklife @ 3/23/2005 3:00:59 PM # Q
My personal opinion is the following:

T5 is going to be "forgotten" about sooner than later. If anything approaching the mythical T6/T7/LifeDrive comes out and is even a minor hit, that'll be the end of the T5. P1 will just march on as they always have done and push that one into the "Handheld Hall of Fame" on their website alongside the T|T etc.

The NVFS block size isn't AS big of a problem on the T5 since it has quit a bit more system RAM to play around with than the Treo 650. Also, it's sort of the red-headed stepchild in the lineup (a flagship that was not originally intended to be a flagship) whereas the T650 is clearly P1's darling of the moment (like it or not).

P1 will probably get around to updating the T5 eventually but it's likely to not occur until this summer--after the 650 has launched on Verizon (pre-patched) and all of the GSM carriers are taken care of as well.


RE: T5?
xpan @ 3/24/2005 5:54:39 AM # Q
this is sad... I really hope you are wrong! Otherwise, I am turning down PalmOne, once and for all...

:(

---
"home is where my computer is..."

Reply to this comment

OK, now where's the efficiency update for the Tungsten T5?

vesther @ 3/23/2005 8:13:23 PM # Q
OK, now I want to know if there's going to be an update that will do the same for the Tungsten T5 (of course, there's no voice features) that will use up memory more efficiently for the least? C'mon palmOne--GET MOVING!!!

Powered by Palm OS since March 2002
Reply to this comment

Upgrade Results

mopcodes @ 3/26/2005 3:14:07 PM # Q
Hello...

Well after the patch I went from 4 MB free to 10 MB free. So that was not a bad deal.

I had to reapply the DUN patch.



D. Martin
Former Amiga/Commodore Author/Writer/Reviewer

RE: Upgrade Results
xpan @ 3/27/2005 11:31:40 AM # Q
that's good!

Can you test the backup solutions to tell us if the problem is fixed, already?

thanks


---
"home is where my computer is..."

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