The Gadgets Page

TreoCentral has a review of a replacement battery cover for the Palm Treo 650. They start the review with a sentence that threw me for a loop:

If the phrase “if I had a nickel for every time I had to reset the Treo” has ever crossed your mind, the Seidio Battery Cover with reset hole is a must.

I’ve been using the Treo 650 for nearly a year. If I had a nickel for every time I had to reset my Treo, I’d have… a nickel. Mine crashed once the day I bought it, when I overfilled the memory with software, and I haven’t had a crash since.

Nevertheless, Palm machines—not just the Treo—have a reputation of crashing more often than Microsoft Windows. Seidio isn’t insane—they actually saw a market for a special battery cover to enable quicker resets, and they’ll probably sell some.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Got a crash-prone Palm? Don’t buy a new battery cover to make it easier to reset, fix it. Here are some tips to make your Palm as stable as mine.

Why Does it Crash?

Operating systems, like PalmOS, divide a device’s memory between applications and the OS. At any given time, your Palm’s memory might be divided into sections for various portions of the core operating system, the application you’re running right now, and maybe a background application or two.

Ideally, each program would use its portion of the memory, and ignore the rest. Unfortunately, sometimes a badly-written application will access memory outside its own range, which can lead to corrupted data or to a crash.

Modern operating systems use a system called memory protection to prevent each application from messing with memory that belongs to the OS, or to another application. PalmOS, as you may have guessed, has very poor memory protection. Protected memory is one of the features touted for PalmOS 6.0 (Cobalt), announced over a year ago. Unfortunately, no current Palm device includes the Cobalt OS—not even the two new ones—so for now we’re stuck with the older, unprotected version.

Less Applications, Less Crashes

With Palm’s unprotected memory, any application can potentially cause a crash, and with thousands of applications available, it’s no surprise that the majority of Palm users have experienced crashes. To avoid crashes, you need to manage your installed applications carefully:

• Consider whether you really need an application before installing it.
• Remember that any application can cause crashes, including optional software that came with your Palm. Don’t install it unless you need it.
• Check your list of installed software regularly and remove applications you no longer use.
• If possible, avoid applications that run in the background—for example, Graffiti replacements and pop-up accessories. Since these are running all of the time, they have the potential to crash your Palm any time, not just when you’re using them.
• Install only one application at a time, and test the Palm for a day or two before you install any others.

Fortunately, there’s a great deal of stable Palm software out there that is unlikely to cause crashes—for example, Astraware’s games and Tealpoint’s applications. Once you find an application you can trust, it’s unlikely to be a problem.

How to Crash-Proof Your Palm

If you’re already dealing with frequent crashes, I suggest you make a fresh start:

1. Install the latest updates for your Palm from Palm support. Some crashes are caused by buggy system software, so eliminate those first.
2. Sync your Palm to a computer and view the log to make sure the sync was successful.
3. Select App | Delete and delete everything in the list except applications you’re sure you need.
4. Soft reset the Palm using the Reset button.
5. Test the Palm for a few days. If it no longer crashes, you’re done.
6. Still crashing? Try deleting all applications. (If you’re sure you have backups of the installation files for all of your software, a hard reset will do this quickly.) You should now have a Palm with only the built-in software, and no crashes.
7. Now reinstall each application you need, one at a time. (You can usually find your deleted applications in your Palm\username\Archive directory.) After each one, try switching between applications and using every feature you can think of, and see if you run into crashes.

Troubleshooting Crashes

If you make sure to install applications one at a time and use your Palm for a while before installing anything else, it’s easy to guess which application causes a crash—it’s usually the one you installed last. Also, if crashes always happen within a certain application, it’s probably due to a bug in the application. If they happen randomly in many different applications, you’re probably dealing with a background program or, rarely, a bug in PalmOS itself.

If you’re using a Treo 600 or 650, there’s a built-in debugging feature that will tell you which program caused the most recent crash. Try dialing the following special code from the phone application:

• ##377 (Sprint / CDMA phones)
• #*377 (GSM phones)
• #*#377 (Verizon)

After you enter the correct code and click Dial, a dialog displays the date, time, program, and error message for the most recent crash. This is especially useful since crashes will sometimes reset the Treo without displaying a message.

Unfortunately, the application causing your crashes might turn out to be one you really need. In that case, your best bet is to contact the person or company who produced the application, describe the circumstances that cause the crash in as much detail as possible (including the specific error message from the Treo debugger) and see if an update is available. No update? Choose a different application, or invest in that easy-reset battery cover.

Conclusion

I realize this is drastic advice—Palm sold you a device that can run thousands of great games and applications, and I’m telling you to install as few as possible. But with Palm’s touchy memory, that’s the only way to prevent crashes.

If you’re willing to give up unstable software—and consider all software unstable until proven otherwise—you can have a crash-proof Palm.

Update 12/6/05: Added Treo crash diagnostic details. (Thanks Sam!)

Here is a unique use for your camera phone that might actually help you lose weight.

• My Food Phone

Here’s how it works:

• Every day, you take pictures of every meal and snack and upload them to your account.
• Once a week, you will receive a video message from their nutritionist with recommendations on how to eat healthier.
• You can keep track of your meals in visual form online along with your weight, BMI, waist to hip ratio and lots of other items that you may want to track.

They charge between $99 and $149 a month for this service, which is near the cost of hiring a nutritionist once a month to look over your food logs. It’s a really good idea, but it’s something that you could do on your own just as easily.

You could use your camera phone as your food journal and use it to calculate your calorie intake every day. By doing a little of the homework yourself, you could save the $149 a month.

Julie at The Gadgeteer has posted reviews of the two new Palm handhelds released last month:

• Palm Z22 Review
• Palm Tungsten TX Review

Both reviews are worth a read if you’re looking for a new PDA and aren’t interested in a smartphone. Quick summary: The Z22 is a nice entry-level handheld for $99 and its iPod-like design sensibility doesn’t hurt. The TX, while adding WiFi support to the feature list of the previous top-of-the-line T5, has less memory and a slower processor, so it’s perhaps not the ideal upgrade.

Between the strange LifeDrive and this lackluster entry in the high-end PDA market, I think Palm has truly lost touch with the market for non-smartphone PDAs. I’m not sure if that market will still exist in a few years, but if it does, I’m afraid Palm will still be way behind the times.

Treo Today mentioned my review for the headphone adapter for my Treo 650.

• Treo Today » Blog Archive » Headphone Adapter for the Treo 650

There was a comment from a reader at the end of the review:

“WARNING – These straight earbud adaptors are very dangerous for the Treo. The slightest torque or pressure on the adaptor will damage the earbud receptor in the Treo. I know this for a fact as I destroyed mine (broke the adaptor off in the Treo, shattered the receptor, and had to get a new Treo). If you want to listen to MP3’s get an earbud set made to fit the Treo, and make sure it’s a short “L” shaped connector. Word to the wise.”

I haven’t had that trouble, but I can easily envision it happening with my clumsy nature. I guess I’m going to go find a “L” shaped connector like the one Amazon sells.

I love to have a docking cradle for my PDA. I don’t know if it’s because I’m an old-school Palm Pilot fan or if I am just lazy, but I prefer to have a spot to place my phone easily. Fussing with cords is a pain in the butt for me. Half the time, the cord would fall behind the desk when I removed it from my phone and when I finally got a cord manager to prevent losing the cord, it made it difficult to have the phone facing the right direction.

A cradle stores my phone face up and angled perfectly for me to see while it’s charging or syncing. This particular cradle is a little nicer than the one I had for my Zodiac. There is an extra compartment to charge an additional battery and the sync button is a real one, not just a mechanical work around that indirectly presses the sync button on the original sync cable.

Another additional feature is that you have a choice whether it will be a charging station or a syncing station for you. If you want a cradle where you charge your phone, but prefer to sync at the computer with your original cable, you can do that. The same is true if you want to sync with the cradle and charge elsewhere. You don’t need to have both cords connected for it to work.

I don’t know why they don’t include cradles with the Palms anymore. Maybe there are some people who didn’t really like them. Now, there are several cradles from different peripheral providers to choose from, but this one works like a dream.

Palm’s Treo Docking Cradle is $39 for the version linked here, which includes the AC power adapter and USB data connector. A cheaper version, which includes only the cradle and works with your existing cables, is also available.

I got my headphone adapter at Radio Shack and it looks like the one pictured here. I have been using it to listen to music on my Treo 650, but yesterday, I learned a new feature that was built into my phone. If you are listening to music on the Real Player (it comes with the Treo) and a call comes in, the music pauses and the phone rings. If you answer the call, the music stays paused during your call and resumes when you hang up. If you decide to ignore the call, the music automatically resumes within a few rings.

Additionally, if you pick up the call, you can hear the phone through your headphones. You still need to bring the phone up to your mouth so that the microphone can pick up your voice, but being able to take the call without upsetting my headphones is really cool. Plus, the call came through on both of my ears instead of just one. This is an added bonus if you’re in a noisy environment and want to block out a little more of the noise around you.

This adapter is shaped a little better than the one I bought at Radio Shack, so it might be the way to go. Mine sometimes falls out because it’s so big and bulky. Either way, the headphone adapter has been a great way for me to listen to music wherever I want. The Treo kicks butt!

Palm (formerly PalmOne, formerly Palm) has updated its product lineup with new versions of the Zire and Tungsten series, both of which have been reduced to single letters:

• The Z22 is a new low-end model priced at $99. It has a 160 x 160 display, 32MB of memory, 200MHz processor, and runs PalmOS 5.4 (Garnet).
• The TX is the new high-end model. It has a 320 x 480 display in the classic Tungsten E form factor, runs PalmOS 5.4, 128MB of memory, a 312MHz processor, an SD card slot, and built-in WiFi (802.11) and Bluetooth networking support. It retails for $299.

I’m not too excited about any non-smartphone PDA these days, but the Palm line was in need of an updated high-end model—the bulky LifeDrive doesn’t count.

Treonauts, a great Palm-related weblog, has posted a good review of PalmOS GPS devices. The following devices are covered:

• TomTom Navigator 5 Bundle
• Emtac + GPS
• Palm GPS Navigator

The devices seem about the same, but they vary in bundled software and accessories. The short version: it looks like you can have a pretty good GPS unit on your Palm for $250-300.

The ThinkOutside Bluetooth keyboard is designed to be a true keyboard for PDAs, mobile phones, and Tablet PCs that don’t have their own keyboards. Does it work? Is it as good as a regular keyboard? We put one to a long term test. Read on for the report.

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The i.Tech Virtual Bluetooth Keyboard is an interesting idea: A small device the size of a pack of gum projects a laser image of a standard keyboard onto any flat surface. You type by touching the surface at the image of the key you want. Does it work? Yes. Is it practical? That depends a lot on your needs. Our review puts it to the test.

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