Touch Pro Finally!

The wife & I picked up our matching pair of Touch Pros last weekend from the Sprint store. What a great phone! A beautiful 640x480 screen, full QWERTY keyboard, GPS, WiFi & EVDO Rev A. It's taking some getting used to having a slider keyboard and the Touch Flo interface, but I've been using Voice Command a lot more now. The UI is a little laggy at times, but I have been doing some performance tweaks that I've read about in various forums. It's been only a week, but overall, I'm really liking this phone.

Airave Update

We've had the Airave a few weeks now and it works nicely. We've now got a solid signal for our Sprint phones and the quality is very good. Dialing out takes about 1-2 seconds longer, but incoming calls are seamless as is the transition to regular cell towers when we leave home.

Sprint Airave Coming

I just got off the phone with Sprint, our cell provider for almost 2 years. They're going to send us their Airave femtocell, which has been widely released last month. We live in an area which has marginal Sprint coverage, which has been the only negative about our service. This device is like a cell phone repeater, except it will route your voice over your internet connection - so it's like a cell phone VOIP adapter. The Airave costs $99 and $4.99/month but Sprint hooked us up for free with free FedEx shipping. Now, we'll get 4 bars at home to go along with our SERO plan (unlimited EVDO, unlimited SMS, 500 minutes/month and nights & weekends 7-7) for just $30/month.

New Toy - GPS Receiver for 700WX

I picked up an IBlue 737 GPS receiver from buy gps now. The receiver is very compact, about the size of a pager and it is very sensitive - it doesn't need to be left on the dash - it works very well in a cup holder or the door handle. It communicates to the 700WX via bluetooth and we use it with Google Maps Mobile and our unlimited data plan. It doesn't have all the extras of a dedicated GPS (like text-to-speech, etc.) - it just tracks your location. However, any place we can Google, we can get turn by turn directions to it from where we are at the moment. Also, since it's so small, there's no large device to tote around or leave in your car baking in 120 degree temps, hoping nobody steals it.

Palm Treo 700WX - A Mixed Bag

We've had our Treos now for about 5 months. It's been great having them but at the same time, I've had problems with mine. We've been taking full advantage of the unlimited Power Vision internet access provided with our plan. We have a few apps we use all the time on our phones:

imov Messenger Basic - this is the free version of their jabber chat client. It also has hooks to Yahoo!/AIM/ICQ transports so you can communicate with people on those networks too. I use it with my Google chat account (which is built into Gmail). It seems more reliable with Jabber (which Google chat is based) than with the other transports. Directions to configure it with Google chat.

Google Maps - it's now available as a CAB file to install directly on your phone! We use this all the time. We can easily look up a store, etc. while we're on the road and call them directly from gmaps!

Slingplayer Mobile - of course, what good is unlimited internet on your phone if you can't watch TV? We've been trialing the software and will likely cough up the $30 each. It is so convenient to watch TV while you're waiting in line, etc. - especially with two kids around running amuck. We may have to spring for a 2nd Slingbox for the other DirecTiVo so we aren't fighting for the 1 Slingbox.

Now for the bad things about the phone. The camera SUCKS! There is a problem with Bluetooth and 700WX that causes Bluetooth to stop working. The Treo needs to be reset to restore Bluetooth. It seems there is a fix from MSFT but there is no download available from Palm. Finally, to top it off, there is apparently a problem with the headset jack that dates back to previous Treos (650, 600). It's starting to affect my phone. It's pathetic that Palm has known about this problem for 2 or 3 generations and they still make the same mistakes. Can you say class action lawsuit? People have sued for less (scratches on their iPod for example). I really like the phone, but this may be my last Palm device unless these problems are fixed.