Treo 300

I had one of these for a year. I got rid of it the day my service contract was up. In retrospect I shoud have taken the $150 hit and ended the pain a lot sooner.

The last straw was when I got the Treo e-newsletter asking "If you'd like to share a story of how you use your Handspring SmartPhone or organizer (at work, home or play!), send us an email at enews@handspring.com."

I was in a bad mood that day. I sent this reply:

 

Yeah... I'll share a story with you. This Treo 300 has been the biggest disappointment of any phone I've ever owned, and I've owned cellphones for 20 years, since you had to carry them over your shoulder like handbags.

I've had the unit for just about a year, and its been nothing but trouble. Issues include:

- lousy audio - need to hunt for the sweet spot in the flip to be able to hear anything; no visual or tactile cue for the right location...

- ...or, ear-blasting audio if speakerphone enabled by touching the wrong icon. Though certainly not loud enough to actually be used as a real speakerphone except in a small, silent room.

- buggy Palm firmware: OS and browser crashes; my palm Vx never did that.

- buggy radio firmware - gets stuck in a state where it can't associate with a cell unless unit is warm booted

- hour-plus waits on hold calling Sprint

- utterly useless customer "support" from Sprint when you finally do get through - obviously the CSRs were not trained on the Treo 300 when it was introduced. (Might be better now, but I gave up and use the chat boards for support instead).

- Not notified when new firmware was available for radio, despite several trouble tickets filed.

- Marginal cellular coverage from Sprint - noticeably inferior to AT&T in my service area.

- Bad ergonomics - dial voice mail and it says to push a digit, but the digits aren't displayed on the screen. Keyboard lighting turned off when you need it.

- Construction feels fragile, and judging by the number of units on ebay with physical defects, it is.

- Unique headset requirement, incompatible with industry standard.

- Can't change battery when it runs out.

- Stylus retainer weak - stylus easily pops out and gets lost (never happened on my Palm, Palm III, or Palm Vx)

- Can't read the screen in ordinary daylight

- Poor component quality - screen developed an enormous yellow blemish obscuring the lower right quarter of the screen. A first among the perhaps fifteen various cellphone and palm devices I've owned over the years.

- Poor warranty policy - tried to charge $180 to replace the screen after the enormous yellow blemish appeared. And took three weeks to find this out.

- Predatory "nickle-and-dime" charges from Sprint - an attempt to charge $36 to switch my account to another phone while the enormous yellow blemish wasn't being fixed. And a "forwarding fee" ??!! in addition to minutes charged for calls received during that time.

- Etc.

So, the only way I'll even even consider the Treo 600 is if the trade-in allowance is significant enough that I can view it as an apology for being made to put up with all of the issues above. As far as Sprint is concerned, there's no possibility of that relationship being salvaged whatsoever; the next one will definitely be GSM/GPRS.

I suspect you won't be publishing this in the next Handspring "News You Can Use" newsletter, but I just thought you might want to know.