If I can make only one impact with this blog, I really hope it is this post.Here it is: Do not buy the Treo! I don't care if it is free, if someone gives you money to use it, or even if you have to use it to keep your job. This phone (if that is what you want to call it) is the worst technology ever invented.
It is one of the biggest mistakes I have made in my technology life. I bought the Treo about 18 months ago from Verizon. I was happy when it came and thought I was pretty cool with this new phone. It runs Windows and has some cool web functionality. I loved it and was the cool kid on the block.
Well, long story short, I was on a plane about a month or so after I bought the phone. and a guy sitting next to me asked if I was having problems with the phone. I had not, but he told me these stories about him experience and many of the people he worked with that were having terrible problems. I was amazed to hear these stories and figured I was lucky to not have bought my phone any earlier as I must have purchased a better (fixed) version.
Well, a few months in it was crashing on a weekly basis, a few months later it was crashing daily, and when I finally threw it away it was crashing every 10 minutes. It crashed when the phone would ring. I was on the phone with clients and it would drop off. I finally stopped using my phone at all. I moved to a land line. I am 100% certain that I lost business because of this phone.
I tried (as a second job almost) to get it fixed. I talked to Palm, called Verizon, went into a few Verizon stores, and even called Palm HQ. The message was clear; they claimed it was my fault. Though I never installed anything on the phone, they claimed that it was because I was installing bad applications on the machine. I reformatted the phone. I reset it 100's of times. It was the phone, but no one would admit it.
I went into the store and even the sales person at Verizon and she confirmed that many people are having the same problems. She suggested my best option was to buy a new phone and just cut my losses. This was a Verizon employee in June of 2004. What is going on with these companies?
I have spoken to many people since and they all have a similar story. There are 100's of these stories out there online. These are interesting quotes in the comments section from a recent post from Fred Wilson on the Treo:
'I fixed it by cutting up a piece of paper, folding it, and sticking it behind the SIM card in the little plastic carriage'
'My 600 doesn't hold a charge. I'm waiting for the Q and getting away from Palm entirely. Before it lost its charge, it crashed a lot as well. Palm blamed 3rd party apps.'
'My Treo 650 and Treo 600 used to crash at least once per day, sometimes upon receiving a new phone call.'
'My 650 does this as well. It will often crash as I am about to receive a call. '
The worst part of this is these are posts from some of the most technically savvy people in the US. How can Treo and Verizon continue to sell this phone? This is the one case in my life where I agree with a class action suit. These guys deserve to pay for putting consumers though this hell, it is gross negligence. Not only is Palm to blame, but what about Verizon, Sprint, and Cingular?
They all are still selling this phone that they know does not work! I suggest you move to t-Mobile as they are one of the only carriers that don't sell this phone.There are many articles and stories about this. Talk to anyone that has this phone and they will tell you the same story. Even Business Week wrote a quick item about this phone. How can these guys really pretend it is because someone downloaded a piece of software? And, by the way, isn't the phone suppose to support downloads anyway?
DO NOT BUY A TREO or any other phone associated with this company!!!
