Until yesterday, I had been experiencing multiple random power-offs and hard resets on my Treo 650. It would power-off the phone without warning, without any apparent pattern: while I was on a call, while I was using the browser, or while it was simply sitting on my desk. If I didn’t see it power-off, I would go for considerable periods with it off. Not good, and I began to hope that it would last long enough to get naturally replaced when I purchase (probably…) an iPhone in June.

UPDATE:  This fix didn’t last.  The resets began again after a few days, and I have since had the phone replaced.  I have had the new (probably rebuilt actually) 650 for a few days now, and am purposely not installing any of my apps on it.  If the new phone remains “reset-free” for a couple weeks, I will be confident that basic OS & phone functionality is OK.  I’ll then install the apps & see what happens.

–

This problem had forced me to replace the phone back in October. Unfortunately, the Razr I purchased was so difficult to use for email and messaging that I went back to the Treo in January. Conscious of the resetting problem, I simply paid extra attention to it and turned it back on as necessary. And I started taking important calls on land lines.

But as I said – that was until yesterday. Desperate to get a functional cell phone for my travels, and not too anxious to buy another Razr or Crazr or whatever they have at Cingular on a Saturday afternoon, I did some quick research and was a bit shocked at how many other people out there were experiencing these random resets on their Treo 650s.

I had assumed that the resets were a hardware problem; a soft- or firmware problem should have manifested when the phone was new, right? Mine had been fine for a long time, and it seemed reasonable to conclude that the hardware (more precisely the main board inside the Treo) had developed a crack, or perhaps a cold solder joint. This used to be common enough in electronics, and the since the symptoms showed up after the hardware had been used for a long time… well, as I said, I thought it was the hardware failing.

But in yesterday’s research, I was pleasantly surprised to see a firmware update for the Treo 650 that, among other things, claimed to resolve “…reliability problems”. There was no deeper explanation for what that meant, but I took it to mean “random resets and power-offs”. So I downloaded & installed it, and the Treo has been powered up ever since.

The firmware upgrade seems to have fixed what I was convinced was a hardware problem. Nice.

Details here:

http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo650updater/cingular.html

By the way, you will probably need help to in order to do the zero-reset. I simply could not press the power button, the up arrow key and the hot-sync button at the same time as depressing the stylus into the reset “hole” in the back. I had help.

Tags: treo, treo 650, treo firmware, treo resetting

Popularity: 1% [?]