Grrr

[szasz]

As of this afternoon any attempt to transmit a file from my Treo 650 to another device via Bluetooth causes the Treo to instantly perform a soft reset. I can't figure out what the hell is wrong and I have few things to try to fix it. I haven't installed anything recently, either. Grrr.

BUT, the thing has to be exchanged anyway, because even though

Comments

[zarfmouse]

I did some web searching and learned stuff similar to what szasz says in his response below. Basically the treo itself has a modem interface but different cellular providers have different levels of support for it.

There's a particularly weird issue with Verizon which is that apparently I'm "grandfathered" in to accessing the "just pay voice minutes for data" service that they have because I have an old plan. There's a lot of speculation but no answers out there about whether a grandfathered person like myself would retain that service option if they upgraded to a Treo. It's even more complicated by the fact that all the discussion I found about it was about the slower Quick2Net 14.4kbps service...I happen to get the faster (approx 90kbps) NationalAccess service for the same price (just pay voice minutes) and I've never figured out if this was an accident of the configuration of my account or that I just lucked out and got a good plan. I rely on it so heavily for my work when I'm on the road that I am hessitant to raise these questions with Verizon.

[szasz]

If I had to guess, I would say no. The Sprint network that's used for Vision (how the Treo gets data access) is 1XRTT, and you don't pay minutes, since it's always online (once the PPP connection has been established). Some providers make you pay by the kilobyte, others have a flat monthly fee. But because there's no such thing as "just pay minutes for data" I bet the plan would not translate. But I suppose it's worth asking.

[zarfmouse]

To clarify, there are Verizon Treo's now and if I got one I'd probably want to transfer my Verizon plan over rather than adopting a Sprint plan for a Sprint Treo.

(Posting from a greyhound bus over verizon, paying by the minute (actually deducting from my pool of free monthly minutes) for my PPP connection.)

My phone has two modes, one is enabled with "AT$QCMDR=3" and the other with "at$qcmdr=2". The PPP connections for these modes have two different username/passwords. Mode "3" uses PHONENUMBER@vzw3g.com as the username and "vzw" as the password. Mode "2" uses "qnc" as the username and as the password. I get up to 100Kbps over Mode "3" but I only get 14.4Kbps over mode 2.

Lots of things I've read online suggest that only Mode 2 (aka Quick2Net) is supposed to be charged as airtime minutes and that Mode 3 (aka NationalAccess or ExpressNet) is supposed to require paying for a special extra plan that I never signed up for and that charges either a flat monthly rate or a per kilobyte rate. I always use Mode 3 and never get billed for it. I pay less than $50/month and have unlimitted data on nights and weekends. It's much more to get an unlimitted NationalAccess data plan.

Verizon also has a new service called BroadbandAccess which is supposedly several times faster than NationalAccess. That is not available from my phone.

I think that I may have been the lucky recipient of liberal fingers when I first got my phone and the data didn't work at all and I called tech support and they went "clickyclicky try it now" and then the NationalAccess AND Quick2Net both worked. Hence I don't want to rock the boat.

Everything I read through google about this shows that other users are also quite confused about what exactly Verizon offers today (Verizon really wants you to pay $80/month or more for unlimitted NationalAccess service on TOP of having a voice plan!) and what exactly happens when you change plans from one of these grandfathered voice/data plans.

It doesn't help that my phone doesn't seem to have a simcard in it so it isn't trivial to just "move my service" to another phone by swapping the simcard. I'll have to actually do business with Verizon.

So basically I'm stuck with this crappy free phone until I meet someone who has had more courage than me in making the leap and can find out what their experience was.