mook

Wishful thinking on my part.

Since it will most likely be a while before AT&T/Cingular offers the 650, I'm hoping this issue will be resolved. Nothing really to do with it being GSM. Hopefully AT&T/Cingular is seeing the problem Sprint/Palm is having with the hands free profile and will correct it on their version of the phone. Also, AT&T hasn't crippled Bluetooth in the past, so hopefully they won't mess with it on the 650.

As for the headset issue, I've seen some folks complaining about their headsets on the TreoCentral forum, but that isn't necessarily the phone's fault and it seems to be with a Jabra headset.

I guess the real problem here is there is no one to take true ownership of this type of problem. It is all too easy for the phone vendor to point a finger at the auto maker and vice versa. Acura can hide behind their list of "approved phones" and PalmOne can say "well it works for Audi" and we are left in the middle with a phone that doesn't meet our expectations.

RGHessel

I may just have to get a new car!

mook

Aaaarrgh! Blasphemy!

No phone is worth giving up the TL!

If you really need the 650, I'd just go to a Bluetooth headset that works well with the 650 and set up voice dialing. Not quite the TL's hands free link but pretty close.

RGHessel

LOL. I'm very promiscuous when it comes to cars and gadgets, so I know there will always been a new one around the corner...

mcarrigg

I got my treo 650 and "successfully" paired the phones. However, when I try to use the steering wheel functions to make a call, the car says that no phone can be found. The weird thing is, that if I make a call from the phone while I am in my car, it suddenly transfers over to the car and I can talk hands free through the car microphone and hear the other person through the speakers.

Basically it sort of works, but is definitely not fully functional. Would like to hear others findings with the TL and Treo 650. After talking to a tech guy at Sprint he noted what happened and said that he felt that they would most likely fix the issue with a software update but did not give a time frame.

legendguy

I was hoping NOT to find this thread. I am a new owner of an '05 RL and avid Treo user. Was waiting for a GSM version of the Treo 650 to come out before jumping on board. The memory issue that is being worked out with the first phones available through Sprint made me happy that I needed to wait for a month or two for GSM. But the thought that the phone may not be compatible with Acuras is bad news indeed. What do we need to do as a group to get someone looking at this issue?

Unfortunately mook is probably right that the problem here is ownership of this problem with no car manufacture guaranteeing all Bluetooth will work and no phone makers guaranteeing compatibility with all cars. Arrrrg!!

nonstop

Well, I figure Acura is unlikely to resolve this on their end (if in fact it even is an issue they can resolve) so I headed to PalmOne to submit a complaint. PalmOne directed any customer care issues regarding the Sprint Treo 650 to the Sprint PCS website. I left Sprint PCS an email addressing my concern with the Treo 650's inability to successfully pair with the Acura TL and my intentions of finding a new provider if it's not resolved. I suggest you all do the same and perhaps they'll address the issue sometime soon!

legendguy

Nonstop,

I went to the Sprintpcs.com site and posted this email to cs:

"Hello,
I am interested in the Treo 650. I would like to use its Bluetooth Handsfree link in the 2005 RL that I just purchased. Will this new phone link successfully to a new Bluetooth Handsfree linked car like the Acura 2005 RL? So far, people on the Acura TL website have said thet are having problems with their TL. I do not want to postpone my Treo 650 purchase for long, but want to know this is working before making the purchase. Thank you."

Hopefully will find something out. Keep the faith!

legendguy

Sprint got right back to me today and said:

"Dear Joe,
Thank you for the email regarding the Bluetooth Handsfree link.
I am happy to inform you that this new phone will link successfully to a new
Bluetooth Handsfree linked car like the Acura 2005 RL.
We appreciate you contacting us.

Alton
Sprint eCare"

So sounds like someone at Sprint CS thinks this is not a problem. Strange that RGHessel got a response that they are working on a solution. I guess not everyone is communicating to each other there at Sprint.

nonstop

This is what they sent me:

This response means they failed to read my message as I clearly stated I intended to purchase the 650 only if this issue was resolved. They're implying, however, that it's some kind of error on the user end and it should be able to pair. Perhaps they just need to be made aware and hopefully they'll patch it. Keep emailing them everyone!

MarkAdcock

Here’s what I’ve found after a few days of tinkering with my Treo and TL… Pretty much confirmation of mcarrigg’s experience/posting on 11/23.

In short, I have been able to successfully pair the Treo to the car and make and accept calls. The operation is not totally as expected or desired, but for right now, I’m accepting of how it operates as it’s better than what I got with my 600. ;-)

Unlike other members of this forum my settings were not deleted upon restart of the car, so you may want to double-check that this is indeed happening. Have the car list the phones “Phone Setup|List” command and I’ll bet that it’s still there.

Upon completion of the pairing process and/or startup of the phone the phone icon is displayed for a few moments in the Center Console Display, but for some reason the car seems to lose track of the phone and the icon disappears. (If I recall correctly when I tested a long time ago with a friend’s Nokia, the phone icon was present at all times) I’m guessing because of this communication loss, all of the car-initiated functions (including answer) seem to fail. You can tell when the phone is communicating with the Treo as the Bluetooth icon in the upper right of the screen of the Treo appears in reverse blue - just as the phone icon disappears on the TL display, the Treo stops communicating.

Side Note: After pairing you should also be able to set Discoverable on the Treo to no for security purposes.

The HFL is successful in assuming the call communication I initiate a call with/or accept a call from the Treo. This is expected behavior based on the Treo Owner’s manual. Page 71-“If you are using a handsfree device with Bluetooth wireless technology, Treo automatically routes all calls to that device. When a call comes in, your Treo rings and the headset beeps. However, even if you pick up the call on your Treo, the call goes to the headset”. I was unable to answer a call using the TL – upon pressing the Talk button, the Treo picks up the call, but does not route it to the car. The Back button however, successfully rejects the call.

Most of the data that the TL supports on the MID is not passed such as the battery and signal strength of the phone, but given the level of interaction so far, this was not a huge surprise. For incoming calls, however, the MID did correctly display the inbound telephone number (definitely a nice surprise).

So right now, I pretty much am able to use the HFL successfully as long as I use the phone to control the call. I have noticed some small irregularities in the actual Bluetooth transfer of the call from the Treo to the car in that every once in a while the transfer doesn’t occur. So far, out of approximately 10 outbound calls 1 of them was not correctly routed to the car. I’ve had approximately the same failure rate on inbound calls as well. Of course you can still use the Treo as normal in these instances, but it has not worked perfectly every time. I’ll keep watching this.

While I eventually want the full functionality, especially the MID display data I will probably initiate most of my calls from the Treo as I have a pretty large contact list and the lack of synchronization between the TL’s phonebook and the Treo’s makes it less than useful except for calls to my closest circle. At home I use GoodLink software (www.good.com) on the Treo anyways which allows me to wirlessly sync w/o running the desktop redirector.

So any other experiences out there? At least this level of communication gives me a strong hope that this is a simple software update in order to get the expected functionality up and running.

RGHessel

I've had the exact same luck pairing my Treo with the TL. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

legendguy

MarkAdcock
Thanks for the detailed post. Please keep us posted on any new developements!

mcarrigg

MarkAdcock:
My experience is exaclty the same as yours. If you start with the handset, the phone seems to activate the car and they will hold the pair for the duration of the call. Then they lose each other. I think it is definitley fixable with a patch from Sprint, so everyone who has a treo 650 and TL needs to call sprint and talk to a tech person and make sure they note the problem. Hopefully it will become listed as a known issue and they may fix it.

Dafried

Add me to the group having the same experience. Mine 650 is 5 days old and my TL is three weeks old.

Initiating a call on the TREO 650 will cause the TL to take over once it starts ringing. I even tried adding my TL to "Trusted Devices" on the Treo, but it still didn't work differently.

ssnacks

MarkAdcock's post was great and reflected the same experience that I am having. As it turns out, I was able to get the Treo 650 to make a call from the navigation system. I notied the phone symbol in the display between the driver's and passenger's temperature settings right after I started the car. I wondered if that meant that system might work as expected. I quickly found something in the nav directory and, sure enough, the "send" button light up. I pressed the button and the HFL announced that it received a phone number from the navigation system and completed the call. The MID displayed the phone number and the call went through without a problem.

This gives me hope that they problem is more of a timing issue. It seems that the Treo registers with the HFL and then suspends transmissions after 20 seconds. I have played with the wakeup setting on the Treo and have had no luck in affecting this issue. Unfortunately, even when the phone and HFL are working, no battery or signal information is exchanged. I suspect that the Treo is dropping the connection because it is trying to save battery power.

Has anyone noticed a substantial amount of whine from the engine in the HFL? The whine at a constant engine speed is noticeable, but when you rev up the engine, you can hear the pitch of the whine increase. Quite annoying!

Corn

OT question for you guys with a Sprint PDA/Phone: Do you need the laptop/PDA plan for data to surf the web on the Treo? Wondering if that's only necessary to access for DUN profile on the phone. THX.

nhe

I was using the Sony Ericsson T608 (no longer in production) since December 2003 which used to be the only Sprint Bluetooth phone. With this phone the MID showed battery level as well as signal strength and caller id. It worked fairly well with the HFL although it would disconnect from the HFL during calls on occassion and the battery life was only adequate. When the battery was very low the phone would not connect to the HFL.

I recently purchased the Treo650 and encountered the same problem with it working properly with the HFL like a lot of other people here. I found that if a call is initiated by the Treo, it will be transferred to the HFL if the radio/cd is off. If the radio/cd is on, I can press the HFL button and say "transfer" and the call will be transferred even though the phone icon is not on the MID. For incoming calls, the caller id is displayed and the call can be answered with the HFL button or the Treo. Also, sometimes when I get in and start the car, the icon appears on the MID for a few seconds. This leads me to believe that it is a software problem with the Treo not maintaining the link. On the Sony T608, there was a Bluetooth setting where BT could be set to ON, OFF or AUTOMATIC. On the AUTOMATIC setting, only the phone could initiate the connection.

I called PalmOne but the low level techs would only try to instruct me on how to pair the Treo with the HFL. I finally got a hold of a supervisor and he told me that the Palm engineers are working very hard on a software patch. Apparently, Acura is not the only car where the Treo is not working properly with Bluetooth car kits. He told me that the patch should be posted at the following url when it is available: http://www.palmone.com/us/support/bl...atibility.html.

If anyone is interested, I have one used and one new Sony Ericsson T608 which I may be selling. They originally cost $199, a lot less than the Treo650.

tl_soso

I have to really thank the guys who posted up their experiences so far - because I was ready to buy my T650 ASAP. I just happened to browse into the site today and found this thread. You guys just saved me about 500 bucks. This forum is BRILLIANT.

Thank you guys!

And yes, I am quite frustrated that the 650 doesn't work with the TL. Did PalmOne get lazy or something?? How much harder could it be to make it compatible with the TL and other BT enabled cars?

I just might end up switching providers. what are some other smartphones that other providers have that give the 650 a run for its money?

Dafried

Hi All,

I use my TREO 650 with spotty success. To summarize, I cannot initiate a call from the steering wheel, but 9 out of 10 times I do it from the phone and it will transfer to the car for the duration of the call. I have the exact same experience when answering calls; if I use the TREO to answer, the call will be heard on my car speakers and all seems to work ok. As for HID, I get a signal strength meter only, and it never shows any strength, regardless of the strength shown on the phone.

Now to my call to Sprint: I ended up getting a live "Level 2" guy in Oklahoma who said that they had a technical conference call with PalmOne last week. According to this guy, PalmOne was not aware of the issue until the SprintPCS guys mentioned it on that call. I know these are big companies and it is conceivable that two dept's are working on the problem simultaneously. The tech guy at Sprint told me that the issue was undoubtedly fixable and being worked on my PalmOne.

Meanwhile, I still enjoy my TREO 650 and wait for the firmware upgrade for HFP, which appears to be imminent.

Hope this helps you looking at buying a TREO 650.

Cheers,

David

nhe

As all of you may know, SprintPCS allows you to return the Treo650 within 14 days if you are not satisfied. While I considered doing that because of the problems with the Bluetooth connectivity with the TL HFL, some of the features have convinced me to keep it and wait for the HFL fix. For example, you can assign up to 56 hot keys so that you can use each letter of the alphabet as a hot key for dialing numbers. Then there is the Voice Dial option. It is a $20 software download that allows you to use voice dialing for any name in your contacts. Unlike the voice dialing in most phones, you do not have to record the name in to the phone. The software uses voice recognition like Sprint's voice command (and you cannot program the HFL to dial Voice Command). This is a lot better than the 50 phone numbers that you are limited to in the TL HFL. Voice Dial also allows you to dial digits. You can try the Voice Dial free for 14 days. After that, only the digit dialing will continue to work unless you pay $20. But since this works like Voice Command you can cancel it and save $5 a month so it pays for itself in 4 months.

noahlh

Hey folks...I've been checking that page that nhe referred us to, and this new page seems to have appeard in the last 24 hours or so...

http://www.palmone.com/us/support/bl...650carkit.html

I think based on the conversations people have had with the techs and this, we can pretty well expect an update to fix this problem fairly soon...

I, for one, am ordering my 650 now!

nlh

csunracer

That's a glimmer of hope I just need to wait for the GSM version of the phone to be released so I can get rid of my treo 600. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

lindros2

My thoughts (after successfully using a SonyEricsson T616 for a year) are the following:

1. I wonder if the GSM version will be any better. The Motorola T710 also had problems, and the only link I can make (other than both being non-Nokia and non-SonyEricsson) is that these are CDMA devices (which are normally more locked down than their GSM counterparts).

2. I'm interested to see how long it will take for a fix to be released.

3. My SonyEricsson occasionally acts weird (ie: transfers calls to TL after I've specifically "disconnected" via the phone), but for the most part has been solid.

I, too, am waiting for the Cingular-AT&T version, but clearly want validation that it will pair before I drop $600.

-josh

kvigil

~Kirk
As far as my experiences, I have an Acura TL/Treo 650 and have experienced the EXACT same results as MCARRIGG. I can initiate a call from my phone and have it picked up via the car HFL. I can also answer incoming calls on my phone and use the HFL. However, I cannot initiate calls from the HFL or answer calls from the HFL. The car continuously finds the phone in the car, displays the phone icon, however it soon disappears and than re-appears. I do get caller ID in the MID, but no other information. Additionally I have had issue deleting paired phones. Since you can pair up to 10 devices, I have paired many phones with the TL in testing, but now cannot delete any of them. I go through the options to delete the phone and it appears to be stuck in a 'loop'. It asks me to confirm the deletion by saying "OK". I say OK and it reverts back to asking me again if I want to delete the phone I oroginally selected.

I do use the HFL by using the phone to initiate everything but am really looking forward to a Treo update and/or Acura update to make it work as it should

-Kirk

TL Boris

Just got my Treo 650. It's a great toy. But it does absolutely nothing in the TL - the phone simply won't find the car and vice versa. Can't wait for the fix and appreciate you guys staying on top of it.

Not to make this about IT, but if anyone is successfully using the Treo 650 with Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 at your work, let me know if there's a best way to hook that up for corporate email (I've got Sprint). I'm going to tackle that next week.

NorCalAl

Hi there,

I was hoping that those of you who have successfully paired your 650 to your TL, would give us a step by step of how you paird the phone to the car.

What mode does the phone have to be in? Discoverable, BT on? What did you do to initiate on the TL?

I'm sure it's straight forward, but just to be sure, I'd appreciate hearing about your experience. Seems some prople are getting CallerID displayed on the MID, while others aren't. Perhaps it's an install step that is being done differently by one vs. the other? Or, could it be a 04TL vs. an 05TL? I'd like to see if we could get a standard process, then we can make it STICKY on this forum.

TIA
NorCalAl

AcuraTLGuy

Thanks to everybody for the great posts on Treo 650/TL bluetooth problems. I felt like a real chump - I upgraded to the 650 and bought a TL in anticipation of the Handsfree Link feature. I even tried it out briefly at the dealership - it paired up and let me place a call so it seemed cool. Once I bought the car I experienced exactly the same dis-functionality as described in these postings: pairs up, takes over calls made on Treo, answers calls to Treo while displaying Caller ID, but no other functionalty. Thank goodness I found Acurazine and this forum. I now think this problem will be fixed!

I had called the help number shown in the Handsfree Link Acura manual (888-528-7876). The Acura HFL system is built and serviced by Johnson Controls. After curtly telling me that I was stupid to call about a phone that was not on the Acura approved compatibility list, the gentleman indicated that the Treo 650 was being tested by their company and that they hoped to have something within the next thirty days (Jan 05). He took my email address and indicated they would email me when they learned something.

Everybody keep calling Acura, make posts on the PalmOne Forums complaining about this issue, and call PalmOne and Sprint (PalmOne turns the support over to Sprint but PalmOne needs to make the fix) to get this software or firmware updated and fixed.

Phonetic Man

First, I have the same problems that everyone else does with getting limited functionality from the HFL for the treo 650. I just got off the phone with Acura about it, and a gentleman named Danny told me that Acura is not doing anything to fix the problem. It is definitely up to Palmone to fix the problem with a patch.

cullal

Palmone has released a patch for carkits for the treo 650. According to palm the Acura Handsfree Link is supported by the patch. The patch can be found at

http://www.palmone.com/us/support/do...html#supported

Has anyone applied this patch and tested the treo 650 with the HFL?

zeezz

AWESOME!! now i can buy my treo!!! i'm almost sure this will work as it's listed exactly by our manufactuerer and our HFL is made by johnson controls. hopefully more poeple will be testing tomorrow. THANKS GUYS.

md mdx

Woooooooohoooooooooo!!!

RGHessel

I applied the Treo 650 patch this morning and am pleased to report everything seems to work great!

[1] Incoming calls are answered flawlessly.
[2] I could dial using numbers ("Dial 555-1212") without problem.
[3] The numbers stored in the phone book also work great now.
[4] Caller ID info shows up in the display.

The only issues I've encountered:
[1] When storing phonebook entries, the phone crashed if I stored a "1" before the area-code; if you leave the "1" off, it works fine. (i.e. store "312-555-1212" not "1-312-555-1212"

[2] Battery and signal strength do not show up.

[3] This isn't a problem with PalmOne, but I am having difficulty sending tones during a call (to access voicemail systems). According to the owners manual, during the call you say "send 1234"; the car then responds "would you like to send 1234", then you say "yes" (or "send" or something like that.) By this time, the voicemail has thought you are leaving a message and passes the point where you can enter your ID. Need to figure out a way to bypass all the Acura confirmatory prompts.

But all in all, it's working GREAT! Thank you, PalmOne.

Whitesnake

Thanks for the update, Have you contacted Palm about your results.. Maybe they can fix the other minor problems. Also can you sync the palm with the Acura's phonebook?

Whitesnake

Oh ... I was thinking.. maybe you can program that in your phone.. Put a few commas in the phone number to put your password in etc..

RGHessel

Yea...that works great when dialing from the phone, but supposedly (according the the TL manual) you can send tones while on a call. I am not sure if you could save the necessary "pauses" in the Acura phone book. Guess I could try saying "pause" when I store a number.

RGHessel

I don't believe this is possible with any phone (but please, do correct me if I am wrong...)

tl_soso

do u guys think that any liklihood of this phone completely working (battery life and signal strength displayed) ??

RGHessel

Just to add to my original post below, after using the patched Treo 650 with my TL, a few odd problems have poppled up when I attempt to dial from the phone book. About 50 % of the time, once the car tells the phone to dial (after I made a "call Home" from the phone book command), the phone totally crashes and does a soft reset. When I dial using just numbers it seems to work okay. I havent been able to figure out any pattern, since some of the phonebook entries I used in the morning that worked, no longer worked when I got back in my car to go home.

Hmmm...

What are other people's experiences with the patched Treo?

ricwilson

I don't have the manual in front of me to confirm how to enter the pause, but yes, you can have pauses in the TL's phonebook. Makes life much easier when I try to get my voicemail. rw