My first week was a disaster. The Pre constantly went into "phone offline" mode, or had no network connection (1xRT but no EVDO, etc), etc. and the signal strength just bounced around all the time, whether I was at home, work, or the Sprint store. My Treo signal strength had always been steady and solid at those same locations. I returned the phone for a new one, but that did not fix the problem.
I turns out the problem was being caused by Google calendar; once I removed that, the Palm Pre started working perfectly. The phone no longer goes into phone offline mode. I maintain a steady EVDO connection pretty much anywhere. Signal strength is solid without too much variation.
So if you have a Palm Pre and are experiencing these same problems, and you are using Google calendar, remove Google calendar and see if that fixes the problem.
Below is the source where I found out how to fix this problem:
http://forums.palm.com/palm/board/message?board.id=webossoftware&thread.id=165&view=by_date_ascending&page=11
I found a configuration that stops the inconsistent signal (EVDO) issue that I was seeing.
Here's my configuration that gave me problems:
WebOS 1.0.3
FW CC1.1(90)
Fandango
Pandora
AccuWeather
mCraig
Facebook Contacts (default settings with ~50 contacts)
Google Contacts (default settings with ~20 contacts)
Google Gmail (default settings with Inbox 2500 emails)
Google Calendar (default settings with ~500 events)
Below are some experiments that I tried in order:
* Changed my Voice Network setting to 'Sprint Only'. I read somewhere on another forum this helped. Unfortunately it didn't help me.
* Updated my Network Settings. I read that this can help....didn't help me.
* Systematically removed each application that I had installed myself. With no "3rd" party applications installed I still had issues, no worse, no better.
* Partial erase...with no email, contacts, or calendar configured. This actually stabilized my EVDO!! I left it this way for 2 hours and my phone never went offline, and my EVDO icon never flickered once (as far as i could tell).
* I added back my Facebook contacts. Everything was still good. I left it for 2 more hours...phone was still acting properly.
* I added back my Google account to email, contacts and calendar. My phone instantly went back to jumping back and forth between being online and offline, and losing EVDO every couple of minutes.
* So I went into my Gmail account and archived all of my Inbox emails (yes all 2,500). I went back to my phone, did the partial erase, configured my Facebook contacts, followed by my Google accounts (email, contacts, and calendar). Once again, immediately after configuring my Google accounts my phone instantly went back into misbehaving.
* I then removed my Google calendar account. Bingo, the phone starting acting properly! It's been over 24 hours and i havne't seen EVDO go away once. My phone doesn't switch between offline and online.
Since then i've changed my email settings to sync every 1 hour instead of every 15 minute. This setting alone has helped with battery life.
I also figured out a way to live without my calendar until Palm figures out how to fix things. Google supports SMS calendar event notifications, and morning agenda emailings.
7 comments:
That fix also worked for me, but I really need the Google Calendar. What can we as customers do? I don't want to return my Pre, but I may have to now.
Sorry I don't check my blog often so didn't see your comment til just now.
Personally I wasn't using my Google calendar much so I just check it online via PC. I was hoping to try out the Facebook calendar when I finally joined Facebook last month, but it isn't working and the various calendar applications on Facebook just don't have the features of Google's calendar in any case.
I do have multiple gmail accounts and I might try using Google calendar again on one of my other gmail accounts. My main gmail calendar is far too "busy" with multiple daily events to risk using again via my Palm Pre until I can confirm that Palm has fixed this bug. Perhaps if I start with a blank calendar and slowly start adding events, I can see at what point (if I get that far) that the calendar breaks my Pre's connectivity.
Since the calendar feature isn't that big of a deal to me at the moment, I'm not in any hurry to find out or otherwise push my luck.
The weird thing is that there are plenty of people using the Palm Pre and Google calendar together without any problems. I find it hard to believe that there are underlying hardware variations in the existing Palm Pres that would cause this; perhaps there are certain characters or functions on our particular Google calendar set ups that was causing this?
At some point in the future I'll start googling to see if this bug has been fixed; right now the calendar feature isn't a big deal to me; hopefully you are/were able to work something out.
Ooopppss....bad idea to try Google calendar with a different gmail account. Even with a completely blank, empty Google calendar, it messed up my reception and I my EVDO connection until I completely removed (deleted) the Google calendar and did a full hard reboot (backup/restore) of my Palm Pre.
For some reason, even the slightest connection with Google calendar is completely toxic to my Palm Pre. Weird.
So anyway, still no dice. Looks like I won't be using Google Calendar on my Palm Pre for a while longer.
On the plus side, the Palm calendar is really nice and does everything I want. I don't really need Google calendar so it's not a big deal for me.
How do you update stuff on palm calender from computer?
"How do you update stuff on palm calender from computer?"
Palm Pre webOS syncs with "the cloud" automatically, so you don't have to "figure out" how to sync stuff, although you can manually sync if you want to. Anything you put on your Google (or other supported) calendar will show up on your Palm Pre; in turn changes you make on your Palm Pre will show up on your Google (or other supported) calendar.
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