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.
