Broken Treo 650 replacement: Part 2

[Bob Russell]

I'm happy to report spectacular success so far. After months of putting up with the bad connector, I finally submitted the claim to the Assurian insurance company that covers my Verizon Treo 650 for theft, loss or damage. (See previous article.)

Less than 24 hours later I had a replacement Treo 650 in my hands. I don't know if it's new or refurbished, but it's in great shape and as far as I can tell by looking at it, it's new. I guess I'll know more when I get a good look at the screen to see if it is pristine.

There are two changes I've found... First of all, when I go to the phone application and phone info menu item, it says "Hardware: B" whereas the original phone said "Hardward: A". Sounds like a good thing to me, but I don't have any way to judge that. Secondly, from the same screen, I can tell that the firmware is upgraded to 1.04 for Verizon, so it's up to date. No firmware updates for me to do. My previous phone was still running 1.01.

I haven't really used it or even turned on the phone. Haven't checked for dead pixels (anyone know a good way to test that?) But so far so good. In fact, so far so spectacular!

I used my favorite Backup program, BackupBuddyVFS by BlueNomad to create a backup on SD card from my old device. Then I restored it to my new device. Took only seconds and so far it looks like there's not a hitch. Beautiful. I'm sure there are some other great backup programs out there, including the new free program from Alexander Pruss tailored for NVFS devices. But when you have one that you are used to and it is tried and true, you want to stick with it. I like the ability to schedule backups, and I can easily copy the backup files to my desktop using an SD card reader for an additional copy of the backup. (Watch for their new product that does wireless backups to a server. It's currently in beta!) Also, my thanks to Alexis from Blue Nomad Software, who saw my post and took the time to write me a nice note and provide some tips.

At any rate, it basically shocked me because I didn't really have to do anything except the backup and restore and of course switch the SD card to the new Treo. I don't think I can do that if and when I get a Sprint Treo 700p because of the model change, but I don't mind starting fresh when moving to a new model anyway.

In fact, in a somewhat reckless move, I did my first hotsync (desktop -> Treo unidirectional) on my work computer in order to install ShadowPlan. I wanted to have the Shadow desktop at work because it's going to be dedicated to project info for work. Like everything else so far, it worked like a charm.

So if everything continues without problem, all I have to do is pack up the old Treo and hope that they process it correctly so I don't have to fight any extra credit card charges (my Toshiba warranty repair required a little extra persistence there, but the Toshiba people were very nice and it was resolved.)

Almost too good to be true, so let's see what happens over the next few days!