Treo essentials:
Chapter 2

Part II

• Send a Text Message
• Visit a Web Page
• Take a Digital Picture
• Use the Calculator
• Search Your Treo for Text
• Reset Your Treo
• Preserve the Treo Battery

• Navigate the Treo User Interface
• Make a Phone Call

Part II: Performing the Treo Essentials

Send a Text Message

The full QWERTY keyboard on the Treo devices opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities for text messaging. Granted, hardcore text message users have become quite adept at cranking out messages on tiny phone keypads with only a few keys. With the Treo, however, you can start using your smartphone as more of a true text communicator. To send an SMS (Short Message Service) text message on your Treo, follow these steps:

1. If the mobile radio isn't turned on, hold down the Power/End button until you hear a tone and a screen appears that indicates you're being connected to the wireless network.
2. After you are connected to the network, press the Messaging button (to the lower right of the five-way navigator) to launch the Messaging application.

3. Tap the New button to begin creating a new message. The Compose screen opens, as shown in Figure 2.15.

   
   
   
   Figure 2.15: Use the Compose screen in the Messaging application to enter a text message.
4. Press the number keys on the keyboard to enter the phone number of the text message's recipient next to the To: label. If you want to send a text message to an email address instead, you can enter the address in the To: field.

5. Press the Down button on the five-way navigator to move to the message body and begin entering the message text (see Figure 2.16).

   
   
   
   Figure 2.16:Entering text for a text message simply involves typing text in the body of the message in the Compose screen.
6. When you're ready to send the message, tap the Send button near the bottom of the screen. After a few seconds, the message is sent to the recipient.

You probably noticed some additional buttons along the bottom of the Compose screen that I neglected to mention in the previous steps on how to send a text message. You can use these buttons to do some useful things, such as insert QuickText, which consists of commonly used phrases that you can select and insert to save time. You can also select emoticons (smilies) to insert in a message. To add pizzazz to your text messages, you can turn them into multimedia messages by adding a voice memo, digital picture, or video clip. All these topics are tackled in detail in Chapter 9, "Communicating with Text and Multimedia Messages."

---

Note - SMS text messages are limited to only 160 characters, so the idea is to keep them short and sweet. However, if you find yourself rambling past the 160-character limit, don't fret because the Treo's Messaging application automatically breaks longer messages into 160-character chunks that are sent as separate messages.

---

Visit a Web Page

Accessing the wireless Web is truly one of the most exciting facets of any smartphone, and the Treo makes this prospect particularly compelling, given its relatively high screen resolution (320x320). Blazer is the standard Web browser on Treo devices, and it does a good job of allowing you to view both mobile-specific and general websites designed for full-sized computers. To visit a web page by using the Blazer Web browser on your Treo, follow these steps:

1. If the mobile radio isn't turned on, hold down the Power/End button until you hear a tone and a screen appears that indicates you're being connected to the wireless network.
2. After you are connected to the network, press the Option key followed by the Phone/Send button to launch the Blazer Web browser. The web page for your wireless service provider will likely open by default.

---

Note - As a shortcut for entering the URL of a web page you'd like to visit, tap the Earth icon in the Blazer toolbar to open the Go to Web Page screen, or just tap the address bar of the Blazer browser and enter the URL directly in it. If you enter the URL directly in the address bar, tap the Go button to open the page.

---

3. To visit a different page, press the Menu button, scroll over once to the Go menu, and then scroll to select the Go to Web Page menu item. Press the Center button to issue the menu command and open the Go to Web Page screen, as shown in Figure 2.17.

4. Enter the URL of the web page you want to visit by typing it on the keyboard. You can use the helper boxes just above the text entry area for common parts of the URL, such as the www. at the beginning and the .com at the end.
5. When you're finished entering the URL, tap the OK button to accept it and open the page in the browser. Figure 2.18 shows the splash page for my website (http://www.michaelmorrison.com/) open in Blazer.

Although the layout is different when you view the page in a normal desktop Web browser, the content is still visible in a reasonable format in Treo's Blazer browser. Some pages scale down better than others, but most pages are at least readable on your Treo. Just keep in mind that the Blazer browser tends to stack Web content vertically down the screen even if its original layout is horizontal. Figure 2.19 shows my page on a normal desktop Web browser, which illustrates what I'm talking about because the image and text appear horizontally as they were intended. (Compare this layout to the one shown in Figure 2.18.)

---

Note - The Blazer Web browser also supports a Wide Page view, which doesn't stack the content on a wide page vertically as in the default Optimized view. Instead, you must scroll left and right in the browser to view the full width of the page. To toggle between Optimized and Wide Page view, tap the toolbar icon that looks like a miniature Blazer screen (located to the left of the Earth icon). You'll find that Wide Page view is often preferable on pages with a layout you're accustomed to viewing a certain way.

---

The toolbar along the top of the Blazer screen allows you to perform common Web-browsing tasks, such as navigating backward or forward a page, refreshing the page, changing the page view (Wide Page or Optimized), jumping to the Home page, and accessing bookmarks. The Blazer browser is a powerful little Web browser with lots of handy features that are covered in detail in Chapter 10, "Browsing the Wireless Web."

About the Author
Michael Morrison is a writer, developer, toy inventor, and author of a variety of computer technology books and interactive Web-based courses. He has been using wireless handheld devices for over a decade, dating back to early HP handheld calculators. His previous books include Special Edition Using Pocket PC 2002, The Unauthorized Guide to Pocket PC, Beginning Mobile Phone Game Programming, and Sams Teach Yourself Wireless Java in 21 Days.



Click to Buy

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Take a Digital Picture

What started as somewhat of a gimmick has turned into a truly useful feature that many people can't do without, including me. I'm referring to the digital cameras included in many mobile phones, including the Treo smartphone. With the digital camera in the Treo, you can take digital pictures up to VGA resolution, which is 640x480, or 0.3 megapixels. Granted, this resolution isn't so great by digital camera standards, but it's not bad at all by mobile phone standards. Keep in mind that not everyone has unlimited data on his or her service plan, in which case sending hefty high-resolution images would put a serious strain on your phone bill.

Although you can certainly take pictures on your Treo device without a memory card, if you get serious about it, I'd recommend buying a card at some point to beef up the storage capabilities. For now, however, you just want to learn how the camera works and take a few pictures to get your feet wet. To take a digital picture with your Treo, follow these steps:

---

Note - The Treo 650 adds support for capturing video with the onboard digital camera. Capturing video is practically the same process as shooting a still picture; you just operate the camera in video mode instead of camera mode. Chapter 12, "Taking and Sharing Digital Pictures and Videos," tells you everything you need to know about shooting and sharing pictures and videos with your Treo.

---

1. Press the Application button to open the main application screen.
2. Press the C key to jump near the Camera application, and then navigate with the five-way navigator to select the Camera application.
3. Press the Center button to launch the Camera application. The digital camera immediately turns on, and the screen becomes the virtual lens for the camera (see Figure 2.20). The camera lens is located on the back of the device in the upper-left corner—aim the lens at the target you want to photograph.

4. Zoom in and out on the picture by pressing the Up and Down buttons on the five-way navigator. (There are only two zoom levels.)
5. When you're ready to take a picture, just press the Center button. You hear a shutter sound and the picture is displayed, along with a series of buttons at the bottom of the screen for deciding what to do with the picture (see Figure 2.21) .

---

Note - You might notice a little round mirror positioned adjacent to the camera lens on the back of your device. This mirror enables you to aim the camera at yourself for taking self-portraits or pictures of yourself with friends and family. Just make sure you can see yourself in the mirror when you snap the picture!

---

6. To save the picture, tap the Save button on the toolbar, which is the first button with a floppy disk icon. If you want to delete the picture and try again, tap the Delete button, which has a trashcan icon.
7. To view a picture after you've taken it, tap the Pics&Videos button in the lower left of the Camera screen, which has four small squares to indicate several pictures. Figure 2.22 shows the Pics&Videos screen, which provides access to all the pictures and videos stored on your device.

You can do all kinds of interesting things with a picture after you've taken it, such as sending it as part of a multimedia message, organizing it into a photo album, and viewing it as part of a slide show. All these topics are covered in detail in Chapter 12, "Taking and Sharing Digital Pictures and Videos."

Use the Calculator

The Calc application on the Treo serves as a calculator that does much more than just basic math functions. The Calc application includes several advanced modes for performing conversions between different units of measure as well as scientific, financial, and statistical calculations. Following are the different modes the Treo calculator supports, along with what functions they offer:

---

Note - If you want to keep your pictures as small as possible, change to a lower resolution by tapping the resolution pick list in the lower-right area of the Camera application, and select 320x240 instead of 640x480.

---

• Basic—Common math functions, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root, and memory
• Math—Advanced math functions, such as exponents, roots, logarithms, as well as flexible memory storage
• Trig—Trigonometric functions, such as sine, cosine, and tangent, as well as flexible memory storage
• Finance—Financial functions typically found on a financial calculator, such as amortization, as well as flexible memory storage
• Logic—Logical operations, such as And, Or, Not, and Xor, as well as conversions between different bases and flexible memory storage
• Statistics—Statistical functions, such as sum and factorial, as well as a handy random number generator and flexible memory storage
• Weight/Tmp—Unit conversion for weight and temperature in metric and English as well as flexible memory storage
• Length—Unit conversion for length in metric and English as well as flexible memory storage
• Area—Unit conversion for area in metric, English, and traditional as well as flexible memory storage
• Volume—Unit conversion for volume in metric and English as well as flexible memory storage

To use the calculator, follow these steps:

1. Press the Application button to open the main application screen.
2. Press the C key to jump near the Calc application, and then navigate with the five-way navigator (if necessary) to select the application. Press the Center button to launch the calculator, which appears in Basic mode (see Figure 2.23).

3. To perform a calculation, tap a number on the screen using the stylus or enter it on the keyboard; Option Lock is automatically turned on so that you don't have to press the Option key on the keyboard.
4. Specify the math function by tapping it on the screen or pressing the key on the keyboard—the W (addition), S (subtraction), Z (multiplication), and Q (division) keys contain the four basic math functions.
5. Enter the second number for the calculation, and then tap the Equals button on the screen or press the Enter key on the keyboard. The result is displayed on the screen.
6. Switch to an advanced mode by pressing the Right button on the five-way navigator. To cycle through the different advanced modes, press the Right button; to return to Basic mode at any time, press the Left button. Figure 2.24 shows the calculator in Length mode.

The Calc application has several menus for fine-tuning the specific mode you're using. For example, most of the advanced modes allow you to specify the number of decimal places to display in the calculator. To change this setting, follow these steps:

1. Enter the number of decimal places, and then press the Menu button.
2. Navigate to the Pref menu, and scroll down to select Fixed(x) from the menu.
3. Press the Center button to accept the change.
4. If you want to return to a format that shows all the decimal places in a number, select Float from the Pref menu.

The numeric notations on the Pref menu actually correspond to floating-point (Float), fixed-point (Fixed(x)), scientific (Sci(x)), and engineering notation (Eng(x)). The last three notations have an x in their names because these modes expect you to enter a number indicating the number of decimal places to display for each notation.

The Pref menu also enables you to switch between degrees (Degrees), radians (Radians), and gradians (Grads). Radians express angles in terms of the math constant pi, and gradians are a European form of degrees; there are 400 grads in a circle, as compared to 360 degrees.

The Pref menu is the same in all the advanced modes except Logic mode, in which case the menu changes so that you can change the base and width of numbers. More specifically, you can choose between binary (Bin), octal (Oct), signed decimal (SDec), unsigned decimal (UDec), and hexadecimal bases (Hex). The storage width of a number can be set to 8 Bit, 16 Bit, or 32 Bit.

The last detail to cover for the Calc application is the History feature, which displays a list of recent calculations you've performed. To access the history, press the Menu button and select Show History on the Edit menu. A history of your recent calculations is displayed, as shown in Figure 2.25. In this example, I divided 5280 by 4, and then converted the result from feet to miles.

You can copy the history to paste into other applications, such as an email or a text message, to share with someone by selecting Copy History from the Edit menu. To clear the history, select Clear History from the Edit menu. The Edit menu also includes a Copy Total command for copying the current calculation results. Finally, the Paste command on the Edit menu allows you to paste in a number you've copied from another application.

About the Author
Michael Morrison is a writer, developer, toy inventor, and author of a variety of computer technology books and interactive Web-based courses. He has been using wireless handheld devices for over a decade, dating back to early HP handheld calculators. His previous books include Special Edition Using Pocket PC 2002, The Unauthorized Guide to Pocket PC, Beginning Mobile Phone Game Programming, and Sams Teach Yourself Wireless Java in 21 Days.



Click to Buy

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Search Your Treo for Text

As you continue to use your Treo for a while and amass a fair amount of data, you'll undoubtedly run into a situation where you need to search your device for information. Fortunately, the Treo includes a built-in text search feature called Find used to search the entire device for a string of text. Follow these steps to use the Find feature to find text on your device:

1. Press the Option key followed by the Shift/Find key to open the Find screen (see Figure 2.26).

2. Enter the exact text for which you'd like to search, and tap the OK button to carry out the search. The search results appear in a larger Find screen (see Figure 2.27). In this example, the memo named "2x4's" is a match because it contains the search term "nails."

3. If you don't see an interesting match, tap the Find More button to continue searching your device. When you see an interesting match in the Find screen, tap it in the list to open it.

The Find feature searches the database of each application on your device for an exact match of the text you specify. Although the match must be exact, the text does not have to appear as individual words. So if you search for the text sam, possible matches could include Samantha, sample, and flotsam.

Reset Your Treo

It's a sad truth that Treo devices are like every computer, in that they can get unstable from time to time and require a reboot. The likelihood of your device getting unstable has to do with how many applications you install and how much of a strain you put on its memory, among other things. Even the most conscientious user who is careful not to overload his or her device is still capable of running into a shaky system at some point, which makes a reset a good idea.

You can perform three different kinds of resets on your Treo. Here I've listed them in increasing order of severity:

• Soft reset
• System reset
• Hard reset

The next few sections examine these types of resets in more detail. If you find yourself contemplating a reset, make sure you try them in the same order that I explain them here. Or let me put it more bluntly—resort to a hard reset only when you're desperate and out of options because it blitzes your device's memory!

Perform a Soft Reset

A soft reset is the Treo equivalent of rebooting your desktop or notebook computer, and it's a good idea to do one from time to time if you notice your device behaving strangely. There aren't any risks to performing a soft reset, as it preserves data as long as you aren't in the middle of editing a new piece of data (contact, memo, and so forth). Just make sure you don't have a specific piece of data open in an application when you perform a soft reset. Following are the steps for a soft reset:

---

Note - A soft reset is supposed to safely close applications so that you don't lose any data, but it's safer not to leave anything open.

---

1. Press the battery door release button on the back of your device, and slide the battery door downward to remove the door. Be careful not to remove the battery, just the battery door.
2. To the left of the battery, you'll see a small recessed hole that contains the device's Reset button. Press the Reset button by gently pushing the stylus down into the recessed hole until you feel a tiny click.
3. Replace the battery door as your device restarts.

After you perform a soft reset, your device restarts and returns you to the main Phone screen.

Perform a System Reset

A system reset is a step more serious than a soft reset because it immediately restarts your device without necessarily closing applications safely. A system reset is also different from a soft reset in that it restarts your device without loading any system extras, which means you get a bare-bones restart that allows you to potentially uninstall malicious applications. In this way, you can think of a system reset as being similar to rebooting in safe mode on a Windows PC. If you need to perform a system reset, keep in mind that you always want to perform a soft reset following the system reset so that you finish with a normal (full) restart. To perform a system reset, follow these steps:

1. Press the battery door release button on the back of your device, and slide the battery door downward to remove it.
2. Press and hold the Up button on the five-way navigator. While holding down the Up button, gently press the Reset button on the back of the device with the stylus.
3. Continue to hold the Up button until the circular Palm Powered logo appears onscreen, and then release the button.
4. Replace the battery door as your device restarts.
5. Solve the problem that required the system reset, and then perform a soft reset.

Understand that the purpose of performing a system reset is to solve a problem that can't be fixed with a soft reset, such as an application that has somehow entered an infinite loop and locked up your device. Whether or not you need to uninstall the offending application, it's important that you perform a soft reset at some point following a system reset. You won't be able to turn on the mobile radio until you do so, not to mention that a host of other important device features are disabled after a system reset.

Perform a Hard Reset

Read on with caution. Seriously, a hard reset is recommended only in the direst of circumstances or when you're getting rid of your device and want to erase all third-party applications and all data from your device, effectively restoring it to its factory state. Even though a hard reset is aggressive, if you've synchronized your device recently, you can restore data by synchronizing after performing a hard reset. A hard reset can be useful if you encounter a problem that can't be solved with a soft or system reset. And as I mentioned already, a hard reset is extremely valuable for wiping your device should you sell it or turn it in to your company at some point. To perform a hard reset, follow these steps:

1. Press the battery door release button on the back of your device, and slide the battery door downward to remove it.
2. Press and hold the Power/End button on the five-way navigator. While holding down the Power/End button, gently press the Reset button on the back of the device with the stylus.
3. Continue to hold the Power/End button until the circular Palm Powered logo appears onscreen, and then release the button.
4. A prompt appears asking whether you want to erase all the data on the device. Press the Up button to confirm that you want to continue with the hard reset.
5. A language screen might be displayed next, in which case you must select your language; this language should match the language you selected during the Palm Desktop software installation.
6. Replace the battery door as your device restarts.

After the hard reset, your device is completely clean, as though you just bought it and took it out of the box. Use the Palm Desktop software to reinstall applications and synchronize any data.

Preserve the Treo Battery

An important aspect of using any mobile device is learning how to manage battery power carefully. Treo devices are efficient, but their battery life depends a great deal on how you use them. In other words, the amount of device usage you get out of each battery charge has as much, if not more, to do with you as it does the device itself. So it's worth examining some strategies to help maximize battery life on your Treo.

First, the Treo battery is designed to provide about 6 hours of talk time when using the device as a mobile phone or about 300 hours of standby time if the phone is doing nothing more than waiting for calls. Using the device for other things can add to or take away from this usage range. For example, Bluetooth puts a significant drain on the battery, so it's worth considering whether you want to leave features such as Bluetooth turned on all the time.

The first step you can take toward maximizing the Treo battery is to charge it regularly. Unlike some older battery technologies, the lithium ion battery in your Treo performs better when topped off regularly, as opposed to letting it run down entirely before each charge. So charging your device every night is generally a good idea. You can also get into the habit of connecting it and allowing it to charge when you're at your desk. Because the Multi-connector used to synchronize your device includes a plug for the AC charger, you can combine charging the device and synchronizing it into a single step.

Although charging the battery regularly ensures that your battery has a good charge, it doesn't address the issue of making the charge last as long as possible. Following are some suggestions for squeezing the most out of each battery charge:

• Use wireless features only when necessary. All the device features that require turning on the wireless radio put a significant drain on the battery. This includes the Phone, Messaging, Blazer Web browser, and VersaMail applications. Keep in mind that you can work in some of these applications offline to preserve the battery.

---

Note - Obviously, I'm not suggesting that "angyou don't use the phone feature on your Treo. It's just important to understand that the wireless radio puts a big hit on the battery charge, so if you're in a situation where you can live without the phone, by all means turn the wireless radio off and save the battery. Remember, to turn the wireless radio on and off, just hold down the red Power/End button.

---

• Bluetooth is another wireless feature that takes a toll on the battery. If you use Bluetooth, consider turning it on and off as needed, as opposed to leaving it turned on all the time. As an example, if you use Bluetooth with a headset, you could leave Bluetooth on during business hours and then turn it off after work when you receive fewer calls. Chapter 11, "Communicating Wirelessly with Bluetooth," explores the Bluetooth feature of your Treo in detail.
• The screen is another fairly big power hog, and its capability to drain the battery depends largely on how bright it is. So you can save some battery consumption by adjusting the screen brightness down to a dimmer level. This is particularly useful if you're using your Treo in a dimly lit area that doesn't require as much backlighting to see the screen. Chapter 3, "Customizing and Personalizing Your Treo," shows you how to adjust the screen brightness in the "Adjust the Brightness and Screen Settings" section.
• Another screen-related power-saving feature is the Auto-off setting, which controls how long your device must sit dormant before turning off the screen. You can decrease this setting down to as low as 30 seconds, although I tend to find it annoying if my device turns off after such a short time. On the other hand, if you're trying to squeeze every bit of power out of your battery, it's not a bad idea. You learn how to alter this setting in Chapter 3 in the "Tweak the Power Preferences" section.
• Although not on par with the wireless radio or Bluetooth radio in terms of battery consumption, the infrared port on your device requires power to be constantly available for receiving beamed data. If you don't receive beamed data via the infrared port often, you might consider turning it off. This topic is also covered in the "Tweak the Power Preferences" section of Chapter 3.
• You might not think about it, but the sound volume on the Treo has an impact on the battery, albeit somewhat small because most sounds play only briefly. However, music played in the RealPlayer application can certainly put a drain on the battery, especially if you listen to it with the device's speaker, as opposed to headphones. Consider turning the speaker volume down lower in general, and use headphones when listening to music to help conserve the battery. The RealPlayer application is covered in Chapter 13, "Listening to Digital Music."

Even if you follow all these tips to help prolong each charge of your battery, you might be in a situation, such as traveling, where you have absolutely no access to an AC charger to recharge your Treo. Don't despair because some interesting options that don't involve a fixed power source are available. I'm referring to Treo chargers that use traditional batteries to charge your Treo battery. For example, a company called Seido makes an Emergency Charger for the Treo 650 that allows you to use a 9-volt battery to charge your device. A single 9-volt battery can charge your Treo battery to 40% to 50% of its full capacity, which isn't bad. This affordable charger is available from the TreoCentral Store at http://store.treocentral.com/—just search for "seido emergency charger."

If you prefer using AA batteries instead of 9-volt batteries to charge your Treo, you might want to look into BoxWave's Battery Adapter, which uses four AA batteries to charge your device. This adaptor also requires BoxWave's miniSync cable, which is a dual charger/synchronization cable. BoxWave also makes an interesting product called VersaCharger that serves as both an AC charger and a car charger in one compact unit. To learn more about BoxWave's charging products for the Treo 650, visit the Treo 650 section of its website at http://www.boxwave.com/products/easyfinder/products-for-palmone-treo-650_442.htm.

---

Note - Palm also makes a car charger for charging your Treo device using the cigarette lighter plug found in most automobiles. This charger is available online at Palm's Palm Store at http://store.palmone.com/.

---

Summary

I hope you're now feeling a bit more at home with your Treo. This chapter has covered a great deal of territory in introducing you to most of the Treo's key applications and features. In reality, however, you only scratched the surface. The remainder of the book dials in much more closely on each aspect of Treo devices and guides you through getting the most out of them. The next chapter is particularly interesting because it focuses on customizing and personalizing your device to suit your own style and mobile workflow.

Go back to Part I

About the Author
Michael Morrison is a writer, developer, toy inventor, and author of a variety of computer technology books and interactive Web-based courses. He has been using wireless handheld devices for over a decade, dating back to early HP handheld calculators. His previous books include Special Edition Using Pocket PC 2002, The Unauthorized Guide to Pocket PC, Beginning Mobile Phone Game Programming, and Sams Teach Yourself Wireless Java in 21 Days.



Click to Buy

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.