It’s Sunday again and the new summary is available. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
Thomas
Thomas Busch
It’s Sunday again and the new summary is available. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
Thomas
It’s Sunday again and the new summary is available. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
Thomas
It’s Sunday again and the new summary is available. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
It’s Sunday again and the new summary is available. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
It’s Sunday again and the new summary is available. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
Some weeks ago Palm announced the Treo 700w. And some users still don’t want to believe that Palm now uses WindowsMobile, too. But the Treo 700w just seems to be the forerunner of a whole fleet of non-Palm OS devices produced by Palm.
As reported by LinuxDevices.com there soon could be a Treo running Linux:
Palm will ship Linux-powered mobile phones this year, say sources claiming to be close to the company. The devices will be powered by Wind River Linux, and pending carrier reaction, may well be the first Linux-powered handsets distributed widely within the US.
And “Gadgets on the go” tells us that Palm even plans to bring out a Smartphone running Symbian OS:
Ijust heard from a ***very reliable source*** that there is indeed a new Palm Treo and a Symbian Treo in the works for both CDMA and GSM networks.
What do you think about this rumors? Is it a whise decision to support 4 different operating systems and platforms? And which effect will this have on the Palm OS and on PalmSource?
Sep 252005
It’s Sunday again and the new article is available. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
As every week a short information for our German-speaking readers: The last week’s articles have been summarized and translated. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
Sep 112005
Just a short message for all German-speaking readers: The new summary is available at TamsPalm.de!
In part 1 of my review I told you about all the functions that “Ringo Pro” offers. Now let’s see if the program works properly.
The big testing
Thank God we have an ISDN-telephone at home. That means: I have 3 different phone numbers to call the Treo. I tested “Ringo Pro” with these 3 numbers, let’s call them NR1, NR2 and NR3.
- I added NR1 as a “Ringo Friend”. As ringtone I selected “Outcast-Hey Ya” and I picked a picture, let’s call it Pic1.
- NR2 is in no special group and no “friend”. The default ringtone is “Gritty Shaker” from the Ocean’s 11 soundtrack. Default picture is Pic2
- NR3 is in the “Private” Group. For this group I selected “U2-Vertigo” as ringtone and used Pic3.
Now I took the 3 phones we have and called the Treo from each phone.
- Call from NR1: The Treo plays “Hey Ya” and shows the right picture
- Call from NR2: Treo plays “Gritty Shaker”, shows Pic2.
- Call from NR3: Treo plays “Vertigo” and shows Pic3.
So far, “Ringo” does it’s work very well. Now I wanted to test the “Don’t disturb”-functionality. I activated the corresponding checkbox for NR1 (“Ringo Friend”) and NR3 (“Ringo Group”). And I did some calls again:
- Call from NR1: The Treo rings, playing the polyphonic tone selected in the built-in ringtone application. The right picture is shown.
- Call from NR2: Treo plays “Gritty Shaker”, shows Pic2.
- Call from NR3: Treo again plays the polyphonic ringtone, shows Pic3.
Result: Something is wrong with the “Don’t disturb” function. The Treo rings, but it shouldn’t! As a last test, I set the ringtone for the “friend” and for the “Ringo Group” to default. Perhaps the Treo doesn’t ring now. Testing again:
- Call from NR1: No sound comes out of the Treo
- Call from NR2: Treo plays “Gritty Shaker”.
- Call from NR3: Treo doesn’t ring
As you can see, the “Don’t disturb” option only works if no individual ringtone is selected for “Ringo Friends” or “Ringo Groups”. But this is the only bug I found.
Conclusion
“Ringo Pro” offers a lot of options to make your Treo ring the way you like. Depending on the size of your MP3-collection you can choose from hundreds or thousands of different ringtones. By using “Ringo Friends” and “Ringo Groups” you can assign an individual ringtone to every person and/or group of your address book. The only negative thing I found is the problem with the “Don’t disturb” option.
I don’t know if all these functions are worth 29,95 USD. Some other ringtone programs are cheaper. But they need additional MP3-player software like PocketTunes or AeroPlayer. So the price of “Ringo Pro” is not exorbitant high.
I would give “Ringo Pro” 4 points out of 5. One point is missing because the “Don’t disturb” option and the “Ringtone Mixer” do not work perfectly. But I can recommend the programm to all Treo users who want more than just the built-in tones.
Introduction
When your Treo comes out-of-the-box, it’s not able to use mp3-files as ringtone. You only can use the built-in polyphonic ones. The only way to make music or other sounds a ringtone, is to record them via the Treo’s microphone. But the quality of this sound is not very great. If you want your Treo to play “real” music, you need 3rd party software, such as “mRing“, “LightWav“, “mp3Ringer“, “PhoneTechnician“, “TreoGuard” or “Ringo Pro“.
I had a look at “Ringo Pro for Treo 600 & Treo 650 4.4″ by Electric Pocket (Price: 29,95 USD)
Installation
The *.zip file contains the “Ringo-installer.prc”. After the transfer via HotSync the software extracts and installs itself on the Treo. While the installer.prc has a size of 918KB, the installed program only uses about 400KB of RAM.
First look and overview
The program offers three different views: “Ringo Ringtones”, “Ringo Friends” and “Ringo Groups”. You can switch from one view to the other by tapping the corresponding symbol at the lower right corner of the screen.
- On the “Ringo Ringtones” screen you can choose the default sounds for incomming calls and text messages. And you can pick a picture to be showed when somebody calls you.
- For important persons you can use “Ringo Friends” to assign each “friend” an individual ringtone and/or picture.
- The “Ringo Groups”-screen offers the same functions for the different categories of your contact database.
The “Ringo Ringtones” screen
There are 4 different ways to choose a ringtone or a SMS tone:
- You can select a MP3 tune from any directory of your storage card. Ringo comes along with 5 tunes which are stored at the /audio directory. Before you definitely pick a MP3 tune you can listen to it by tapping the “Play” button.
- The second possibility is to browse the Ringo ringtone store. After choosing this option the web browser is started and connects to the ringtone-website on electricpocket.com. I did not download any file from the website just because using a GPRS-connection is too expensive for that.
- Of course you can also use the built-in polyphonic ringtones. Additional MIDI tones can be imported over the menue Tones>Import Tones
- Last but not least you can create your own unique ringtone when you tap the button “New”. You can choose from different drums, melodies and instruments to mix the ringtone you like most. This is really great fun. I spent hours with trying all the different sounds. There’s only one thing I don’t like about the “Ringtone Mixer”: When I choose a drum pattern and a lead pattern they are played simultaniously until the lead pattern is repeated. Then the lead pattern sets in too early and the rhythm of the drum and the rhythm of the lead voice don’t fit together any more. This means it sounds quite horrible. You can avoid this problem when you only use the drum or the lead voice.
As you can see, you have a lot of options to select the ringtone you like. At the next step you can decide if you want a picture to be shown at an incomming call or not. You can use the pictures taken with the Treo’s camera or the ones that are on your storage card (in the directory /DCIM).
The “Ringo Friends” screen
This is the screen for important callers. A “friend” is added by tapping the “New” button. You can pick a person from your address book or create a new entry. For each “friend” you can choose an individual ringtone, SMS tone and picture. And you can select the “don’t disturb” option which means that the Treo won’t ring when this person is calling.
The “Ringo Groups” screen
On this screen the categories from your address book are listed. For each category you can again pick a ringtone, SMS tone and picture. And of course select the “Do not disturb” option.
For our German-speaking readers: The last week’s articles have been summarized and translated. Just take a look at TamsPalm.de!
Content, RSS
Twitter