Fix for Treo 600 Hangs

By | March 19, 2006

I suffered through about a month of misery of having my Treo 600 hang on me, typically while trying to place an outbound call or just seconds after receiving an inbound call. The screen would freeze for about ten seconds and either the outbound call would never go out, or the inbound call would be disconnected. In the top left corner “Sprint” would sometimes be replaced by “print” or “rint” and the message “No Service” would also appear at the top of the screen.

Oddly enough, email and web access were not affected nearly as dramatically. Sometimes the Treo would hang for a few minutes while downloading email, which would chew through a lot of the battery’s charge, but it didn’t happen that often.

Another problem is that the battery ran down really quickly. It needed to be recharged every day. The only way the Treo could survive a weekend without charging was if I turned off the wireless radio each night.

Finally, I got around to searching the web to see if this was a common problem. Of course it was. It’s easy to forget that there are a gazillion people out there like me who have problems with things and then post on the web about it. Just like this blog post.

Other people had reported this problem on the TreoCentral (here’s one of many threads on the topic) discussion forums and on several other Treo discussion forums. The first proposed solution was to send your Treo back to Palm if it was still under warranty and the ESN on the back was between 09600716001 and 09600864216. Mine is in that range, but is long since out of the warranty period.

The next thing people discovered was that replacing the battery would fix the problem. I came within one click of ordering a new battery before I decided to take one more look at what people had posted.

I then discovered a couple of posts suggesting that the problem was with the battery connection. The real benefit of replacing the battery actually came from reseating the battery connection. While the Treo would still work with a loose connection, it caused battery discharge and wireless radio problems. I suspect this might be because of undesirable drops in voltage or current across the connection.

To make a long story only a little bit longer, I used some excellent online instructions from gethightech.com to take apart my Treo and reseat the battery connection. Those instructions are for replacing a battery, but they tell you exactly what you need to know to just fix the connection.

Problem solved. It’s now been almost two weeks since I fixed the battery connection, and I haven’t had a single reoccurrence of what had become a near daily problem.

Update 11/1/2006: The problem came back. I reset the battery connection again. Unfortunately, now my Treo reboots everytime I turn it on. I did a battery reset, which fixed the reboot problem, but caused my Treo to no longer find the Sprint network. Then I did a hard reset, and everything seems back to normal.

12 thoughts on “Fix for Treo 600 Hangs

  1. Nguyen

    it was great that you wrote up this issue. i had the same issue and tried the way you advised just now. lets see if I can get rid of it without changing the battery.

    Thank you Robert

    Reply
  2. Eric

    I am ready to throw my treo 600 in the trash. But I decided to go online and see if I can find a fix for this. I’ll give it a try. Sounds like it just might work. Thank you for sharing this knowledge.

    Reply
  3. Robert Post author

    So far, this fix is working great for me. It’s now been about 2.5 months since I reseated the battery connection, and the problem has yet to reappear. The battery charge doesn’t hold up as well as it used to, but that’s to be expected for a two and a half year old battery that has gone through as many recharging cycles as I have put my Treo through.

    Reply
  4. Joe

    Robert:

    I was ready to give up on my Treo 600 for same issue. I had almost decided to buy a new one or some other device when I came across your article. Tried…It works…and so far it has been working fine. Thanks a lot for sharing….I am wondering if this was such a common issue, why Palm has not published on their knowledge base web site. I browsed through hundreds of articles on their knowledge base with absolutely no luck…

    Thanks again Robert….Regards,

    Reply
  5. Alf

    THANKS! Your website alone helped me fix my Treo 600. A co-worker gave me her Treo 600 phone last week and she was complaining about “dropped calls”. The phone was two years old and the warranty expired. So she upgraded to the Treo 700w. So I went about trying to determine what was wrong with the phone. I experienced the same symptoms that have been described earlier, i.e., dropped calls, network not found, etc. despite having a decent charge and within range of cell towers. Also the problem completely dissapeared when the phone was connected to the powere cord. Also the problem occured when I pressed the speaker phone button during a call. (I’d hear a click, click click, and then would lose the signal). So, I was about to buy a battery online, and then found your site, and then opened up my phone (I used a .05 hex wrench and a credit card without any problems) and took a look at the battery and disconnected the battery from the motherboard and then reconnected. Presto! NO PROBLEMS ANYMORE! (at least now for a week) And I didn’t have to buy a battery. Yeah, I’m sure I’m gunna need to buy one sometime, but now the phone’s working and everything is cool. Thanks,

    Reply
  6. Stealth

    This is a great tutorial and everything and I was soo happy that it was finally going to work and when I got my case open, I dreadfully saw that there was no detachable battery cable. Mine is welded to the battery. Thanks Ebay! Anyone know how a different method to this?? Let me know please, I’ll be very grateful. My email is [email protected] Thanks in advance.

    Reply
  7. alf

    UPDATE: The problem returned (i.e., dropped calls), so I bought a battery from http://www.gethightech.com (hi capacity 2000mAh (also bought the t5 and t6 driver) and installed it. I was glad for the driver set because I could tighten it real good. (last time I stripped a screw using a .05 hex wrench). It worked but I almost lost the screw because it wasn’t tight. I used a credit card to pry the case away. Anyhow, so far no problems and the original problem seems to be gone. My goal is to try and keep this phone working for at least six months then I’ll spring for the treo 700p! Thanks for the site. alf

    Reply
  8. Robert

    I’m also hoping my 600 survives a little while longer. I’m going to try to hold out a few more months to see if Palm will announce an even newer phone that will be available with Sprint. I should probably just get the 700p and be done with it.

    Reply
  9. Moni

    This makes TOTAL sense! I had read over the last 2 years I have had my two Treo 600 phones that the problem was the batteries. I ordered 5 new batteries cause I found them on eBay for $5.00 each and each battery gave me the same problem after a month or so, maybe 2. BUT, if I swapped out the current battery with a battery previously used (I was smart enough NOT to throw all the “bad” batteries away) the previously used batteries would work fine again for a month or so. This whole time it’s been that the connection gets loose over time. I started to suspect this because I found that I attempted to send out a text msg and got the dreaded “network” errors if I pressed slightly on the back of the phone the Treo would operate normally and the messages would go through fine. I suppose that is because by pressing on the phone I was actually creating a better connection between the battery and the connector. I love the internet and all the info it offers!

    Reply
  10. Greg

    There must be a problem with the charging circuit, b/c I’ve replaced the battery in mine 4 times at $20. It now only works when plugged in. I’ve tried all of these solutions. junk.

    Reply
  11. Dave

    Recently upgraded from a Treo 300 to the 600 and figured I’d have to deal with the “No Service” issue. My T600 from an e-bay vendor seemed in excellent condition but did experience the “No Service” issue/dropped calls/random reboots or lockups several times (around 60%? randomly at other times)

    This site and it’s comments were very helpful in getting the 600 to work (after resetting the battery). I special ordered a battery from Batteries Plus (which was the incorrect size 1700 vs advertised 2000 mah), then Staples.com which was cheaper and IS the correct advertised item. (Anyone still looking Radio Shack has the same battery for $2 cheaper AND free shipping) About 16 hours since the change over and charging of the new battery. I’m hopeful it will last longer then what some others have stated. Yet for a phone with it’s original (5 year old) battery… I’m optimistic my 600 might do just fine now. It wasn’t part of the original ESN range that were known to have the issue and according to it’s “Life Timer” it has seen some significant use… I’m hopeful that means it’s previous user didn’t have much problems until the battery gave out…

    Worst case, I’m thankful for this site outlining the reset option which will be useful the next time I have a problem.

    Reply

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