Palm tweaking Pre for better quality 39
Thu, 20 Aug 2009 1:40 pm EDT 
As Palm has done in the past with most of their devices, they're making subtle, small hardware tweaks in newer revisions of the Palm Pre. As PreThinking posted in a mini-survey of sorts and as much-discussed in our forums, it appears that Palm has taken some steps to correct the physical maladies that affected earlier Pre phones.
The most notable correction comes in the battery compartment, where Palm has affixed a small foam pad opposite the power connection points to provide a more snug fit for the battery. This seemingly inconsequential addition is to combat the slider-related crashes that plagued many early units, including this blogger’s own phone. In fact, I recently picked up a newly refurbished Pre to replace mine after a bizarre failure, and it too has a foam pad inside. The foam pad is a more elegant (and less flammable) variation on the tiny paper inserts some users were resorting to.
Newer Pre phones also have a more silvery center button instead of the somewhat pearlescent button that early models had. There is also considerably less wobble to the slider and none of the surveyed new owners had experienced the maddeningly mysterious spider web cracking that so many others saw. There also seems to be a slightly modified battery in newer phones (the pegs on the rounded end are hollow), though the reasoning behind the change is not known.
So we at least know that Palm heard our cries for help and set out to correct the problems that some early adopters faced. And those of you who have gotten a replacement Pre and are curious if it’s a refurbished device can open the phone app, type in ##786# to bring up the Reverse Logistics Support card. This is full of useful information, including your phone’s configuration, initial activation date, MSID, recondition status (yes or no) and the date on which your phone was reconditioned. As Dieter noted in our PalmCast podcast, it’s not necessarily a sad thing if you get a refurbished phone, as that means somebody has taken the time to go over it and make sure it’s in good working order.
39 Comments
I have this version of the phone, with the "new" little foam pad on the battery compartment and I've had 0 (zero) issues with the slider wiggling, cracked screen, oreo effect...etc. Though, I have had the headset/microphone issue...which is ridiculous...
I'm confused where you go to check the refurb state of the phone. How do I get to the phone app? : O )
Thanks!
Jen
You see that little button with the phone on it? The one that you use to make calls? That's the phone app.
Just type ##786# into the number pad and a menu will pop up.
PreThinking.com covered this a little over a week ago.
http://www.prethinking.com/home/2009/8/11/newer-palm-pres-are-better-bui...
Still, good coverage of the changes. Thanks for all your hard work!
Glad to see Palm is doing something about all these build problems. I'm tempted to call up Palm and see if they can replace my phone cause it's under warranty. I guess I should be happy that my phone is pretty good overall, but I would love for this wiggle/oreo effect to go away. Maybe I'll wait it out another few months, and then give 'em a call. Would be awesome if they could replace the plastic casing with a light weight metal to make it a truly solid phone.
Go to your phone dialer app on your Palm Pre, and dial "##786#" without the quotations of course. The Reverse Logistics Support information will then be displayed. You may check the refurb state of your phone under the "RECONDATE" section. As for when palm started to implement these changes... the information under my "WARRANTYDATECODE" is 07/07/2009 and this is my third Pre. It has no wobble or oreo effect, it does have the small foam piece in the battery compartment and the button is more of a silverish color rather than the white pearl color that the first batch Pre's had. My first Pre had the silver colored button as opposed to the more white pearl button and had a small oreo effect, but it did not have the foam pad int he battery compartment, it's WARRANTYDATECODE was 07/02/2009. My second Pre is exactly like my current Pre, foam pad in the battery compartment and everything. I took it back for the one I have now due to dead pixels. I hope this answers some questions.
Does anybody know under what conditions palm will replace your current pre with a new refurb. model? Mine wobbles a bit and gets really hot during calls.
...which is something we haven't seen from Palm in about a decade....
How can I get one of those?
Where can I get these refurbished Pre?
Where can I get these refurbished Pre?
Where can I get these refurbished Pre?
My screen cracked and I sent it to Palm to be repaired. I just checked and they also added the foam pad to the battery compartment. Hopefully they made some kind of adjustment that will stop the screen from cracking again!
This "news" story hasn't been "new" for a couple weeks. PreThinking posted a story about the foam pad in the battery compartment some time ago (it's been discussed to death in the forums too). Besides, a tiny little piece of foam that costs Palm practically nothing doesn't mean they're fixing the Pre in any way :/
I'm not here to Pre bash, in fact I own a Pre. But lets get real here people. Palm will likely never address any of the real issues people are having with the Pre. Palm probably had hundreds of Pre's sent back for the battery looseness issue. They added this piece of foam and VOILA! the phones are now perfectly good refurbs.
Try at least *SIX* months. No way I'm even considering the WebOS for at least a year from launch. WebOS/Pre: New incompatible OS, major hardware issues, etc. No thanks, I'm done with being a self-financed beta tester for Palm.
Palm's Treo 600 was miserably buggy, but the 650 wasn't half bad if you totally discount the fact Palm screwed the pooch on RAM. The 700p went toward fixing that, and by the time Palm released the Treo 755 the phone had matured into nearly rock solid as it could be - though Palm still screwed up on the RAM specs. Instead of seeking continual improvement and coming out with a 256MB Treo with increased cache and some OS tweaks, they went off and started making all sorts of different bad phones and slapping the "Treo" name on them.
Maybe it was a scam to make the Pre look good by comparison, but if someone would pour a some Ritalin into the water cooler of the product planning team at Palm that would be appreciated.
I have an early production model used for training and testing that was manufactured on 4/25/2009, around 6 weeks before release. Other than a few resets from general (over)usage, no problems. So what I'm saying is not EVERY early pre is defective.
I feel as though the "oreo" comments are fairly general. My pre has a little wiggle to the right when closed (maybe a mm) but a lot of slider phones I have seen have that. When it is open, it is solid as a rock.
Are these new phones with no "oreo" any more stable that they have no wiggle whatsoever?
can you have sprint install it in your pre if you already have one