Replacing an iPod by a PalmOS-based Treo: how to transform a Treo into an MP3 player
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Background & Goal
My 4G iPod, as a sign that the iPhone was going to be released a couple of weeks later, started making a lot of noise: the hard drive is dying. Listening to music works fine, however, synchronizing new songs to it doesn't anymore, especially when it gets to the stage of analyzing gaps between the songs. The hard drive just cannot handle too many accesses too fast anymore. I admire Apple's innovation, but I am increasingly annoyed by the lifespan of their products. My iPod has lived 2 years; previously, I had Powerbook issues after 45 days (which turned into a horrible experience with AppleCare.)
So, instead of buying another iPod, I thought I'd try something different. And as I merged my PDA and my phone 2 years ago, I thought that it might be time to merge my PDA-phone with my music player.
I am documenting in this page my experience replacing my iPod with my Treo 680.
Hardware requirements
Making it work
Playing music
The Treo 680 comes with Pocket Tunes 3. The interface is not as sleak as on the iPod, but it's actually not bad at all, and it does the job for free.
There's other programs available, including the new Pocket Tune 4, but for now I am satisfied with Pocket Tunes 3.
Installing audio files on the Treo
The iPod has great integration with iTunes. It is obviously hard to beat this.
On the Mac
However, on the Mac, Missing Sync actually does provide syncing with iTunes. So, if you have a Mac, it's actually not so different than with the iPod. If you have a Mac and a PalmOS-based device, you certainly already have The Missing Sync, so you should be all set.
On Windows
If you have Windows (which I don't, so I can't really comment on this too much), mOcean brings iTunes synchronization in addition the iPod interface on your Treo, both for audio and video. The rest of the information on this page is targeted at Mac users.
Installing Podcasts
The main use for an MP3 players now are the podcasts I listen to daily. The Missing Sync sees podcasts as any other playlist:
There's however a couple of caveats:
- It doesn't know how to synchronize only the latest podcast. There may be a way to create a smart playlist which contains only the lastest podcasts, but I haven't found how to do so. The way to go around this is to enable auto-delete on all the podcasts, and keep only the two most recent podcasts. That way, the two most recent podcasts (and only those ones) will be installed on the Treo.
- Once you don't listen to podcasts using iTunes or an iPod anymore, they are not marked as played anymore, and iTunes will stop downloading your podcasts after a while; a script may be used to mark all the podcasts played in order to continue downloading them.
Conclusions
A Treo is not an iPod. That was something obvious from the start. However, you can transform one into a pretty good MP3 player for cheap (less than $100), which allows you to free yourself from one device, its accompanying AC adapter, data cable, etc.
Of course, you will be able to do the same and more with the iPhone, and a lot better, but for a lot more money. Also, this is going to be the first generation of this device, and Apple's first batches of products are always buggy. This is therefore a good way to wait and see. You might call it the iPhone of the poor.
Hugo Haas - 2007-06-20
Palm Treo 680: a PalmOS-based PDA
2.5mm to 3.5mm jack adapter: an adapter is needed to plug traditional headphones (which use a 3.5mm jack plug) into the Treo, which uses a 2.5mm jack; I use a JAVOedge 2.5mm to 3.5mm Stereo Headphone Adapter for Palm Treo 680, cheap, but great!
a large storage card for all your music: even though the Treo specs claim that only 2GB SD cards are supported, the Treo 680 supports certain larger capacity cards; in particular, the Transcend 8GB SDHC Class 6 (TS8GSDHC6) works fine; it will report that only 4GB are available, but it actually can access the 8GB fine.