Is Your Smoking Hot New Palm Pre Smoking Hot?? Bug Fix

Not sure if this is a bug, or not but there seems to be a widespread issue of the Palm Pre running hot and sucking battery down even when not being actively used. Below is a fix for it!

Let me just say, to the competition haters and Pre buyers who are crying about this, bugs occur with every new product. As long as the company acknowledges it and fixes it, it's not an issue.

Now you as a 1st generation buyer need to deal with these issues as best as possible. The Pre WebOS is awesome, and the phone works well out of the box but here is a fix for the heat issue.

1. Update to version 1.02 with OTA (over the air updates in your apps menu on the 3rd screen). It's 60MB but if you have a good 3G signal OR you have you Pre hooked up to WiFi it takes about 5-10 minutes to DL, plus 10 minutes to install. Technically Sprint and Best Buy stores should be doing this before you leave the store. The update is a major update, adds some features, and fixes some minor bugs, the OS seemed snappier as soon as I did it as well (and it was snappy before).

2. load your contacts into your Palm Profile from outlook if you use Outlook. Palm sent out an email to people who setup there palm profile when they turned the phone on with a link to this. Once this is done, sync with Outlook (this is a one time, one way sync). Set Palm Profile as your default contact management. This will sync your contacts to the "Palm Profile Cloud" as well as your calendar, notes, and task. The Pre auto backs up your Pre to the cloud daily, and auto syncs your contacts with both Palm, Google, Facebook and Exchange using Palms Synergy. This works great and means no more lost contacts and Apps. However, PLEASE NOTE THE PRE DOES *NOT* sync/backup your USB drive information which includes your photos, and MP3s. Please make sure you back this stuff up yourself.

3. Facebook seems to be fine in synergy, as does google (my wife is running both with no heat issues) but some people reported google to be an issue. Since at this time Google contact sync is all or none (as is Facebook),  I'd not use google contacts for the time being. Contacts is Googles weakest app anyway so just leave it off the Pre for now to play it safe. Google adds any email address you ever reply to as a contact, and all show up on the Pre.

4. When setting up email you CANNOT use Hotmail. It seems Hotmail is the cause, or the main cause of the heating issue. Microsoft has tried very hard to make it's email as proprietary as possible, and even as a long time Hotmail user I have to say, it might be time to move on. So remove Hotmail from the Pre.

4a. Google uses IMAP folders/sync so my advice is to go into your Gmail options and have hotmail checked via google. I would have your Hotmail sent directly to your archived folder, and not your Inbox to keep things more simple. This won't get your junk mail, but the bad news is since Hotmail is HTTP based, the Pre never could access your Junk mail folder anyway. Nothing is lost, and everything works just fine like this. Gmail is a superior mail server and the IMAP is less taxing on the Pre, plus IMAP syncs much better with Outlook and Outlook Express desktop clients.

4b. If you have other accounts it might make sense to check them through Gmail as well. Although it seems Yahoo and Exchange are not an issue as both are currently running on my Pre, and it's now running ice cold.

4c. My setup is this, Hotmail through Gmail, my corporate exchange email through exchange set to continuous checks (counter intuitive but seems to not drain the battery), and my Yahoo at 6 hour intervals since I don't use it for much except Yahoo based services (Flickr and such).

5.Turn off the GPS auto locate. This wasn't and isn't a cause of any known problem but it will increase battery drain with all phones.. If you are questioning why you would do this I can assure you that your phone also uses A-GPS which means it can get a rough location (actually VERY ACCURATE) from your cell tower triangulation, just open the Google Maps app with the GPS off while standing in your basement with a cell signal, and notice the blue dot is fairly accurate!!. This means GPS is just a drain. Again, you might be wondering if Sprint Navigation will still work? The answer is yes, when you turn on Sprint Navigation ( a very good TeleNav/TeleAtlas based text to speech GPS app) the GPS DOES turn on. However, when you close it the radio turns off again and you go back to A-GPS. This is the best of all worlds!

6. Finally to increase your battery life while at home, make sure your Pre Wifi radio is on at the house or at known WiFi locations.  The Pre will turn off the EVDO search when a strong WiFi connection is present. Sprints 3G network is great but the WiFi is stronger, and faster in most cases. This will give you better performance, and better battery life. Turn it off when you are out and about since it will continuously search for networks, many of which are secure and useless.


I just want to stress that I know many people are going to jump on any issue found with the much hyped Pre. All I can say is I will have my 96 hour hands on review out shortly and overall this phone meets and exceeds expectations, CONSIDERING the fact I have waited through 6 months of hype for this phone. Deal with the minor issues by fixing them yourself where possible, report them to Palm/Sprint, and give Palm and Sprint the 30 days you have to return the phone to work out any MAJOR bugs in a 1st generation hardware and software system. Believe me when I say, if this phone fails, Palm is gone, and Sprint has nothing novel to bring customers back to it's revamped and very good network, both companies have a lot at stake and this phone has to be priority #1 for both companies.

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Have Camera, Will Time Travel

Traveling through the Charlotte Airport on our way to Memphis in 2007, I noticed the lighting and architecture of the airport. Unlike the spartan concrete prison block look of Memphis (or many other airports in the US), Charlotte had some interesting design and lighting.

I've always had no problems pulling my camera out at airports, after all, you often spend hours waiting with nothing to do. My camera is frequently my only sanity when forced to deal with extreme boredom, or as an escape from the reality of certain situations where I'd gladly load a round, spin the revolver and see what happens with a shot to the head. These days with laptops and wifi, time passes a bit more quickly while traveling, but airports are in many ways an interesting photograph waiting to happen, and a camera is still the best escape from reality.

My wife asked me why I titled this "Time Travel?" I liked the futuristic feel of it at the time, and also later in the finished photo. Yet, the black and white with the old biplane makes it sort of timeless. It makes me wonder whether I were going back in time, or maybe forward in time. Second, I shot it in 2007 and it is coming to life as a finished product in 2009. I suppose this photo was like going back to the future.

There were a few photos I really liked the concept of at the airport, but at ISO 1600 in color, with the contrasty mixed lighting sources, nothing really worked off the bat. While I envisioned the final ISO 1600 photos being black and white to make use of the pleasing digital noise structure of Pentax cameras at high ISO, I also liked what I took in color.

This conflict led to me processing and reprocessing the images in color, and then in black and white. I never could get my favorite of the bunch to work, eventually I grew tired of working on the airport shots, so they languished in digital purgatory for 18 months till I could revisit them with a fresh look. In the end, "Time Travel" wasn't even the photo I had originally picked as the best of several different scenes, but looking at the various scenes from a fresh perspective I finally got what I was looking for.

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Merck Farm and Forest, Right To Farm

(from 1st visit of May 2009)

With the spring just taking hold at the lower elevations, and still a few weeks away up high, I've been chomping at the bit to get a little color in my life and in my photos. In a month the greens won't seem so impressive, and I'll be anxiously awaiting the late summer flowers, and then the fall foliage, but when looking out at a skeleton forest of gray and brown for the last month the green cannot come fast enough.

Heading east on Rt 146 at 4:55am the sky looked like it might become dramatic as the sun rose over the Hudson River. Of course getting up to the alarm clock at 4:30am I was certainly hoping for better light then what was before me. Because it was so warm and so breezy, the water is actually cooler than the air, and there was no dramatic morning fog and mist coming off the rivers and ponds. Now I had no lighting, and I had no early morning mist. As I drove east towards the Vermont border I wondered if I should even bother driving the 50 miles or just hit something a bit closer to home.

Something told me to keep going, and when I find that something, I am going to give it a little lecture for the bad advice. No, it wasn't a bad day, actually the weather was interesting for a hike, but depressing when you are toting 10lbs of photo gear with the intention of using it.

Believe it or not this drive northeast through Greenwhich and then Salem was a first for me. I've never been farther east than Schuylerville in Washington/Saratoga county, and it was actually quite pretty. Vermont might be known for quaintness, but New York can be quaint as well. This portion of Washington County undulating dairy country, criss crossed by the Battenkill River.

When I arrived at the Merck Forest parking area I was greeted by a swarm of black flies. Of course, I didn't have bug dope. Usually it's not needed this early in the year since the flies tend to not be aggressive this early, and fortunately while the flies were swarming, they weren't all that hungry.

6:30am is even early for the farmers on a Sunday, and I had the place to myself for more than an hour. I headed up to the live stock fields, and hung out with the ewes and lambs for a while, although I never could get a clear shot of the young lambs nursing which was truly the most interesting thing going on..

After breakfast with the sheep, I headed down Old Town Road  to Clarks Clearing. With the trees not leafed out yet, the forest floor along the woods roads was covered with tiny wildflowers. I spent a little while taking some flower flower closeups of the dime sized flowers, and then continued on to  Clarks Clearing. At the clearing it was starting to feel a lot like rain was imminent, but I was 2/3 of the way to Mt Antone, the 2600ft peak over the farm. I began to climb Mount Antone but ended up in the clouds. Instead of pushing my luck, on a day when I was certain not got get anything photographically interesting, I turned around.

The return trip I took the McCormick Trail, and then the Wildlife Loop, with the intention of shortcutting back to the car via the Forestry or Discovery trails. I somehow got lost on the Wildlife Trail, and ended up bushwhacking to make up some time. Of course, that didn't go as planned either. I did hit another trail as I had planned the problem was the private property markers had me confused. I expected to be on the Forestry trail, above the parking area, but I was on the Discovery trail below the parking area. The problem was I started out the bushwhack lost, and the key the staying not lost is to not get lost in the first place. (this is going to continue to sound like a Yogi-ism) The bottom line is you can know where you are going, if you don't know where you started from. Got that!

Back at the car I realized that while the Merck lands aren't exactly the pristine wilds, or the deep backcountry, this is a great place for families to come and backpack with young kids. I saw several scout troops, and a few families with very young kids who had backpacked and overnight camped. One family had an all terrain stroller to push the youngest kid. Camping here is not exactly cheap ($25 a night for tent sites) and more for the cabins, but it is on par with a state campground in cost, and the semi backcountry experience is probably well worth the added cost for a family with young kids.

All in all I hiked about 8 miles before 10am, and never actually got rained on. The Merck Forest, with it's 25 miles of trails only a 45 mile drive from home, will certainly be a place I will spend more time in all seasons.

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Sleep Deprivation In Death Valley

(a continuation of my DEVA series of images and trip reports)

Death Valley is far more than a hole in the ground, and I honestly didn't even see Badwater Basin in my 2 days there, nor was I upset. I did in fact have some concepts for the basin after sunset including star trails, and moon lighting on the salt flats but the wind was less than cooperative, and plans needed to be adapted.

We were just a short drive from the basin on the first day, but Devils Golf Course was much more interesting to me than the flats of the basin. Fear not, I was about -150ft below sea level so I can at least say I was lower than most places on earth ;-).

This shot is an example of forgoing sleep to get the shot. Neither of us got any sleep the night before we flew out and after shooting star trails in the canyon below here till almost midnight, then eating dinner, and getting just a few hours sleep we were back up by 5am. We were done here by 7:30am, and in the real world, one with trees and shade, we could have gone back to our tents and slept for a few hours. Unfortunately, while Death Valley isn't just a hole in the ground, it is sparsely forested, and shade is a rare commodity. So we'd just have to get by on less sleep to come home with a few good shots.

In the end it was worth it. The point this photograph was shot at was devoid of any texture within half an hour of sunrise, yet our pre sunrise arrival yielded what is a phenomenon known as alpenglow that only occurs prior to the sunrise, and is actually not light directly hitting the peaks but rather reflecting onto them.

The colors and textures of Death Valley immediately disappear upon the rise of the sun, and any chance of a meaningful photograph go with it. Within seconds of the sun rising in this shot all the color was gone on the mountains, and I was left with a cold hazy background that even the warmest of warming filters wouldn't have improved.

While the snow might not be there later in the year, I have a feeling this point, Zabriske Point, which towers above Golden Canyon, is actually a better spot later in the spring or summer. The reason of course is the first rays of sun should rise on the foreground as well as hit the Panamint Range in the background. However, the azimuth of the sunrise in March is such that the sun didn't hit this area till it was fairly high in the sky, yielding too much contrast for good photography if you were including the background mountain range across the valley.

So in the end it's a trade off, the contrast of alpenglow on snow, or a more dramatically lit foreground. Which ever you choose, this is another reason to not visit DEVA during the summer months. The days are long, and the chance to photograph is short. You'll most likely get better images in winter and early spring just because of the fewer daylight hours and lower sun angle. Of course the flowers, and snow capped mountains don't hurt either.

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