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Treo's unknown features

Mon Jun 3, 2002 - 11:44 AM EDT - By Marcus Adolfsson




Handspring's Treo contains a bunch of hidden features and Easter Eggs. While the hidden features are truly useful, most Easter Eggs have no functionality and the programming team just added them for the fun of it.

Here are a couple of them:

Speed Dial Time and Date

When programming your Speed Dial buttons, you can enter two special codes in the Name field that will transform that button into either a display of the date or time - &date and &time. You can still program these buttons to dial a number.

Because the Treo doesn't tell you either of these data when you open the screen, it's a great trick to know (submitted by TC member george_vc).

GRPS Upgrade 1.0 added the ability to use @time and @date. If you use @ instead of & the button can't be used to dial a number, but on the otherside it can't be selected with the jog dial either.

Battery Status

Yearning to know more about your Treo's battery status?

Go the launcher. While pressing the up button, use your stylus to press down on the screen to the right of the time in the upper right corner.

A battery status window pop-ups, informing you of values for Voltage, No Load, Load, Percent, Avg Voltage, and Avg Percent.

A similar feature is available on the Visor Prism/Platinum (but you click on the battery icon instead).

Connection Speed

When you are connecting to your ISP and it says "dialing ..." hit the scroll down button and you can see the number it's dialing and the baud rate that it connects at. So far,I always connect at 9600 (submitted by AbortRetryFail?).

Flip it, Flip!

Go to the launcher screen, and press the Up key while clicking on the time displayed in the upper left corner. Handspring's corporate mascot Flip will start dancing around on the screen.

If you press the Down key while the animation is displayed, a date will be displayed in the top right corner. Could be the ROM date - mine reads Feb 5 2002 18:34:29.

An actual Easter Egg (and a bonus for 180g owners)

Open up the preferences page, and switch to the General Category. In the bottom right hand corner of the screen (above the calculator icon on the 180g), draw a tiny clockwise circle. A tiny little Easter Egg will pop up on the screen! If it doesn't show up, keep trying. It can be hard to get.

180g owners can now switch to the Memo Pad, and hold down the PageDown key while drawing a line from the middle of the graffiti area to the left edge of the case. A steam boat will appear!


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