I bought a couple of PPC-6700 phones on an as-is basis to be used as PDA's (mainly for writing word files on the go). Phone functionality isn't important to me at all.

They looked new and both came in the box with all the accessories). They both power on, both go to this screen:


Telus Mobility

H/W=2 P SNAZ-40306
M=12 R 1.05.00
U=4 D 1.04.00 wwe

Then, the picture starts breaking apart and the same process starts over again.

I've tried plugging them in to the cradles, charging the batteries separately, plugging them into the chargers, all with the same result.


If the batteries are dead/dying, could that be the cause (even though the PPCs are plugged in as this occurs)?

Any other suggestions?

They are gonners, although you are also using old firmware.
Try updating the firmware, but I doubt it will help;
http://www.telusmobility.com/6700upgrade/

Same thing happened to my UTStarcomm , and the MFR said it can only be serviced to fix which is essentially $300 for most people, but even free for me wasn't worth the effort.

Battery wasn't the issue, fully charged both in the unit and in the charger didn't help.

Thanks for the reply. Did you try a new battery before you got a new phone?

Because after screwing around with the units for many hours, I fluked onto a way to have them both running again:

I loaded active sync to 2 PC's and have tried every fix I could find the net (including the MTTY fixes). Nothing worked (I couldn't get the devices into bootloader mode without having something plugged into the USB port (otherwise they just wouldn't power on) and that put me into "USB" bootloader mode instead of "SERIAL" as perscribed in the tutorial and seemed to mess up the process with no USB option coming up in the PORT drop down menu of the MTTY program). Anyway, after trying all that to no avail, I plugged one of the devices into the cradle with one end of the USB cable in the USB USB (not power USB) slot in the cradle and the other end in the PC's USB slot. I left it for a little while and went to the other PC to try and establish a connection with the other 6700. Suddenly the cradled 6700 beeped. I went back over to see it and found the OS fully loaded! I tried the same thing with the other PC and the other 6700 and the same thing happened. They've both been working like this as long as they were plugged in. Both indicating a nearly dead battery (both through occasional warning messages and with an "!" by the battery symbol), that seems to indicate that dead batteries are causing this thing after all (even though when I would take the batts out of the units and plug them into the cradles before, the green charge light appeared).

I want to order some new batts off ebay, but I guess that depends on what your answer is to the question above.

Cheers.

I tried new batteries, and even with old batteries I could get them running for a period, but they would eventually crash again into a white screen of death or else freeze which fooled me into thinking it was working.

And yes they do seem to remain more stable when plugged in, but still crashed after a while.

Good luck, but a new battery didn't work for me and I gave it a full month to fix on it's own with various fixes.

Got a new battery, things seem to be running smoothly. Do you happen to remember how long it took before signs of deterioration started to show again after you got a new batt?

Well for me it happened hours after swapping out, however in the charger it would take even days sometimes.

The battery didn't seem to affect anything for me. Hopefully that was the fault for you, for me it seemed to be a short (I think in the clider mechanism) and it would also sometimes reboot with the screen shifted over about 10-20 pixels so the touch points didn't line up with the screen render and some features were off screen.

Anywhoo, hope it's fixed it for you, makes it an easy fix, plus gives you the benefit of a fresh battery, 3 batteries didn't do it for me (I have access since I work at the phone company and have friends in Mobility), after that, wasn't worth the hassle (even sending the unit to Korea, not worth it versus just getting a free Pantech at the time).

Sounds like both were power issues, but mine seems to've been solved with a new batt. Thanks for your help.