More about the Pantech Breeze III – fixing issues with the PC Suite on Windows 7

Pantech Breeze III (AT&T).

In another post, “where have the feature phones gone”, I briefly presented Pantech’s Breeze III, the feature phone sold by AT&T to its Enterprise customers. It’s not sexy but it works – and if you’re looking for a really cheap GSM feature phone you don’t have much choice anyway. It comes with a very conventional Windows only application whose primary purpose is to let you synchronize the contacts list and JPG files between the phone and your PC.

There are three issues worth noting with the PC Suite:

Even if the installation wizard lets you install the PC Suite on a Windows 7 (64 bit) system, one of the drivers will not be accepted by Windows and the connection to the phone will never be established. The solution is pretty simple, once you find the answer in the forums: the most important driver of the PC Suite drivers only works on 32 bit systems, and some tweaking is necessary. Pantech’s message first:

Configuring the Pantech PC Suite for Windows 7 (64 bit)

“Unfortunately the reason why this is not working is because this software is not fully supported on the ‘Windows 7 OS’ which also goes for ‘64-Bit OS’. This is the reason why you are having this issue with your PC Suite software recognizing your phone on your PC.”

A contributor named MobileKing on a RadioShack forum proposed this solution which worked for me, and also solved the problem for other people, apparently.
 
“You might still be able to get it to work though, try these steps:
 
– Right-click on the PC Suite icon, and click on Properties.
– On the new window that opens, click on the Compatibility tab.
– Click on “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select your version of Windows.
 
Make sure the checkbox for “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” is checked. Also make sure to check the “Run as Administrator” box, then click on “Apply” and “OK”.” 

Thank you Mobile King.

The “move to idle screen” message: when the PC Suite finally works, you try and copy a selection of your Outlook contacts into the Breeze. And it fails. You only get a cryptic message “move to idle screen” on your PC. The user manual and the help files don’t give any explanation. Once again I finally found the answer in the user forums (this time AT&T’s, thanks to a Donaldle). It simply means that “the display screen of your phone should have the time clock and the background picture” (in other words, leave the “contacts” sub menu of the phone and go back to the main screen).

Thank you Donaldle.

Lastly, the phone crashes if you ask it to copy too many contacts in one go.
Do it by batches of 30 contacts and it will work.

Those issues are not a big deal for an IT person who can find his or her way in the forums of phone users. I doubt the target audience of this phone – people who want simplified menus and a pill reminder – would be willing to go through such a hassle.

Pantech’s Pill Reminder Application (Pantech Breeze III) – Source: http://www.phonearena.com