Design & Features
Palm Centro is little, fat, and cute all at once. It’s more the size of a regular phone than a business-class smartphone like Sprint’s HTC Mogul, and is available in a nicely dressed down black, a flashier red, and a soft pink, each of which is accented by a gray stripe running across the front panel of the phone. While Centro’s 18.5mm thick profile means it bulges in a front jeans pocket, it’s small enough to easily use in one hand - provided you don’t need the other hand to work the stylus.
Looking at the candybar-shaped Centro from the front, it somewhat resembles a shrunken BlackBerry with its full QWERTY keypad laid out beneath a display and navigational array. Centro’s 2.25” LCD screen is a touchscreen, which really adds to the handset’s usability, and despite it’s small (for a smartphone) size, the display is crisp and easy to read. Thank its surprisingly high resolution (320 x 320 with a high dots per inch count) for that. I wasn’t crazy about the display being recessed-mounted, and I also didn’t particularly like the plasticky feel of the device as a whole, but neither were big sticking points for me. Centro feels a little bit like a toy, I suppose, but I never feared it was about to break under normal use.
While Centro’s touch display isn’t really finger-friendly, you’ll have no problems navigating screens and menus thanks to the included stylus and the navigational array mounted on the gray stripe that separates display from QWERTY board. The center-mounted four-way directional pad worked quite well for me, though the rest of the nav buttons could use a bit more tactile feedback. They’re all plenty big (maybe even too big) but are flush mounted to the point of a little wonkiness.
Treo aficionados will feel at home on Centro, while those coming from slicker current devices like Apple iPhone, LG Voyager, or HTC Touch might find the Palm OS a bit antiquated. My take? Centro’s UI definitely lacks for the eye candy that catches consumers’ eyes these days, but it makes up for it in sheer usability. Menus are well laid-out, buttons and icons clearly labeled, and fonts easy to read. Centro’s software certainly isn’t ugly, but it’s also more utilitarian than glitzy; “Easy to use, but not all that pretty” kind of sum’s up Centro’s menus and graphics.
That being said, the Palm OS opens Centro up to a world of user-installable applications beyond the comprehensive software that comes pre-loaded on the device. So smartphone geeks on a budget may take an interest in Centro, especially if they’re tired of Windows Mobile. But Centro is being marketed more towards the mainstream user, and there’s plenty for the “I’ll Use What They Give Me!” crowd to appreciate here.
VersaMail is an easy to use Email program with streamlined support for Gmail, Yahoo!, Apple .Mac and other popular Email services as well as user-configurable settings for any POP3 or IMAP provider. MS Exchange is also supported, including MS Direct Push for real-time synching with Exchange servers. Centro also comes ready to connect to your instant messaging accounts, and not only supports simultaneous logins to multiple accounts (including AIM, Yahoo, and Windows Live), but it also displays text messages as threaded (IM-style) conversations. Expect to see threaded SMSs popping up as an option on more and more mobile phones in the coming months — Palm’s been doing it for years, actually, but iPhone’s made it popular as of late.
Centro also ships with Documents to Go 10, which lets you create, view and edit MS Word and Excel files (and view PowerPoints and PDFs) - something that many a so-called smartphone can’t do right out of the box. Treo users will recognize Palm’s personal information software on Centro, including Calendar, Contacts, To-Do, and Memo apps along with a voice recorder. The included Blazer Web browser is decent but not great, though Web pages loaded quickly over Sprint’s EV-DO network, and Google Maps for Mobile worked quite well with the integrated A-GPS chip in pulling down maps, satellite imagery, and traffic data. On the entertainment side there’s a video player that’s fine for short clips but tended to skip and pixelate with longer movies, and support for Sprint TV and streaming radio from Sirius, MTV Mobile, and other providers.
My favorite pre-loaded app on Centro was probably Pocket Tunes Deluxe Edition. This music player is easy to use, attractive (in that Palm sort of way), and supports both unprotected and DRM-protected tracks played off of microSD cards up to 4GB in size. Pocket Tunes also supports Internet Radio, which is a cool little feature - combined with Sprint’s 3G network, you’ll have access to your favorite free streaming stations wherever you roam. Well, wherever you roam within 3G network coverage, anyway.
4.3
