Palm Centro Review

Introduction:

For years the term “Treo” has been synonymous with smartphones; the line had become iconic, and the rumors and speculation surround new releases were once the talk of the mobile industry. Now-a-days you’re more likely to find a BlackBerry or Windows device in the hands of a smartphone user however, and many are criticizing Palm for resting on its laurels while others are innovating. It seems that Palm has heard the criticism, and the Centro sets out to quiet those pundits. In the world of the ultra thin Motorola Q and BlackBerry Pearl, the Centro has shed the Treo’s baby fat while increasing functionality and at $99 is finally poised to compete with the heavyweights again.

Included in the box the user will find:

Design:

From the minute you pick the Centro up its obvious that the device is totally different than the Treo. While it retains the candy bar form factor found in most smartphones, it is smaller in all dimensions and feels near perfect in your hand. The Centro strikes a near perfect balance between thinness and narrowness; it’s narrow enough to be grasped comfortably and thick enough so that the device doesn’t feel fragile and get lost in your hand.

The casing is two tone, both black and red mica versions will be available, with silver accents. The plastic casing is slippery, and while we would have preferred the soft-touch paint found on the 755p the construction is still good. Palm definitely skimped on materials to bring the Centro to market with such a low price-point, but they did so in a way that the device does not feel cheap.




The touchscreen display is 320x320 supports up to 65k colors, and is easy to read in all lighting conditions. Underneath the user will find a silver strip, flanked by the send and end buttons. In the center is the 5 way directional pad. To the right of the d-pad is the home and messaging buttons, to the left sits the phone and calendar keys. Buttons are easy to press and give good feedback.



At the bottom of the phone is a full QWERTY keyboard, with ALT, Shift, Backspace, Enter, 0 and context menu hard keys. When pictures first surfaced of the Centro the diminutive size of the keyboard was the most talked about feature, and there is no doubt that it’s tiny. However, the keys are constructed of a rubber-like material that makes them just grippy enough that size is not an issue. We had no learning curve using this keyboard, and within minutes of picking it up were already typing faster than we do on larger keypads. The keys are placed far enough apart, and there is auto-correction software onboard which generally fixes the occasional mis-type. We actually find ourselves preferring this keyboard to larger keypads found on models like the Q and even the Treos. We gave it to some people with larger fingers and they had no problem using it either.



The left side of the phone houses the volume rocker at the top, with a programmable side key just below. On the right is the Infrared port and a pretty much hidden MicroSD slot. It ships with a sticker alerting the user of its presence, but once removed the slot is integrated almost seamlessly into the silver trim that rings the sides of the phone. The slot is pretty hard to open, and users without fingernails will find themselves removing the battery door to access the MicroSD card. That battery door monopolizes the back of the phone, but at the top the user will find the speaker and 1.3 megapixel camera. The stylus tucked away at the top left, and on the right is a rubber plug that hides an external antenna port. Along the top of the phone is a sliding switch that quickly puts the phone into vibrate, and the bottom is the standard Palm charging/data port.

Overall we have found the design of the Centro to be excellent. It is as close to perfect as we have encountered for a full featured smartphone, and it’s hard to describe just how great this device feels to use. The Centro is a major upgrade from the already good 750/755p design. It is also good to see Palm put some forward thinking into the design of their devices.

Interface:

The Centro runs Palm OS, clocking in with version 5.4.9. It has not changed much over the years, and anyone who has ever used a Palm should feel comfortable picking up the Centro. In fact, users who have never used a PIM or smartphone before should be comfortable picking up the Centro too. As always, the Palm OS runs smooth and stable, and the layout couldn’t be more intuitive. Power users can find third party applications (both free and for a fee) that will allow them to do just about anything with their device. The beauty in Palm OS is that it is easy enough that new users won’t feel intimidated, yet it is powerful enough to be a true all-in-one unit.

That said, the OS is growing stale. The layout and basic functionality has not changed in nearly a decade. Features like a camera, web and multimedia players have been integrated since its initial inception, but the OS remains fundamentally unchanged. To be fair, the OS lends itself to seamless integration of new applications and features so functionality and ease-of-use remains without endless submenus. The OS is very customizable- the user has the ability to edit and create categories, as well as reassign any application to any category they see fit- but it lacks the personalization found with Windows Mobile. There are several color themes available, but they cannot be personalized. The user can only use a wallpaper in the phone screen, and that is at the expense of an on-screen dial pad. If Palm would incorporate a customizable home screen into the OS a-la Windows Mobile we feel it would do wonders for the aging OS.

Phonebook:

The phonebook on the Centro is as robust as it comes. The user can store just about any piece of information they want with a contact and is limited only by available memory in the phone. You will find standards like multiple phone numbers and email address, photo caller ID and personalized ringtones onboard, and the user has room for multiple addresses, IM names, birthday and anniversary, 9 custom slots as well as a memo for each entry.

The contact list can be managed both from the device as well as from your computer using the included Palm Desktop software or Microsoft Outlook. Contacts can be beamed to other devices via either Infrared or Bluetooth, or can be sent by email.

Voice Control is the application that handles voice dialing. In addition to calling by either name or number, the user can also dictate emails, add calendar appointments, launch websites and check weather and stocks online all with their voice. There are no voice prompts like with VoiceSignal and it sometimes takes up to 30s to process a more complex command, but once you learn how to use it Voice Command is an excellent voice dictation program.

Organizer:

As expected from a smartphone, the Centro features a full-featured calendar. As with the phonebook, it can be synchronized and managed with either Palm Desktop or Outlook, and users can add and edit events on the go as well. It is the same calendar application Palm has used for years, and appointments can be set as a one-time or recurring event. Reminders can be assigned at any time interval, and appointments can be filed under customizable categories and tagged with notes. They can also be set to private, meaning that the user can choose to hide the events in the event that someone gets a hold of the device.

The Centro includes other PIM features, such as a Memos, Calculator Tasks and Voice Memo. These applications work exactly as one would expect them to. The user can store up to 100 minutes of voice memos, and the calculator features an advanced mode that not only offers features like a preload list of common constant numbers (Pi, Avogadro’s number, speed of light, etc) but also has several modes such as Trig, Finance, Statistics, Length and others. The World Clock features an alarm clock function, though that was not the first place we would have thought to look for an alarm.

Messaging:

The Centro is a robust messaging device, offering a full email program (two, actually,) text, picture and video messaging as well as an included IM client. For email Palm includes the same Versamail client found on the Treo line, and Sprint has also loaded the Sprint Mobile Email application.

Mobile Email is powered by Seven, and comes preloaded with configuration settings for AOL, AIM, Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail, but users can configure their personal Sprint PCS mail or any POP or IMAP client as well. It expands on the versions found handsets such as the Muziq and Katana DLX by incorporating a contact and file finder that pulls information from the Centro’s memory and allows for easy sending of attachments. Versamail is similar in function, and allows the user to set up POP and IMAP accounts, but also supports Exchange email.

As we have seen on the Treo, the SMS application on the Centro allows for threaded messaging. This is a wonderful feature, and allows text messages to basically become instant message conversations . We are not sure why more phones don’t incorporate this feature given the popularity of text messaging.

Also along for the ride are Sprint’s Picture and Video mail services, allowing users to send and receive pictures and video clips up to 30 seconds. It should be noted, however, that the process isn’t as seamless as it is on a regular handset. The user gets a notification that they’ve received a message, but then need to follow the link to launch the web to view the media, and in the case of a video the user must download the file to view it.

Sprint Mobile Instant Messaging is included and offers access to AIM, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. This program is free of charge, and is web-based so anyone with a data package (and who owns a smartphone without one?) can IM until their heart is content. Users can be signed into all three services simultaneously, and the program runs in the background which means users will have their IMs delivered to them even when the program isn’t being used.

Connectivity and Data:

The Centro is an EV-DO rev0 device, and so users can expect broadband-like speeds when downloading files and surfing the web. Using the included data cable or Bluetooth the phone is able to be tethered with a phone as modem plan from Sprint. The phone features Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, meaning Bluetooth tethering will be similar to that with a cable. Other Bluetooth profiles supported HFP, HSP, A2DP, AVRC, and hot syncing is available as well.



As with any Palm device, Blazer is the native browser, and version 4.5.8 is found on the Centro. Blazer is capable of handling HTML pages and attempts to optimize them for the device, but it chokes up on larger pages. For example PhoneArena loaded well enough, but a more complex page such as ESPN.com took forever to load and was fairly unusable. YouTube videos were easily viewable via m.youtube.com (to which we were automatically directed,) but when switching to classic view the page took much longer to load and Blazer couldn’t handle the flash format.

The Palm Desktop software is included in the package and handles PC Sync. Users can choose to sync their contacts and calendar either with the program itself, or if they are already running Outlook they have the option to sync data with it. The sync program also allows for users to install third party applications to the phone; users download them to their computer, and then next time the phone syncs they will be installed on the device.

Camera Options

Camera:

The 1.3 megapixel camera found on the Centro performed admirably. It is not the greatest mobile camera we’ve used, but color representation was good and edges were generally sharp. The pictures were a bit brighter than they should have been, but it is more than adequate for casual snapshots. Options are sparse however, and the only adjustments the user can make is image size or to apply a black and white or sepia filter.



The camcorder records videos at a maximum resolution of 352x288. The video quality was adequate, they would probably best be described as YouTube quality. Video options are as meager as the camera. Video length is limited only by available memory, but only ones fewer than 512K (30 seconds) can be sent via the video mail service. There is no setting to restrict videos to a sendable size only as you’ll find on the Power Vision dumbphones.

Multimedia:

Both pictures and videos can be sorted into user-created albums, a very nice feature that allows for easy organization and media recall. All video playback is handled via the Pics&Videos application, and videos can be played in full-screen mode . It didn’t have problem playing MPEG4 QVGA video encoded with H.263 but typically when opening one with H.264 played only the sound.

Audio playback is handled by Pocket Tunes deluxe. It supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA and WMA-DRM codecs, as well as features such as album art playlist editing. The player can run in the background, allowing the user full access to the device. If a call comes in the player pauses and when it is ended the music resumes where it left off. We really can’t complain about anything with Pocket Tunes, it is a full featured player and should suffice any user’s need.

The Centro supports the SprintTV and Radio service. At times the picture will pixelate or fall behind the audio, but the picture quality was generally good and we enjoyed watching TV on the larger screen. The Centro does not support the Sprint Music Store at this time.



Software:

There is 64MB of flash memory in the Palm Centro, but microSD expansion allows for microSDHC cards up to 8GB. Palm is a relatively svelte OS, and despite such little onboard memory we have never had issues with lag or the system bogging down.

Applications are plentiful, and with third party support the possibilities are endless. Besides what we’ve mentioned already the device comes preloaded with the likes of Google Maps, Sudoku, a file manager and Solitaire (both downloadable at no cost after the Centro is registered OTA.)
A Java runtime environment is available for Palm devices, although it is not a free program. In order to run Java applications the user must first download this runtime environment. We were not able to test it, and so cannot speak to the performance of Java application such as Opera Mini on the Centro.

Performance:

We were very pleased with the call quality of the Centro. On both our end as well as the caller’s, voices were clear and rich, and even in fringe areas we were able to hold a conversation. The speakerphone performance was equally satisfying, and while users could tell we were using it they didn’t have any complaints about the quality. On our end it was loud and clear without any distortion. Battery life was rated for 210 minutes and we were able to achieve 213 minutes. Standby time is a more than generous 300 hours.

Conclusion:

Plain and simple, we really like the Palm Centro. The device feels great in your hand, call performance was admirable and as a smartphone there isn’t anything it can’t do. This phone is aimed at the “tweener” crowd- the 16-29 crowd who has never owned a smartphone- but given the robust support for both multimedia and business applications and the fantastic form-factor we expect this phone to appeal to anyone interested in the Palm OS. Oh, and the $99 pricetag might draw in a few users as well.