Thread: Review Of The Palm Centro: The Treo Made Smaller And More Affordable

The Palm Centro packs nearly all the same features as a Treo cell phone and even more in a smaller, cuter package. But the compound and dated Palm operating system makes it less "today" than the looks might suggest. It comes with a lot of PDA features, a full QWERTY keyboard... and some annoyances.
The Bottom Line:
With its low price, the Palm Centro is a great try to make Treo-like PDA phones accessible to more people. But in my humble opinion, the Palm system is so not user-friendly (contrary to popular belief) that the Palm Centro will drive crazy technologically challenged senior citizens and impatient users like me. However, users already familiar with the Palm operating system might like the Palm Centro for its stunning good looks, its relatively okay sound quality (though with a low speakerphone output volume) and its robust design.
Hardware & Design Quality
Pros:
• Lovely and suitable design. Large enough to be a PDA phone but narrow enough to be easy to hold just like any other regular cell phone.
• There is a "silent mode" switch on top of the Centro: a convenient way to turn the ring tone off when entering movie theaters or meeting rooms.

Cons:
• Like all Palm / Treo cell phones, the Centro has a full QWERTY keyboard but this one is much smaller than on Treo's and Blackberry devices. And it is made of rubber-like plastic bubbles that feel like a mix of regular keys and touch-sensitive keys. I had mixed feelings about it: For sure, the rubber-touch helped me stay right on the key but since it is so small, I realized that typing a phrase took just about the same time on the Palm Centro as on any normal cell phone with predictive text input. However, a full keyboard always carries an advantage over predictive text input since it makes it easier to type punctual text like a phonebook entry.
Software
Pros:
• The Palm Centro is no different than other Palm cell phones and comes with a variety of typical PDA software and features. For instance, it can edit Excel and Word files, access your email kind of like a Blackberry device, and it comes pre-loaded with Google maps and more.
• It includes AOL, Yahoo and Windows Live instant-messaging programs, which is a great way to use (and get used to...) the full keyboard.

Cons:
• The Palm operating system is not necessarily my dream operating system for a cell phone. It is sometimes annoying, such as when it alerts you of missed calls and refuses to return to the home screen unless you press "OK". Also, for an unknown reason, the "home" menu frequently went back to the "main" option, which shows only a certain number of items and I had to manually set it back to "All". Honestly, I don't quite like the Palm operating system's painstaking usability. But don't take my word since others love it so you may just like it too.
• The Palm Centro comes with a USB data cable but your computer won't list it as a USB mass storage device, which makes file transfers easier -- instead, you have to use Palm's included synchronization software. Uploading MP3's, WMA and MIDI files requires the use of Sprint's music software!
Performance
Pros:
• I didn't use the Palm Centro long-enough to assess its battery life.

Cons:
• Charging the battery was relatively slow but you can also recharge the Centro while transferring data through the USB connectivity cable.
Call Quality
Pros:
• The speakerphone was very good at picking up my voice. Remote interlocutors would not guess that I was using the speakerphone.

Cons:
• Sound volume coming out of the earpiece was appropriate but not overly high, which can be a problem in noisy areas.
• The speakerphone's output volume was not high enough for an even slightly noisy environment.
• The Palm Centro seems to pick up a bit too much of the ambient noise then translate it into lots of treble. For instance, when I was standing anywhere where there was some noise like people talking nearby or traffic, my test interlocutors noted that it sounded like there was a party of 800 people behind me. It was bearable but slightly uncomfortable for them.
Multimedia Experience
Pros:
• The camera is easy to use.

Cons:
• The counterpart to the camera's ease of use is that you can't adjust any settings such as picture quality or resolution. There is just no option to do so. This is not necessarily a downside since the Palm Centro surprised me with quite decent picture quality but, I would have liked to have some control over it.
Liberty Level
I did not manage to upload free ring tones. However, pictures and files of various types can be transferred through the data cable and Srint's or Palm's included software.