Palm Centro Cell Phone Review - Intro
|
Alfredo Padilla Published on October 25, 2007 Comment on this |
|
|
|
|
The Centro is Palm's latest attempt to bring innovation to the smart phone market, after years of phones with only minor improvements. The biggest thing you'll notice when you see the Centro is that it's smaller than any Treo, and, despite being thicker than we might like, it feels very comfortable in hand. The trade-off is that the Centro's QWERTY keyboard is small and difficult to use — we almost wish Palm had gone with a two-letters-to-a-key approach, as we've seen on the BlackBerry Pearl. The screen is also smaller than the Treo's, but with a higher resolution than most phones. The Centro runs Palm OS, which hasn't seen much development over the last few years. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing; the Palm OS remains one of the fastest and easiest to use operating systems we've seen on a phone, although it lacks in areas like multi-tasking. There is a huge library of Palm OS applications available to improve the Centro's software capabilities, though. You might find yourself taking advantage of this if you want to use the Centro as a multimedia device, as we found the music and video playback capabilities to be unimpressive. Of course, the most important feature of the Centro for many people might be the price, and at $99 with a two-year contract, the Centro might be one of the best values out there, despite its flaws.Tour & Design - The Centro looks like a shrunken version of Palm's Treo lineup, with the biggest compromise made in the diminutive keyboard.
Audio Quality - Audio quality on the Centro was just adequate; we've seen better from other phones, especially in the audio received.
Imaging - The Centro's still camera did not impress us, but video capture is pretty decent for a phone.
Making/Receiving Calls - The call features on the Centro are typical Palm fare; sufficient, but nothing too impressive.
Messaging - Versamail on the Centro lags behind both Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices when it comes to e-mail, but the text messaging application is one of the best we've seen.
Organizer - The organizational features on Palm OS are still among the strongest out there, easily the equal of other smart phones and significantly better than the iPhone's.
Multimedia - We were not impressed by the Centro's multimedia capabilities. If you want to use this as your principal music/video player you'll need to invest in alternative software.
Software - Palm OS is old, but is still one of the fastest and easiest to use smart phone operating systems out there.
Battery Life - Battery life on the Centro was average at best. Big talkers might want to look elsewhere or be ready to charge often.
Connectivity - Like all of Palm's smart phones, the Centro still lacks Wi-Fi, but EVDO data should be speedy enough for most.
Hardware - The Centro's diminutive QWERTY keyboard is nowhere near as easy to type on as a Treo, but we like the sharp, high-resolution display.
Other Features - You can use the Centro as a dial-up modem for your laptop, but there's no GPS on board.
Value & Comparisons - At only $99 with a contract, the Centro is one of the best values for those looking for a smart phone.
| Next | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
