Home > Reviews > Manufacturer > Palm Centro Cell Phone Review

Palm Centro Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on October 25, 2007 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

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.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front
The front of the Palm Centro has a slightly new look for Palm, especially with the control keys, which sit on a silver band across the phone's waist. Below the control keys is a diminutive QWERTY keyboard and above them a 2.2-inch square screen. Above the screen is the phone speaker and a small LED indicator.

Left
The left side of the Centro has two volume rocker keys near the top of the device and a user customizable shortcut key just below it.

Top
The top of the Centro holds the typical Palm ringer/vibrate switch.

Bottom
On the bottom the Centro has the same set of connectors we've seen from other Palm devices. From left to right is a 2.5mm headset jack, Palm's proprietary Multi-Connector, and charging port. There's also a small pinhole for the phone's microphone.

Right
On the right side we see the lanyard loop (on the left) and the Infrared window.

Back
Most of the back is taken up by the battery cover. Above the cover is a silver housing with the lens for the 1.3-megapixel camera, self-portrait mirror, and loud speaker. At the top left you see the top of the stylus, and opposite it is the cover for the external antenna port.

Battery Out
When you remove the battery cover you reveal an 1150 mAh battery. To the left of the battery is a slot for Micro SD cards, which you can thankfully remove without taking the battery out.

In the Box (4.5)
The Centro ships with a software CD that includes Palm's synchronization software, a wall charger, USB cable, and stereo headset. This is a decent selection of accessories — about the only thing we would have liked to see is a Micro SD card to get you started.

Handling (5.0)
One of the first thing you will notice about the Centro is its small size compared to Treo models. The Centro measures 4.22 x 2.11 x 0.73 inches, compared to the Treo 750's 4.44 x 2.3 x 0.8 inches. The small decreases in each dimension make for a device that fits in your hand much more comfortably. The Centro is also more than one ounce lighter than the Treo 750, which makes it easier to hold up to your head for long calls. The curved edges of the Centro also make it easier to hold in the hand. It should be noted, though, that the Centro is still significantly larger than a regular phone, such as the Razr or LG Chocolate.

Portability (6.5)
The Centro's smaller size makes it a bit more portable, but as we mentioned above it's nowhere near as small as a Razr or Chocolate. The Centro is also still a little bit thick at 0.8 inches, so don't expect to be able to fit it in your pocket when you're wearing a tight pair of jeans. Normal pants or jacket pockets should be fine, though, as will most bags.

Aesthetics (4.0)
The Centro is available in two colors, black and red. Obviously aesthetics are a personal matter — some may like the Centro's design, but we're not particularly impressed. The layout on the front seems unbalanced, and despite the curves and smaller size, it seems a little chunky.

Durability (7.0)
The Centro feels pretty solid. We detected no major creaks or obvious flaws in the construction. Our only concern is that it feels rather plasticky and may scratch easily. It's no BlackBerry, but Palm has a history of building solid phones, and we'll give them the benefit of the doubt here.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

We use professional audio testing hardware and software to test the quality of audio produced and received by the Palm Centro. To simulate the human ear and mouth we used a Head and Torso Simulator (HATS), and to analyze the sound sent and received by the phone we used an electro-acoustic analysis program SoundCheck. This is the same combination used by many handset manufacturers. For more details on how we test see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.82)
Above is a graph of the quality of sound received by the Palm Centro. This is how you hear others during a phone call. The blue line indicates the Centro's performance, while the two red lines are the limits against which we test. An ideal handset's curve would run right between these limits. As you can see, the Centro's performance on this test was a little off, rising above our limits at the lower end and falling off a little too quickly. This can lead to exaggerated lower frequencies (making voices sound boomy). But this is only a minor problem;  the sound quality of voices received over the Centro is pretty good.

Cell Phone	Palm Centro (on Sprint)	Sony Ericsson W580i (on AT&T)	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on AT&T)
Score	7.82	7.65	8.30
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul (on Sprint)	Palm Treo 700p (on Sprint)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	7.33	7.83	7.58
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (6.24)
This test measures the quality of sound sent by the Palm Centro. This is how your voice sounds to the person on the other end of the call. The chart above indicates the Centro's performance with a blue line, and the limits against which we test with are shown as red lines. The Centro had some  issues, exaggerated across the middle of the frequency ranges and falling off much too quickly at the high end. This can lead your voice to sound too loud or clipped if you have a high voice. But again, this is not a huge problem; your voice will still be understandable by the person at the other end.

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	Sony Ericsson W580i (on CARRIER)	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on CARRIER)
Score	7.82	6.17	7.51
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul (on CARRIER)	Palm Treo 700p (on CARRIER)	Apple iPhone (on CARRIER)
Score	7.68	7.68	7.58
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (9.86)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice piped back into your ear so you can hear how loud you are speaking. Too much side tone may lead you to speak more quietly, while too little could cause you to speak too loudly. The Palm Centro's side tone measured 17.86 decibels, which is right about where we want it — 18 decibels is the ideal we test against. This means you will get an accurate indication of how loudly you're speaking on the Centro.

Cell Phone	Sidetone Measurement	Score
Palm Centro	17.86	9.86
Sony Ericsson W580i	18.77	9.23
BlackBerry Curve 8320	17.88	9.88
HTC Mogul	17.12	9.12
Palm Treo 700p	21.42	6.58
Apple iPhone	8.80	0.80

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (1.41)
To test the resolution of the Palm Centro's 1.3-megapixel camera we take a series of photos of an industry standard resolution chart and run them through Imatest software. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which measures how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The Palm Centro's camera scored 581 lw/ph horizontal and 596 lw/ph vertical. As you can see below, this is not a particularly good score. Almost all of our comparison phones, including the older Treo 700p, did better on this test, and most performed significantly better. We were not happy with the resolution of photos taken by the Palm Centro; this low resolution score means that fine details won't be accurately captured in the photos that the Centro takes.

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	Sony Ericsson W580i	BlackBerry Curve 8320
Score	1.41	6.35	5.25
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	581 / 596	1195 / 960	1087 / 933
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul	Palm Treo 700p	Apple iPhone
Score	3.57	2.87	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	895.9 / 831.6	830.2 / 789.3	970 / 879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (8.08)
To test the quality of colors produced by the Centro's camera we took photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays shows 24 different colors. These photos are then run through the Imatest software, which compares the captured colors to the original chart colors. Imatest produces the two charts below. On the left is the color chart, which shows the original colors in the small vertical rectangles, the Centro's captured colors in the outer boxes, and the captured colors adjusted for luminance in the middle boxes.


On the right you get a more graphical representation of color capture. This chart shows the difference between ideal colors, marked by a box, and the captured colors, marked by a circle. The longer the line between the two points, the more inaccurate the color capture. As you can see, the Centro did pretty well, with only limited color drift, and put up the best color score among our comparison phones. The Treo 700p put up the second best score, which seems to indicate that Palm knows what it's doing when it comes to color capture on cameras.

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	Sony Ericsson W580i	BlackBerry Curve 8320
Score	8.08	5.61	4.92
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul	Palm Treo 700p	Apple iPhone
Score	1.82	7.59	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (0.91)
To test how much noise is produced by the Palm Centro's camera we took a series of photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at different lighting levels. We then ran these photos through Imatest, which produced a noise score for each lighting level. Our final score is based on both the average noise score across lighting levels and the consistency of noise score between lighting levels. The Centro didn't perform particularly well in our test, putting up relatively high noise scores at all lighting levels. As you can see below, only the W580i did worse in this test.

Cell Phone	Score
Palm Centro	0.91
Sony Ericsson W580i	0.36
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.41
HTC Mogul	1.45
Palm Treo 700p	1.05
Apple iPhone	1.20

Live Preview (5.0)
The Centro's live preview doesn't take up the whole screen, as you see on many phones nowadays, but it does use most of the screen. Given the higher resolution screen this should be sufficient for most. We found there were some issues with the live preview. When you pan there is a little blurring and the preview is darker than the photo you end up with. Colors are also a little different than in the final photo. These issues are minor, however, and overall the Palm Centro's live preview does a decent job.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (5.26)
Unlocked standby to first shot measures how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until you have captured a photo. This test is a good indication of how quickly you can whip out your phone and take a photo when you need to. We repeat this test until we get a consistent result. The Palm Centro took 3.8 seconds to take a photo. This isn't a particularly great score, with all of our comparison phones except the Treo 700p putting up a better score than the Centro. This isn't a phone you can use for quick candid shots.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	3.80	5.26
Sony Ericsson W580i	2.70	7.41
BlackBerry Curve 8320	2.90	6.90
HTC Mogul	3.30	6.06
Palm Treo 700p	3.96	5.05
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23

Shot to Shot Time (0.84)
This test measures how quickly you can take a series of photos. We try to use a phone's Burst mode when possible, but the Centro lacks this feature, so we had to do the test manually. We did turn off the feature that reviews the photo after you take it, however. The Centro took five photos in 17.9 seconds, which works out to 0.28 frames per second (fps). This is again a pretty bad score, slower than any comparison phone except the Treo 700p. Given the Centro's camera only takes 1.3-megapixel photos and doesn't have autofocus, this score is particularly poor. What this means for users is that the Centro will do a very bad job capturing sports shots or other moving objects.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Palm Centro	0.28	0.84
Sony Ericsson W580i	2.70	8.10
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.35	1.05
HTC Mogul	1.90	5.70
Palm Treo 700p	0.20	0.60
Apple iPhone	0.40	1.20

Shutter to Shot Time (2.27)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes the camera to actually capture a photo once you've pressed the shutter button. We repeat this test until we get a consistent result. The Palm Centro took 0.88 seconds to capture a photo in this test, which is once again near the bottom of our comparison phones. As with the shot to shot time score, this result indicates you will have problems trying to capture moving subjects with the Centro.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	0.88	2.27
Sony Ericsson W580i	0.12	16.67
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.43	4.65
HTC Mogul	0.21	9.52
Palm Treo 700p	0.30	6.67
Apple iPhone	0.40	5.00

Interface (8.0)
The Centro's camera interface will be familiar to anyone who has used a Palm OS device in the past few years. The top two-thirds of the screen is taken up by the viewfinder, while the lower third holds controls. The center select key on the d-pad acts as the shutter button, and up and down serve as the zoom control. Moving left or right highlights the other options, which include a folder list for where you photos will be stored, an icon to switch between video and stills, and a shortcut to your album. There is also an indicator showing how many photos you can take given current memory restrictions. Hitting the menu button on the keyboard brings up a simple preferences pane that allows you to perform options like turning off the shutter sound or auto-preview. Overall, the interface is extremely simple and easy to use, but lacks the "camera-like" feel of some more modern interfaces, like the HTC Mogul. Still, simple and easy-to-use is a strong argument, and we found ourselves liking the camera interface.

Photo Album Software Internal (7.0)
The album software for the Palm Centro will also be familiar to longtime Palm users. There's a list of albums, and you can create new ones. By default there's an album for internal memory and another for any memory card you create, and you can also choose to view all photos. You can send photos by e-mail or MMS from within the album software, and you can easily get a slide show going by hitting the large play button. Slide show settings are pretty basic, allowing you to set how long a photo is shown for and a transition, as well as audio captions. The album software does a decent job, but it's nothing too impressive.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Palm Centro does not have any manual controls when taking photos.

Zoom (1.0)
The Centro has a 2x digital zoom available that, like all digital zooms, just crops and enlarges what you're seeing.

Focus (0.0)
Like most cameras on phones, the Palm Centro has a fixed-focus camera. This means it won't try to put the scene into focus for you, so what you see is what you get. We don't award any points for fixed-focus lenses.

Flash (0.0)
The Palm Centro doesn't have a flash.

Metering (0.0)
Although we are starting to see phones with true metering controls, like the HTC Mogul, the Centro lacks any such options. Metering allows you to control from which point or points in the scene light is judged. The Centro also lacks any brightness controls, which are much more common on cell phones.

White Balance (0.0)
There are no white balance controls on the Palm Centro. This is surprising, as most cell phones now include at least a selection of presets, such as Tungsten or Incandescent.

Image Handling (3.0)
The Palm Centro has some fairly basic image handling options. You can add an audio caption to any image, rotate it, or draw on it. The draw feature allows you to use the stylus to add freehand drawings, albeit without many options, and you can also add a text box to the drawing. There's no support for more advanced image handling options like adjusting color, brightness, or removing red-eye.

Video

Overall Video Score (6.0)
The Centro captures video at 352 x 288, which is at the high end of what we see from cell phones nowadays. The only phones that do better are some of Nokia's N-Series devices like the N95, which capture at 640 x 480. The quality of the video taken by the Centro is pretty good for a cell phone. We noticed video looked a little blurry, especially when you do a lot of panning, but if held still things can be easily made out. The quality of the video should be sufficient for YouTube or showing on a computer monitor. It won't look very good on a TV or even full screen on a large monitor. Given that the Centro is marketed as a low-end smart phone, we're pretty happy with the quality of the video it took; it's significantly better than some high-end phones we've seen, such as the HTC Mogul.

Video Resolution (6.82)
To test the resolution of the video taken by the Palm Centro we took video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for still photos. We then took frames from this video and ran them through Imatest to get a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which measures how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they begin blurring together. The Palm Centro scored 249 lw/ph horizontal and 274 lw/ph vertical. This is a pretty good score, and is significantly better than our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
Palm Centro	249 / 274	6.82
Sony Ericsson W580i	122 / 108	1.32
BlackBerry Curve 8320	n/a - no video capture	0.00
HTC Mogul	220.9 / 137.8	3.04
Palm Treo 700p	181.5 / 190.9	3.46
Apple iPhone	n/a - no video capture	0.00

Video Compression (2.0)
The Palm Centro captures video in 3GP format, and there are no other formats available. This is a fairly standard format for cell phones, but given the decent quality of video captured we wish Palm had gone with a higher-quality format, like H264.

Interface (7.5)
The video capture interface of the Palm Centro is similar to the stills capture — the top two-thirds act as a viewfinder, while at the bottom you find the controls. Instead of a zoom control with up and down on the d-pad, these buttons control pause and stop. Shortcuts to the folder you're saving to, album, and switching capture modes are all still there. We found the interface just as easy to use, but a little old fashioned compared to some of the newer phones we've seen.

Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls for video capture on the Palm Centro.

Zoom (0.0)
There's no zoom available for video capture on the Centro.

Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing functions on the Palm Centro.

Modes (0.0)
The Centro gives you the option to capture video at either 352 x 288 or 176 x 144 resolutions, however there is no option that automatically formats the video for MMS or e-mail. For example, even if you're capturing at 176 x 144 there's still a 30-second limit for MMS that isn't handled automatically. There's also no support for functions like metering or Scene modes.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (5.52)
To find out how easy it is to dial a number on the Centro we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had dialed a number. We used five different test numbers and took the average time for our score. The Palm Centro took an average of 3.62 seconds to make a call, which is pretty good for a smart phone. As you can see from the table below, the Centro performed significantly better on this test than the Treo 700p or the Mogul, and about the same as our other comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	3.62	5.52
Sony Ericsson W580i	3.66	5.46
BlackBerry Curve 8320	3.16	6.33
HTC Mogul	6.16	3.25
Palm Treo 700p	5.88	3.40
Apple iPhone	3.96	5.05

Talk and End Buttons (3.0)
The Centro makes some minor changes to the way controls are laid out compared to the rest of Palm's Treo lineup. The send and end buttons are located on the far left and right of the silver strip that contains the control keys. Thankfully the Centro's small size makes them easily accessible. The buttons sit flush with the surrounding plastic, and so are a little difficult to find by feel. There is decent travel when you press them, but not much tactile feedback. Frankly, we like the send and end keys on Treo devices more.

Call Management (6.0)
The Palm Centro's call management features are about what we've seen from other Palm devices. During a call you have several buttons on screen to access functions like speaker phone, hold, the dial pad, and mute. Hitting the menu key brings down a menu with a few additional options, like the option to connect to a Bluetooth headset. There's no support for recording a phone call. The call log on the Centro is a simple chronological list of phone numbers. You can filter the call history to view only incoming, missed, or outgoing calls. When you have a call selected you can use on-screen buttons to add that number to your contacts or view details for the call. There was no information about total call timers or data transfers available.

Startup to Call (2.34)
We timed how long it takes to turn the phone on and make a call to see how quickly you can accomplish this. Like Palm's Treo devices, the Centro does not provide users with a way to completely shut the handset off, short of pulling out the battery. As such we take the battery out for this test and time how long it takes from the time we put the battery back into the handset. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Palm Centro took an average of 42.66 seconds to complete this process. This was a very disappointing time — only the HTC Mogul took longer in this test. The older Treo 700p took 10 seconds less than the Centro.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	42.66	2.34
Sony Ericsson W580i	19.42	5.15
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.12	14.04
HTC Mogul	55.00	1.82
Palm Treo 700p	31.60	3.16
Apple iPhone	26.12	3.83

Ring Volume (0.0)
To test ring volume on the Centro we turn the phone's volume to maximum and use a sound pressure meter to measure how loud the ring tone gets in decibels. In this test we found the Centro's ring volume maxed out at 85.5 decibels. This is pretty standard, as you can see below. You'll note in the table that the Centro's ring volume is significantly better than the older Treo 700p, something we are very happy for.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
Palm Centro	85.5	8.55
Sony Ericsson W580i	85.5	8.55
BlackBerry Curve 8320	85.6	8.56
HTC Mogul	85.7	8.57
Palm Treo 700p	78.0	7.80
Apple iPhone	84.9	8.49

Ringtone Customizability (2.0)
Like other Palm OS cell phones, the Centro doesn't provide users with many ringtone customization features. You can't add MP3, AAC, or WMA files as ringtones, instead you have to go through the rather convoluted process of turning them into MIDI ring tones. You are able to use voice recordings made on the device as ringtones, however.

Non-Audio Alerts (10.0)
The Palm Centro's vibrate alert is not the best we've ever seen, but it's pretty solid. We were easily able to feel it in our pocket, but you may have some trouble if it's in a bag or jacket pocket. The screen also lights up when a call comes in, giving you the option to answer, decline, or decline with an SMS message, a nice feature that has been a trademark in Palm devices. The LED indicator on the Centro lights up when you have missed a call. Overall, we found the non-audio alerts to be sufficient. We've seen a lot of bad vibrate alerts lately, so we like that the Centro's might actually be useful.

[page title="Messaging"]

Supported E-mail Services (7.5)
The Centro uses the same Versamail software that has been found on Palm OS devices for years. This software supports both standard POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail servers, and also supports easy setup of popular e-mail services like Gmail, Yahoo!, and AOL. We were happy to see that when setting up these popular e-mail services all we had to do was enter our e-mail address and password — the software took care of everything else for us. This is a major improvement over Series 60 devices like the Nokia N95, which require you to enter server settings.

Push E-mail (3.0)
The Centro supports push e-mail via Exchange Activesync. You can also get support for push e-mail via BlackBerry Connect, but this requires additional software.

Multiple E-mail Accounts (10.0)
The Centro supports at least five e-mail accounts, and probably more, which should be sufficient for power e-mail users.

HTML and Attachements (4.0)
Like previous Palm OS devices, the Centro does not support HTML e-mail, which is a feature now found on several other phones, including Windows Mobile 6 devices and the iPhone. Attachment support is provided via Documents2Go, and allows you to view or edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF documents. Unfortunately there is no support for ZIP files.

Email Customizations (10.0)
The Palm Centro provides a good selection of e-mail customization options. You can choose between three different display fonts, and one of these display fonts allows you to choose between two different font sizes. These are applied to both displayed e-mails and your composition font. You can also create signatures that are automatically added to outgoing messages, and choose whether e-mails in your inbox are shown on two lines or one.

Time to a New Message (10.75)
To see how long it takes to compose a new e-mail message on the Palm Centro we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had opened a new e-mail dialogue. We repeated this test five times and took the average for our score. The Palm Centro took 1.86 seconds to open a new e-mail dialogue. This is an excellent time, on par with the BlackBerry Curve and Apple iPhone and significantly faster than the HTC Mogul. We found it very easy to just hit the letter "E" on the keyboard, which took us directly to the e-mail icon on the home screen. Once the e-mail program was launched, which was almost instantaneous, we just tapped the "new" button at the bottom of the screen to start composing a new e-mail message. This is an excellent example of Palm's ease of use and fast interface.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	1.86	10.75
Sony Ericsson W580i	n/a - no e-mail client	0.00
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.70	11.76
HTC Mogul	6.22	3.22
Palm Treo 700p	2.66	7.52
Apple iPhone	1.90	10.53

E-mail Usability (9.5)
Versamail on the Palm Centro is fairly simple to use. Messages are displayed in a simple list with contact name, title, and date shown. You use up and down on the d-pad to move between messages. There are three buttons at the bottom of the screen that allow you to create a new message, get more messages from the server, or choose sort options. You can sort by subject, sender, size, or date. When you open an e-mail message you are given several other options at the bottom of the screen, including forward, delete, and reply. We had some trouble finding the Bcc and Cc fields, but you activate them via a very small icon found on the top left, next to the icon that allows you to add attachments.

The problems come when you try to switch between accounts. Unlike Windows Mobile, which allows you to move between accounts using left and right on the d-pad, or BlackBerry, which has a unified inbox, Palm OS requires you to go through the menu system to switch to another account. This quickly becomes annoying for anyone who has several accounts. Aside from this issue however we found the interface easy to use and intuitive.

Like other Palm OS devices, the Centro automatically creates a filtered list of matching e-mail addresses as you type a contact name into the send fields. Unfortunately, this only matches first or last name. BlackBerry devices also can match the actual e-mail address or company name. Still, it comes in very useful for quickly adding contacts to an outgoing e-mail address.

Supported IM Services (0.0)
The Centro comes loaded with Sprint's instant messaging program, which allows you to access AIM, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger. You can sign into all three services concurrently, which is a nice feature missing from most carrier-based IM services. Unfortunately, the problem of each instant message sent or received costing you a text message is still there, so the Palm Centro doesn't receive any points in this area. There are plenty of third-party instant messaging clients out there that won't charge you a text message for each IM sent.

MMS Support (9.0)
Multimedia messages, or picture mail as they are known on Sprint devices, are very well integrated on the Palm Centro. The unified messaging application provides one simple interface that handles both text and multimedia messages, a feature we have always loved about Palm devices. MMS is also well integrated into the camera and album applications.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (10.0)
For those who love smiley faces, the Palm Centro is for you. Incoming smiley faces are turned into graphical representations rather than being left in plain text, and there's an easy shortcut to add a smiley face to outgoing text messages. You couldn't ask for anything more; it's enough to bring a smile to our faces.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (8.0)
The messaging application on the Palm Centro is excellent, as we've come to expect from Palm devices. Both SMS and MMS are handled by this single application; to turn an SMS into an MMS just add a photo, video, or audio recording, simple as that. The best thing about the messaging application is that it organizes your text messages into conversations. It was actually Palm and the Treo that originally popularized this innovation, not the iPhone, which also has a threaded SMS application.

Time to a New SMS Message (11.63)
To see how easy it is to create a new SMS message we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had a new SMS dialogue on the screen. We repeated this test five times and took the average for our score. We were very impressed with the Centro's performance in this test, as it put up the best score of any of our comparison phones at 0.86 seconds. This is facilitated by the fact that there is a dedicated button that takes you directly to the messaging application. Once there, just tap on the "new" button at the bottom left of the screen. It couldn't be simpler than that. Combined with the excellent messaging application and usable, if small, QWERTY keyboard, this phone is perfect for SMS addicts.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	0.86	11.63
Sony Ericsson W580i	1.54	6.49
BlackBerry Curve 8320	4.22	2.37
HTC Mogul	5.46	1.83
Palm Treo 700p	1.40	7.14
Apple iPhone	2.62	3.82

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization (7.0)
The Palm Centro ships with Palm's desktop software, which allows you to easily synchronize information between your phone and computer. Setup is simple and straightforward — simply install the software, connect the phone, and go through the setup wizard. Most users should have no problems getting this working.

We were quite satisfied with the Centro's support for synchronization. You can use either the included USB cable or Bluetooth to synchronize wirelessly. Contacts, calendar appointments, tasks, e-mail accounts, and notes are all synchronized, with a good selection of options to tailor to your needs.

Palm's desktop software application can act as a PIM manager on your computer that synchronizes with your Centro. You can also synchronize with Outlook.

Alerts (7.0)
Alerts on the Palm Centro can only be set for calendar appointments, not tasks. You can set an alert to go off at any time before the appointment occurs, which provides some nice flexibility. You can't set unique alert sounds for each appointment, however — instead you will need to set the universal sound in the preferences. When an alert sounds you get a full screen indicator that displays information about the appointment. You can dismiss, view, or snooze the appointment. Snooze lasts for five minutes, and there's no option to adjust this. If an alert is missed it will sound again based on your preference setting. If you miss it entirely it will be the first thing you see on the screen when you turn the phone back on. Overall it's pretty solid, about the only thing we are missing is better snooze control.

Over-the-Air PIM Sync (2.0)
The Palm Centro supports over-the-air synchronization of your calendar appointments and contacts with an Exchange Server. It does not support synchronization of tasks or notes. For business users working in an Exchange environment this is invaluable, and makes the Centro a realistic business device.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (8.18)
To see how easy it is to add a contact to the Palm Centro we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we added each of five different contact names and their phone numbers. We took the average time for our score. The Centro took an average of 12.22 seconds to add a new contact, which is pretty good. We found the fastest way to access the contacts application was to jump into the phone application, which automatically highlights a shortcut to contacts, activated by hitting the center select button.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	12.22	8.18
Sony Ericsson W580i	22.74	4.40
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.10	7.09
HTC Mogul	14.70	6.80
Palm Treo 700p	17.70	5.65
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79

Looking/Sorting/Search (5.5)
You can sort your contacts by last name or company name — there is no option to sort by first name. You can also filter your contacts by category. Searching for contacts is simple — just start typing either the first or last name (or company name when organizing by company), and the list of contacts will be automatically filtered for you. Other than the lack of support for sorting by first name, we were pretty happy with the options here.

Fields (8.0)
The Palm Centro provides you with 30 different fields, including advanced fields like category, notes, and up to nine custom fields. We found the selection of fields to be sufficient for just about any user, especially with the large selection of customizable fields for whatever information you want.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (2.33)
The Palm Centro has excellent speed dial support, allowing you to assign any contact (or application if you prefer) to any letter key on the QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately there is no support for voice dialing, either via voice tags or voice recognition. There are several third-party applications, like VoiceDiaIt, that provide this functionality.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (20.83)
To see how quickly we can add a new calendar appointment we timed how long it took to add a lunch appointment for the following day with a reminder 15 minutes beforehand. We repeated this test five times and took the average for our score. The Palm Centro took 4.8 seconds to add a new appointment, which is an outstanding time and beat out all of our comparison devices. We should note that we cheated a little; by default the Centro adds an alert five minutes before the appointment, and we changed this to fifteen minutes for our test. If you have to change the alert manually it will add a few seconds to the time of adding the appointment. We were helped significantly by the fact that you can just hit the dedicated calendar button to launch the calendar, then navigate to the date and time you want and start typing.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	4.80	17.24
Sony Ericsson W580i	14.04	7.12
BlackBerry Curve 8320	6.04	16.56
HTC Mogul	7.22	13.85
Palm Treo 700p	12.18	8.21
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29

Calendar Views (7.1)
The Palm Centro provides you with five different calendar views. The default view is the daily view, and you'll probably spend most of your time here. This shows hour blocks along the left with corresponding appointments on the right. It is very reminiscent of the daily view you get on a BlackBerry device. The weekly view shows the typical grid of days along the top and time along the left with appointments blocked out. When a day is highlighted in this view you get a small pop-up at the top of the screen that shows you appointment details for that day, which is very helpful.

The monthly view is less useful. You see the current month with a small box indicating days that have an appointment. Unfortunately the monthly view lacks the pop-up box that the weekly view has showing appointment details, so it's really only useful for looking up a date. The agenda view provides a great deal of information. It shows a list of that days appointments, tasks, and unread e-mail. This is somewhat reminiscent of the active home screens you see on Windows Mobile or Series 60 devices. You can easily cycle between views by hitting the calendar button. Finally, there is a yearly calendar view accessed via the menu button.

Fields (11.0)
Creating a new appointment on the Palm Centro can be somewhat confusing. If you hit the new button in daily view you are given some options; start/end time, all-day appointment, and time zone. Once an appointment has been set you are taken back to the daily view to enter the title. Once that's completed, select the appointment and details where you are given other fields. These include the alarm, location, category, and repetition. You can also add a text note or set the appointment to private. We found the selection of fields to be adequate, but wish the interface was cleaner and less complicated.

To Do/Tasks

Adding To Do/Task (8.68)
To see how easy it is to add a new task to the Palm Centro we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had added a test task reminding us to pick up groceries. We repeated this test five times and took the average time for our score. The Palm Centro took an average of 11.52 seconds to add our test task. This is a very good time, faster than all our comparison phones. We found it easy to open the tasks program by hitting the "T" key on the QWERTY to quickly jump to the program. The most time was taken up setting the due date for the task, which requires entering an additional interface. We also made good use of the touch screen to quickly tap the items we wanted instead of moving around with the d-pad.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	11.52	8.68
Sony Ericsson W580i	16.56	6.04
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.80	6.76
HTC Mogul	16.02	6.24
Palm Treo 700p	12.90	7.75
Apple iPhone	n/a - no tasks program	0.00

To Do/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)
The Palm Centro's task program allows you to filter your tasks by category. It also allows you to prioritize tasks, but you cannot sort your tasks by priority.

Fields (8.0)
When you create a new task on the Palm Centro you are given a decent selection of fields to choose from. You can set the title, priority, category, due date, and set an alarm. You can also add a note to the task and set a recurrence pattern. We especially like seeing advanced options like recurrence on the Centro.

Notes

Adding Notes (5.91)
To see how easy it is to add notes to the Palm Centro we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had added a simple note about a lunch appointment. We repeated the test five times and took the average for our score. The Centro performed well in our test, taking an average of 8.96 seconds. This is better than most of our other comparison phones, as you can see below. Only the Treo 750p performed better, probably helped by its more comfortable keyboard. We found ourselves again using the keyboard as a shortcut to the program we wanted, just hitting "M" to jump to the memo program. From there, just hit the center select key and start typing.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	8.46	5.91
Sony Ericsson W580i	12.00	4.17
BlackBerry Curve 8320	12.20	4.10
HTC Mogul	12.56	3.98
Palm Treo 700p	8.30	6.02
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95

Note Interface (6.0)
The notes interface on the Palm Centro is a bit better than most phones we've reviewed. You see a simple list of notes with the newest at the bottom of the list. Above this is a drop down box that allows you to filter notes by category. Unfortunately, there is no support for searching through your notes, as found on BlackBerry devices. However, we were very pleased with the categories supported and generally found the interface easy to use.

Note Formatting (5.0)
Most notes programs provide no formatting options, so we were pleased to see the Palm Centro allows you to choose between two font types and sizes. That's about the only formatting options you get, however — you can't add hand drawn notes, as you can on Windows Mobile devices, nor can you add media items or do things like italicize, bold, or underline items.

Voice Memo (7.0)
The voice memo program on the Centro provides pretty good functionality. We like that you can get quick access to it by pressing and holding the shortcut key on the left side of the device, although you need to continue holding down the key as long as you want to record. The interface itself is fairly simple and easy to use — there is a list of voice recordings at the bottom and above this are the recording controls. You can easily send a voice recording via e-mail or Bluetooth by hitting the small envelope icon, but there is no support for more advanced features like categorization.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (6.21)
To see how easy it is to get music playing on your Centro we timed how long it took to get a song playing, starting from the home screen unlocked. We repeated this process five times and took the average time for our score. The Centro took an average of 3.22 seconds to get a song playing. You can see below that this is a good time, but is matched or bettered by several handsets. In particular, the Sony Ericsson W580i was almost twice as fast to the draw in terms of getting a song playing. We were generally pleased with the Palm Centro's performance in this test, however.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	3.22	6.21
Sony Ericsson W580i	1.56	12.82
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.62	2.62
HTC Mogul	6.06	3.30
Palm Treo 700p	3.10	6.45
Apple iPhone	3.10	6.45

Dedicated Music Controls (1.0)
The Palm Centro's volume controls can be used to adjust music volume while playing, however these are the only music controls you will find on the handset. For everything else you have to open the music software. You should note, however, that Pocket Tunes (pTunes) does have a preference that allows you to assign either the calendar or messaging button to bring the program up while music is playing, however this option is turned off by default.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (8.0)
The Palm Centro uses pTunes for music playback. This software has been a stalwart for Palm OS devices and provides a reasonable selection of functionality. When we reviewed the Treo 700p earlier this year Palm was only shipping a stripped-down version of pTunes, which required a purchased update to unlock many features. We're happy to see the Centro includes a fully-featured version.

pTunes recognized our standard M3U playlist and allows you to edit and create playlists on the device. It recognized tags for all three of our test file types: Windows Media, MP3, and iTunes AAC. You can sort your music by title, artist, album, or genre. There is no support for searching through your music or rating it. pTunes recognizes all the file types it can play on your device, regardless of where it's stored. Unfortunately, there is no support for album art. We were pleased to see you can play music in the background, however. There is also an equalizer on board, with both presets and the ability to adjust it manually. You can also create new equalizer settings.

Overall, we found pTunes on the Palm Centro to be a fully-featured music playback solution, but we did find the interface was a little clunkier than the Series 60 music player or the iPod on the iPhone.

Online Song Downloading (0.0)
Unlike many other Sprint devices we've reviewed lately, the Palm Centro does not support Sprint's music store. This is a shame, as we can't see any technical reason why the software couldn't be supported. It's been ported over to other smart phone platforms like Windows Mobile (on the HTC Mogul), and the Centro can support Java applications with an add-on application.

Streaming (4.0)
We were pleased to see the Palm Centro supports streaming audio via MP3 or Windows Media formats. It did not support streaming Real Audio. The Centro also has support for streaming radio stations built into the pTunes software.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The Centro doesn't include any software to download or organize podcasts on the phone.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
You can synchronize music between the Palm Centro and your computer using Windows Media Player. This makes it easy and straightforward to move music back and forth.

Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The Palm Centro does not support any form of DRM protected music. It does play unprotected WMA, MP3, and AAC files.

Music Interruption (9.0)
The Palm Centro does a solid job of handling incoming calls when music is playing. The music is immediately paused when the call comes in, and started up again right after the call ended. About the only thing we are missing here is a nice fade-out and fade-in feature, like the iPhone has.

Video

Video Software Access (6.33)
To see how easy it is to get a video playing on the Palm Centro we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had a video playing. We did this test five times and took the average time for our score. The Palm Centro took an average of 3.16 seconds, which is a good time, but is matched by many of our comparison phones, as you can see below.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Palm Centro	3.16	6.33
Sony Ericsson W580i	3.42	5.85
BlackBerry Curve 8320	8.08	2.48
HTC Mogul	7.64	2.62
Palm Treo 700p	5.00	4.00
Apple iPhone	3.20	6.25

Video Controls (4.0)
Video controls on the Palm Centro are fairly basic. When you play a video it immediately goes into Full Screen mode, although we should note that few of our test videos took advantage of all the screen real estate. The volume keys do their thing while the center select button on the d-pad stops the video playback and takes you back to the album screen. Left and right on the d-pad move to the next or previous video in the album. Pressing up or down on the d-pad reveals on-screen controls that just replicate what you can do with buttons. The controls are very bare bones — we saw better selection from the HTC Mogul, Apple iPhone, and even the BlackBerry Curve.

Video Software & Organization (1.5)
The Palm Centro uses the built-in Pics & Video applicat