Palm Centro Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls
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Alfredo Padilla Published on October 25, 2007 Comment on this |
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Dialing Speed (5.52)
| 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.
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