Palm Centro Red Smartphone (Sprint)

The Palm Centro is now available in Ruby Red, only from Sprint. If you didn’t like black, then now’s the time to buy. For Sprint customers, the Centro is a great buy at just $99. For others? Read on for my final impressions and verdict.

I’ve had 4 days worth of usage on my Centro trial. I have to admit, the Centro surprised me in many ways. It’s been very stable — no crashes at all. This could be because of the larger dBcache, but also could be some behind-the-scenes work on Palm’s side.

The Good

Size-wise, I think the Centro is just nice. It still feels hefty for its size, and it could be thinner, of course. I quickly got used to the smaller keyboard, which is a concern for many Treo owners including myself. The screen, as I mentioned before, is fantastic. It packs just as many pixels in a smaller screen, so the images and videos look really good and sharp. I like the fact that the Centro has even more free memory compared to the Treo 680 (68MB vs 66MB). After years of managing with the cramped 23MB capacity of the Treo 650, I really have no idea how I will fill all this up.

The Centro, close up, and in metallic red, looks much better than the photos. I have had several complements on the Centro’s appearance. Most notable amongst these were from my wife : “It’s a Palm? But … it looks good!”

The Bad

There are a few things that I don’t like about the Centro:
- The battery life is even worse than the Treo 680.
- The microSD slot is hidden, and you can’t take out your microSD cards without opening the battery cover.
- The stylus is not much better than a toothpick.
- The keyboard could be designed better. The beveled edge around the keyboard impairs faster typing.
- For the last time, get rid of the green button, or map it to something useful. At least make it turn on the Centro.

The Verdict

Overall, the Centro does everything that my Treo 680 does, in a smaller, lighter package. If the Centro was available at the time I wanted to buy a new Treo, I would have gone for it immediately. In fact, I would have bought 2 : one for myself and one for my wife.

The Centro is a good, if unimaginative, low to mid-end smartphone that will serve Palm until the new Linux smartphones come out in 2009. However, I must stress that the price point is very crucial. At a time when even Nokia is coming out with mid-level phones with over 100MB of memory, Palm needs to price the Centro right for the rest of the world. A $399 price tag (same as the Treo 680) would not make sense — but at US$200, or even US$250, it could be a contender.

Filed under: Centro

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