By Julian Prokaza on Tuesday, 26 February 2008
 Launched in the US late last year, the Palm
Centro caught most people by surprise. With its long awaited update to
Palm OS not due until 2009, few expected it to see a new smartphone
powered by the current creaky Palm OS Garnet, but that’s just what the
Centro was – and it’s now available in the UK.
Palm made a bold move away from its classic (and near-perfect) Treo design with the launch of the Treo 500 last year, and the Centro continues the trend. In fact the two look almost identical, but the difference is in the dimensions and the Centro looks just like a Treo 500 that’s been squashed.
The Centro is Palm’s smallest smartphone to date, but its chunky, rounded design still provides plenty to hold on to (surprisingly, it’s actually a few grams heavier than the Centro). The case feels solid, with no creaks and precious little flex, but we didn’t care for the sparkly finished created by tiny gold flecks embedded in the black plastic.
Small it may be, but the shrunken size of the Centro doesn’t come without compromise and this is most evident in the two most important aspects of any smartphone – the screen and the keyboard.
With just a 2.2in diagonal, the Centro’s screen is the smallest of any smartphone we’ve seen, but thankfully, it still has the standard Palm OS resolution of 320 x 320 pixels. The screen is clear and bright, and the increased pixel density has the added side-effect of making the screen extremely crisp. That said, you’ll need sharp eyes if you plan on reading ebooks or running intricate applications like DateBK 6. Still, at least Palm makes use of all the available display area – the Centro has finally eradicated the two-pixel border that has plagued Palm OS devices for years.
The small screen also makes navigating with the stylus more problematic than usual. The stylus sits in a silo at the top right of the handset and it’s a good length (if a little bendy – it’s all plastic), but tapping some of Palm OS’s smaller on-screen elements requires pinpoint accuracy. There have been some complaints about stylus navigation being made trickier by the screen being too deeply recessed into the case, but it’s no worse than on other Treo models. The Treo 500, of course, has a screen that’s sits flush on the case, but then it isn’t touch sensitive and runs Windows Mobile 6 Standard.
So, it could be bigger, but the screen is just about usable – and it’s a similar story with the keyboard. The Centro’s keys are almost exactly the same size as those on the Treo 500, but since the case is 8mm narrower, they sit much closer together. They also lack any kind of profile and as a result, require some practice to use with any degree of accuracy.
There is a trick to typing effectively on the Centro, though. The rubbery finish of its key tops has been singled out for criticism by some, but it actually works better than hard plastic. The soft keys have enough give for fingernails to find plenty of purchase and as a result, thumbnail typing proves surprisingly easy and accurate – assuming that you don’t bite yours off, of course.
The rest of the Centro’s keypad has the same layout as the Treo 500’s, just on a smaller scale, but the shortcut buttons and four-way control pad are no less usable for it. Palm has seen fit to restore the ringer mute slider switch on the top of the case – it foolishly omitted this trademark Treo feature from the Treo 500.
Palm OS has changed surprisingly little over the years and Palm has been content to endlessly tweak it to cope with new mobile technology rather than come up with a much-needed revamp. Palm OS 5 has been around since 2002 and version 5.4.9 installed on the Centro doesn’t offer much that wasn’t available six years ago. Nowhere is this more noticeable than the Blazer web browser and it’s laughably inadequate even compared to Pocket Internet Explorer, let alone the iPhone’s Safari.
Still, for all its faults, Palm OS still sets the benchmark for elegant mobile operating system design and its snappy response makes the Centro a pleasure to use, compared to the laggard that is Windows Mobile. Palm OS applications are also notoriously frugal and so the 64Mb of memory isn’t quite so poor as you might think. Palm also helps matters by pre-installing the excellent Documents to Go productivity suite, Google Maps and pTunes for media playback. You’ll need to track down a pair of earphones with a 2.5mm socket to make the most of it though, since Palm just supplies a mono hands-free kit.
The Centro has the same Phone application as the Treo 680 and it makes making and taking calls a positive pleasure. This acts both as a call manager and a program launcher, and even the iPhone could learn a thing or two from the way in which it packs several powerful features into an easy-to-use interface. And, of course, the Centro has Palm’s unbelievably useful threaded SMS application – as copied by Apple for the iPhone.
Call quality is good, and certainly much better than on the Treo 650 and 680, thanks to the loud, clear speaker. The built-in speaker for hands-free calls is impressively loud too, but being on the back of the case, it sounds rather muffled if you leave the Centro flat on the desk.
At £180 for an unlocked handset, the Centro is fairly priced, even for all its faults. Make no mistake, though – this is an entry-level device. There’s no Wi-Fi or 3G, the 1.3 megapixel camera is mediocre at best, and software tweaks aside, the Centro offers little that wasn’t available with the Treo 600 in 2003. Of course the same could be said about the still-current Treo 680 -- and that costs £270.
So, if you’re looking for a compact smartphone and value ease-of-use over cutting-edge features, you won’t go far wrong with the Palm Centro. The current version of Palm OS may be seen as obsolete by some, but as long as web-browsing isn’t high on your list of priorities, it’ll more than match your other requirements.
Palm Centro
| Price |
£179.95 inc VAT (unlocked) |
| Rating |
5 out of 6 |
| Good |
Compact; Palm OS still shines for most applications |
| Bad |
Minuscule keyboard; cramped scree; terrible web browser |
| Verdict |
Yes, it's little more than a rehashed Treo 600 and the hardware isn't a patch on the best of HTC's offerings, but this powerful Palm OS smartphone can still show most Windows Mobile devices a thing or two. |
| Manufacturer |
Palm |
| Buy from |
Expansys |
Specifications
| Operating system |
Palm OS 5.4.9 |
| Processor |
Intel PXA270 (312MHz) |
| System memory |
128Mb non-volatile |
| User memory |
68.8Mb (microSD card) |
| Screen |
2.2in (320 x 320) |
| Bands |
Quad band (850/900-1800/1900) GSM/GPRS/EDGE Class 10 |
| Camera |
1.3-megapixel |
| Connectivity |
Bluetooth 1.2, IrDA |
| Other |
2.5mm stereo headset socket (mono headset supplied) |
| Quoted battery life |
3.5 hours talk time, 300 hours standby time (removable 1150mAh lithium-ion battery) |
| Size |
107.2 x 53.5 x 18.6mm
|
| Weight |
124g
|
|
