Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13527 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Palm
• Model: 1057EU
• Released on: 2008-02-24
• Dimensions: 4.33" h x 6.69" w x 6.69" l, .27 pounds
• Memory: 64MB DRAM

Manufacturer's Description
Life starts when work ends. That's why there's the Palm Centro smartphone. Palm Centro gives you voice, chat-style messaging, email and web1, along with a colour touchscreen and even a full keyboard. (So you can say much more than you were used to with your cell phone.) All of this in a phone that's a whole lot smaller than you think, which means you can take Centro anywhere and keep up with friends in every way possible. Mix in stuff like a camera, an organiser and an easy way to save info to your computer and it's the one phone you'll always want with you. Centro. Let's go

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Palm Centro.
This is great little smartphone; well designed, easy to use and very reasonably priced against the competition. Having owned a Treo 680 prior to this I have found Palm's smartphones to be some of the most user friendly on the market. Some reviews I have read about the Centro have been less than favourable, mainly criticising the Palm operating system. I honestly can't see what the fuss is about as I have used Palm OS based devices for over seven years (Sony Clie SJ-30, Treo 680 and the Centro) and found it to be one of the most reliable operating systems there is. Palm seem to adopt the 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' rule to their OS and I for one couldn't be happier.

Compared to the 680 this is a much neater device, shaving about a centimetre off its dimensions and fitting easily in your hand. The keyboard is tiny but not unusable, and the screen is bright and clear. The memory card slot is a big improvement over over the 680, using micro SD cards instead of full size SD (the door shuts properly too!) The camera is only marginally better (1.3 meg against VGA) but still adequate for quick snapshots. The stylus is a bit flimsy but adequate for the job it does, and replacements are easy to get hold of.

A minor criticism is Palm's continued insistance on using 2.5mm earphone jacks which require a bulky adaptor for anything other than the supplied headset, although if you use a bluetooth headset this won't be a problem. If you are looking for a reliable, easy to use and well priced smartphone you can't go wrong with the Centro. Highly recommended.

Review of the Centro for non-Palm users
Firstly, apologies for the very long review, but I am really writing this for those who have never used a Palm product, although I suspect for most of you who are considering this phone, you are probably doing so because you came from a previous Palm product.

If you are not coming from a Palm product, and are considering a smartphone then you really do need to ascertain which operating system you want on your phone. This might sound strange that this should be your first consideration; normally, the criterion for choosing a phone tends to be by comparing its functions, or camera quality, or even its physical looks. However, a smartphone tends to have more functionality than most phones and therefore, the choice of operating system is important because that is what drives all the added functionality you get.

There are a number of O/S's out there, such as Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian and Blackberry. Each has their strengths and weaknesses. I have been using both Palm and Windows Mobile products for many years, and have tended to strongly prefer the Palm operating system. It's a robust and fast system which is not resource hungry (namely, it doesn't chew up loads of memory) and there has always been a very strong list of third party applications available. However, I fell out of love with Palm when I bought the horrid LifeDrive; it was mechanically unsound (the drive kept on failing), and the programs often failed to work properly. And so I switched to Windows Mobile 6.0 - bad mistake; that was a really clunky operating system that chewed up memory, which meant I had to keep on switching the product off and then on again to clear the memory down. Also, some programs could be slow and jerky in their operation. Anyway, the short of it, I came running back to Palm, just in time to see the Centro just being launched.

Well I'm glad I have. The Centro is a lovely robust product. It is quite sleek in the hand, and can be easily used one handed. The screen is bright and the icons are clear; it's not the largest screen out there, but that is the compromise because as a phone it is not that wide. That has also put a slight restriction on the keyboard, with the keys slightly close together, and noticeable when compared to most Blackberries'. The applications that come on the phone are reasonable - it has Google maps, but it doesn't have a proper video player (so you will have to buy a third party product to watch movies). The in-built camera, whilst not having a particularly high resolution, takes reasonable pictures, although highlights blow out very easily (i.e. a very limited dynamic range). The sound quality (for listening to music etc.) is very good, better than previous Palms, but not in the league of Sony Ericsson phones. The one really disappointing aspect is the stylus - it is feeble - and given that you will use it a lot, you don't want it to feel pliable in your hand! The phone feels physically robust, but honestly, I would have a slight concern if I dropped it compared to some of the tanks I have had in the past. Bluetooth works well, and syncing with other devices was a breeze - perfect for non-techies like me. The web function, is reasonably fast - not as quick as some of the newer protocols - but I never felt frustrated waiting for pages to load.

In summary, the operation of the Centro feels really intuitive and works smoothly. The Palm O/S is a winner for me and I would gladly give up some of the functionality of Windows for a phone that is reliable and just keeps on going - and the battery life, as long as you haven't got Bluetooth switched on, goes on for days.

Good smart phone, practical rather than flash
Previously I owned Samsung Blackjack and Sony P1 but sold these and bought the Centro - of the three its the best. This phone isn't as feature packed as the others, it doesn't have Wifi or 3G. Where Palm excels is in the area of usability, the touch screen and keyboard work very well together and the applications are nicely integrated, it has copy and paste just like a real computer! The Centro software is looking a bit old fashioned now but its is very usable and I still have yet to find a better calendar application than the Palm one. The MP3 player works well, but be warned the centro is provied with a 2.5mm jack plug not the standard 3.5mm of most headphones. One annoyance with Pocket Tunes, the built in MP3 player, was the fact it refused to allow the transfer of WMA files through Windows Media Player without me payting 15 quid for a a software upgrade.

For Palm/Treo oweners: The Centro is technologically the same as Palm 755p but in a smaller package. Treo 680 owners will find much that is familiar here, it uses similar software but the screen is slightly smaller than the 680, but with the same resolution so you end up with crisper characters. The 1.3 M pixel camera is much better than the low-res one that came with the 680/650. The keyboard is more cramped than the 680 but quite usable.

In conclusion if you want a small usable smartphone with a qwert keyboard and you don't need wifi or 3G its worth buying. If you want something thin, sexy, ultracool and not so user friendly buy something else :-)