We try out AT&T's new Palm, a Centro with a slick look and EDGE networking. Is this still Palm's secret weapon?
Review summary of the Palm Centro (AT&T):
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_it00.jpg) There is no question that most Palm fans will prefer the Centro over the Treo, and unless you have real difficulty with smaller keys, we would unquestionably recommend the newer Centro over its older cousin. The real question is whether the EDGE-only Centro on AT&T tops the EV-DO device on Sprint. For most apps, the slower speeds are unnoticeable. The Web browser isn't so great that you'll miss the faster networking, and messaging works just as quickly on either device. If you want this phone for tethered modem support, you'll have to go with Sprint, but if you just want a reliable, QWERTY phone that does e-mail and is easy to use, the AT&T Centro has some nice tweaks to the interface that make basic calling features easier. It's a tough call, and though we hate to say it, it might come down to which color (or carrier, of course) you prefer. Then in a month, AT&T will release the phone in black, and the was begins anew. Release: February 2008. Price: $150.
Pros: Cuter, smaller design packs all the power of a full-size Palm. Touchscreen still a rarity on consumer smartphones.
Cons: Slow EDGE networking. Interface looking dated, except where recently improved. Tiny keys tough for typing.
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Full Palm Centro (AT&T) Review:
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Design - Very good
The Palm Centro on AT&T is a cute little pill of a device. AT&T has chosen a slick off-white and green color scheme, and we think it works nicely on the phone. Compared to the Centro on Sprint, it's pretty much the same phone on the outside. The stylus is a bit flimsy; the tip broke while we were using it to pry out the stiff battery, but it still worked fine. The keys are even smaller than we remembered, and we're finally getting Palm's point that business power users might be willing to pay extra for larger keys.
The Centro sets itself apart from other phones this size and price range by including a touchscreen, which makes the phone much easier to use, thanks to Palm's simple, touch-friendly OS. We would have moved the microSD card slot out from behind the battery cover, especially considering the phone's musical agenda. Also, though the HotSync cable makes things easier by placing a HotSync button right on the port, it's time to give up proprietary cabling and go mini- or microUSB, especially for this consumer-oriented device.
Calling - Very good
Calls on the Palm Centro sounded good, nice and clean. For reception, the phone always reported a solid four bars on AT&T's EDGE network in lower Manhattan and New Jersey. Talk time was pretty good; we got almost five hours in a single call, though AT&T only promises three hours of chatting on the phone. Perhaps there is a benefit to the slower network after all.
For call management, AT&T and Palm have included a new dialing app, which looks a bit nicer than the dialer on the older Palm OS phones, but doesn't add much new functionality. The visual upgrade is still welcome, though. Conference calling on this phone more closely resembles the Palm Treo 680, also on AT&T, with intuitive icons to follow on screen, making the process much easier. We also like that Voice Dial didn't ask us for money this time around, as that feature really should be included free.
Messaging - Very good
Thanks to the Palm OS and a couple nice apps from AT&T thrown in, the Palm Centro is a messaging powerhouse. The phone can handle just about every type of messaging you throw at it. In our office alone, we've used Palm phones for IMAP, Exchange Active Sync as well as Good Mobile messaging. AT&T's Xpress Mail app looks a bit nicer on the Centro than on other phone's we've seen, and again the visual upgrade goes a short way to making the Centro seem a bit more modern than your average Palm device. Setting up e-mail was easy, as was signing onto MSN Messenger, thanks to the unified IM client for AOL, MSN and Yahoo. MMS and SMS messaging were also easy, and the Centro benefits from Palm's threaded SMS chat-style messages.
Typing on the keyboard was a bummer, though, thanks to the tiny keys, packed closely together. We even found the transparent white bubbles hard to distinguish from each other, which made learning the keyboard harder. If you need larger keys, they come at a considerable premium on a Palm Treo device, but this is really the only area in which the Centro comes up short compared to its larger cousin.
Music - Good
The Palm Centro on AT&T comes with a few AT&T extras for music, but doesn't quite go far enough. You don't get AT&T's new Mobile Music store, but you can sideload your Napster and Yahoo Music tracks thanks to the phone's AT&T music compatibility. And, for memory, the phone can handle microSD high-capacity cards up to 4GB. PocketTunes, another app that previously cost extra on Palm phones, comes free and handles music playback nicely, though it isn't nearly as easy as the players we'd expect on a dedicated music phone. Stereo Bluetooth was absent, and unfortunately so was a 3.5mm headphone jack, an amenity we've come to appreciate on the BlackBerry Pearl. Streaming music is available over an XM Radio app, but we had some trouble with this service. Downloading the app itself took multiple attempts, including a hard reset of the device. Then, once it got working it usually wasn't worth the effort, with a patchy sound that was clearly affected by the slower EDGE networking.
Web browsing - Good
The Palm Blazer browser is reliable, fairly quick, and very ugly. We've come to expect much, much more from a phone. When we were navigating to a mobile page, like the New York Times mobile homepage or Google's mobile Reader page, we were fine, and hardly noticed the slower network speeds, compared to Sprint's EV-DO Centro. But standard pages, like our image-rich homepage, were more jumbled, and sometimes needed to be loaded multiple times to get them right. Hopefully a desktop-grade mobile browser is on the horizon for Palm's upcoming OS improvements, because the Blazer software isn't cutting it any longer.
Scheduling and productivity - Very good
Don't let the phone's small size and shiny look fool you, the Centro includes every ounce of productivity muscles you'd expect on a Palm device. You get DocumentsToGo for editing and even creating Microsoft Office documents. The calendar app is also plenty robust, with good synchronization features. It isn't quite as thorough as the mobile Outlook calendar and scheduler you'll find on Windows Mobile phones, but it is at least comparable to the BlackBerry Pearl's calendar app.
Value - Good
Compared to the Palm Treo 680 on AT&T, or even the 75x models on the various carriers, the Centro is an unquestionable value. It can do everything that the larger Palm can do, and the only benefit of the larger devices is their size; they use a larger keyboard and a larger screen, though the Centro has the same 320 by 320 pixel resolution. Compared to other smartphones, though, the picture gets more hazy. For the same price, you can get a BlackBerry Pearl or a Samsung BlackJack II, both of which are competent devices. But the real competition may be the Centro on Sprint. For $100 there, you get faster networking speeds, and lose only a few graphical tweaks and niceties.
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