Our editor Philip Berne takes the unlocked version of the Palm Centro for a spin to see what freedom from carriers really offers in our full review.
Review summary of the Palm Centro (Unlocked):
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_it00.jpg) The audience for an unlocked phone is a special bunch, and we wouldn't recommend this phone as an alternative to a carrier-sponsored version if you don't mind signing a new contract. But if you need the unlocked option, the Palm Centro still makes for an appealing, small smartphone. Everything on the inside screams 2006, but the Palm OS worked pretty well then, and it still works well now. It isn't getting any prettier, and the Web browser is practically ancient by today's standards, but for calling and e-mail, the phone is solid. We recommend trying it before you buy, because the small keyboard might stymie even medium-sized fingers, but if the size fits, go right ahead. Release: June 2008. Price: $300.
Pros: Improved calling interface. Unlocked Centro means T-Mobile users might have a shot. Same small design we liked.
Cons: Same small keyboard, same old interface. Apps like the Blazer browser and Pocket Tunes music player starting to show their age.
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Full Palm Centro (Unlocked) Review:
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Design - Good
The unlocked Palm Centro looks almost exactly like the AT&T version of the same device, inside and out. It doesn't get the green keyboard that we liked on AT&T's white Centro, but it retains the improved calling interface that has become common on the GSM versions of the Palm Centro and the AT&T Palm Treo 680. We wish there was more to say here, but Palm has done very little to improve the Centro beyond the standard model offered by the carrier. The keys are still a bit small for our taste, but the phone has an appealing shape and design. Unfortunately, once we turned it on we got the same Palm interface that we've been staring at for a few years now.
Calling - Very good
Calls on the Palm Centro sounded good, nice and clean. For reception, the phone always reported a solid four to five 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 Palm only promises three hours of chatting on the phone. Perhaps there is a benefit to the slower network after all.
For call management, the unlocked version of the Palm Centro mimics the AT&T version, with its improved dialing screen. This didn't add much new functionality, but it looked more modern and fresh than the calling app on the Sprint and Verizon Wireless versions of the Centro (Compare all four versions). Conference calling on this phone also resembles the AT&T Palm Centro, with intuitive icons to follow on screen that make the process much easier. We also liked that Voice Dial was included free, as speaker-independent voice dialing should be a standard feature on every phone.
Messaging - Very good
The unlocked Palm Centro is great for e-mail. 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. Setting up e-mail was easy, even without the carrier's proprietary e-mail apps (go figure), but unfortunately that's where the fun stops on the unlocked Centro. Unlike the carrier-controlled versions of this phone, the unlocked Palm Centro doesn't come with any instant messaging options. We've used third party IM apps for the Palm OS ourselves, so we know the options exist, but it's always nice to save the hassle of downloading and installing a separate program, as well as the extra fee. IM should certainly be a free option on this phone, considering the younger audience. Of course, Palm invented the idea of threaded SMS chatting, which could replace instant messaging, since it looks so similar. But unless you're paying for an unlimited messaging plan, this will rack up fees quickly.
Typing on the keyboard was a bummer, 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 one of the few areas in which the Centro comes up short compared to its larger cousin.
Music - Good
The unlocked Palm Centro comes with Pocket Tunes, Palm's long-standing partner app for music playback. It isn't a pretty looking music player, but it is very functional, and we had no problem playing tracks from our memory card. For memory, the phone can handle microSD high-capacity cards up to 4GB. Stereo Bluetooth was absent, and unfortunately so was a 3.5mm headphone jack, an amenity we've come to appreciate on the BlackBerry Pearl.
Because of the lack of carrier support, music and multimedia features are lacking on this device. Whereas AT&T bundles AT&T Music apps, which lets you play back PlaysForSure DRM tracks from Napster and Yahoo Music, as well as an XM satellite radio player, the unlocked version includes none of these. That isn't such a big deal to us, as these extra services are usually sub-par, but it would have been nice to see Palm make up for the deficit by including a few more options, especially some good media transfer software.
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 Google 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.
Price and availability
The Palm Centro is available now unlocked directly from Palm for $300.
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