Honest 836 Report post Posted June 21, 2008 A Palm Full Of Smart Features If you're tired of your aging and bulky smartphone, but don't wish to compromise on the convenience it offers by opting for a more compact model, its time to rejoice. The newly introduced Palm Centro could be just the phone for you. If you are a loyal fan of Palm phones and the Palm OS, look no further the Centro is tailormade for you. Form Factor The Palm Centro measures 4.22 × 2.11 × 0.73mm. It's the smallest smartphone offered by Palm till date, and weighs just about 119g. The phone's compact size is one of its major advantages and will attract both men and women, since it's small and slim enough to fit into a trouser pocket or a small purse with equal ease. It definitely beats the bulky Treo, and is pretty compact considering that it is equipped with a transflective 2.4-inch 320x320 colour touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard. The 5-way navigation button offers the main browse functionality. 'Talk' and 'End' buttons, shortcuts to the Calendar, Inbox, Phone, and Home Page are very well spaced out, and are easy to use. As far as shortcomings are concerned, the keyboard is cramped and feels as if it's designed for users with either long nails or small fingers. But that's the price one pays for compactness. A volume leveler can be found on the left side of the handset, while a push-to-talk button, an infrared port and a microSD expansion slot are placed on the right. We were happy to see that the microSD slot is protected by an attached cover, but our glee faded a bit on realising that one cannot open it unless one removes the back cover. To add to the annoyance, the SIM card can be inserted only if the stylus is removed. They could simply have allotted more space for the card holder, which would have made the process of inserting and removing the SIM card much easier. A slide button on the top lets you switch the phone between mute and ring mode; no longer do you have to unlock the keypad and move through complicated menus. On the bottom of the handset are a 2.5mm headset jack and multi-connector ports. At the back you'd find the camera lens, a self-portrait mirror and the speaker. The camera is not exposed, which will help to keep the lens clean. Features The Centro is a combination of vital hits and misses as far as features are concerned. It runs on Palm OS 5.4.9 and comes with 128MB ROM and 64MB RAM. Thanks to the backward compatibility of this OS, many applications released for previous Palm PDAs/smartphones will also work with the Centro. Thats especially useful if you already own a Palm and dont want to give up using any of your favourite applications. This phone has been streamlined to work with many popular applications and services. In fact, searching for freeware third-party applications is a breeze; you can easily lay your hands on the most commonly used apps for free on the Internet. The Centro is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) phone and supports both GPRS and EDGE, but not 3G. The voice features include services like speakerphone, three-way calling, voice dialing, speed dial, and the 'ignore with text' feature, which allows you to reply to a call with a text message if you can't or don't want to take the call. The Centro also supports text and multimedia messaging with the usual text chat view, which is quite a famous feature on the Palm OS. Wi-Fi is lacking, which means you could miss out on an essential part of your business communication, while you are left surfing on EDGE speeds. Though Internet on EDGE is good, Wi-Fi would have been even better. The phone has integrated Bluetooth Ver 1.2 for use with wireless headsets, hands-free kits, object exchange, and dial-up networking, but misses out on the A2DP factor, which enables Bluetooth Stereo Headset use. You could thus miss out on wireless music. Equipped with several choices to access your corporate and personal email accounts, the Centro offers more than meets the eye. The VersaMail application supports Microsoft's Direct Push Technology, which enables real-time synchronisation with Microsoft Exchange Server. VersaMail also supports a wide range of POP and IMAP e-mail accounts. We tested a Gmail account and a corporate account and were quite satisfied with the push technology; it worked well with both. Email setup was easy; we used it on a Vodafone account. We tried it on a normal GPRS connection, which did not work; but it connected well with the advanced GPRS package that allows the phone to act as a modem too. As soon as the setup was complete, the detection was quick and email started arriving right away. Multimedia and Camera The Palm Centro comes bundled with PocketTunes Deluxe Edition, which is capable of playing MP3, WAV and DRM-protected music files. However, the in-box accessories were disappointing all we detected was a mono headset. That said; the music quality was decent. The Centro comes equipped with a 1.3-megapixel camera with 2x zoom and video recording capabilities. However, just as with the Treo's camera, there are no options to tweak the white balance, resolution and brightness. The camera is really basic, with no settings or special effects of any kind except 2x digital zoom. Click and capture, and you are done. It does auto-adjust to low light levels, but the lack of a flash was evident. Despite all this, we were impressed with the picture quality; images were sharply defined and exhibited good colour in both natural and artificial light. Performance The Centro has a tiny button on the QWERTY keypad that at first glance seems user-friendly, but falls short of the required size. However, the keys are coated with a squishy plastic that keeps fingertips from slipping, which is nice. Just when you start getting used to the Centro, its OS could hang (as we found out). This was tolerable initially but later got annoying. Such an instance might occur when you are attending calls or when you may be about to make a call. Still, this may well be a rare phenomenon as the OS gave a good performance overall in terms of speed and browsing. The Centro is powered by a 312MHz Intel XScale processor, whose performance was good. We did not experience any significant delays. The applications were quite fast; and the most important feature that the Centro boasts of is the Document viewer/editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF). It was very easy to view and edit documents with this. If you're used to pressing the 'End call' key after any action to go back to the main screen, please dont try it here as such a move not only locks the keypad but also blanks the screen immediately. Features like the Organiser are very basic and do not require any time to get used to. Appointments, Tasks Scheduler, Notes etc. are basic too, but easy to use. One feature exclusive to the Palm Centro is the Agenda View in the Calendar, which puts the whole day ahead of you in appointments, tasks and even unread messages. The transflective display is decent and the screen is fine, especially if you view it in broad daylight. The stylus has a rough exterior that prevents it from slipping down. We found the screen responsiveness a notch lower than what we expected from a touchscreen phone. If it helps to set your mind at rest, the screen comes equipped with a permanent scratch guard. Internet A smartphone with no Wi-Fi doesn't mean the end of the world; EDGE is quite fast. In fact, the Centros Internet browser application, called Blazer 4.5, is faster than most mobile browsers we've tried. It has two modes: Fast and Normal. The difference is quite apparent. In Fast Mode, the web page removes images and disables cascading style sheets, making the pages load faster. Disabling images helps you cut down on your data usage, which in turn should facilitate faster web browsing. However, on using the normal mode we realised that the speed difference was not drastic and the page loaded quickly enough. So it's up to you. The Centro also has support for streaming videos. Overall, the browsing experience is satisfactory and to be honest, we did not miss Wi-Fi much. Battery The Centro's 1150 mAH lithium-ion battery claims to offer three hours of continuous talk time and up to 10 days of standby. We made calls, browsed, clicked pictures and sent text messages, and the fully charged battery lasted two whole days. This is quite good, considering the long history of bad battery life associated with Palm smartphones (read Treo). Conclusion With a price tag of Rs 13,990, we would say the Palm Centro is a deal. Its appeal is universal; it's not targeted only at hardcore businessmen. With such an attractive price and with loads of freeware available online, we recommend a buy. If you're looking for a decent smartphone that will let you call, text, chat and browse, this phone is just right for you. Courtesy : Tech2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Greatest 55 Report post Posted June 22, 2008 CENTRO is one of the best palms till date... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kshah 452 Report post Posted June 22, 2008 if you ask me, palm is probably the best OS for smart phones. Centro is very compact. 755 and 700 are same as centro except for the size. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dkaile 1,051 Report post Posted June 22, 2008 Centro may be lighter and cuter but I think 755 is lot more tougher and stabler, with better battery and keyboard, but these palms do sorely miss out on Wi-Fi. @kshah "VersaMail also supports a wide range of POP and IMAP e-mail accounts. We tested a Gmail account and a corporate account and were quite satisfied with the push technology; it worked well with both" I am using gmail, but how do we use Gmail with Push mail technology. If you could help me out. I want to get my gmail emails like Push Mail (like SMS) on my phone without continuosly being connected to internet. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dj 25 Report post Posted June 22, 2008 Centro may be lighter and cuter but I think 755 is lot more tougher and stabler, with better battery and keyboard, but these palms do sorely miss out on Wi-Fi.@kshah Quote- "VersaMail also supports a wide range of POP and IMAP e-mail accounts. We tested a Gmail account and a corporate account and were quite satisfied with the push technology; it worked well with both" I am using gmail, but how do we use Gmail with Push mail technology. If you could help me out. I want to get my gmail emails like Push Mail (like SMS) on my phone without continuosly being connected to internet. if u think versa is good... wait till u get ur hands on snapper mail... i swear by it !! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dkaile 1,051 Report post Posted June 22, 2008 Welcome back Dj, where were you. And no man, I was just quoting from above post. I wanted to enquire how to get Push Mail. If you know any solutions... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sadikk 301 Report post Posted June 22, 2008 I love Snappermail. Smart and compact Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dkaile 1,051 Report post Posted June 22, 2008 Snappermail is a Palm only software or can it be used on WM HTC also. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kshah 452 Report post Posted June 23, 2008 I too use snapper and its simply superb. You can check if snapper is available for WM too. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mgdelhi 192 Report post Posted June 23, 2008 Snappermail is a Palm only software or can it be used on WM HTC also. On their website, the system requirement is: * Memory Footprint: o 385k Lite Edition o 400k Standard Edition o 610k Premier Edition o 670k Enterprise Edition * Palm OS 3.5 or higher * Connection to the Internet. E.g. built-in wireless modem, IR/Bluetooth connection to mobile phone, Palm dialup modem, 802.11 wireless connection to LAN, etc. http://www.snappermail.com/wireless/email/specifications.cfm Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
@mitJ@in 256 Report post Posted June 23, 2008 Small screen in Palm Centro may be a problem, Otherwise, OS wise and Looks wise, Palm Centro is best as compared to Windows Mobiles Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kshah 452 Report post Posted June 24, 2008 Centro has smaller but very high resolution 320X 320 screen. Its good looking but small. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
