Hardware Geeks

So what’s the difference between a regular cell phone and a smartphone? You can do more with a smartphone.  It can synchronize with your computer and will hold your appointments, and also a larger amount of contacts.

With that in mind more and more people (not just business professionals) are using Smartphones.  Smartphone’s tend to cost double than a traditional cell phone and that is where the Palm Centro differs.

The Palm Centro is an entry level smartphone, designed for teens and people who may want a Smartphone but don’t have a budget for one, and although affordable at $69.99 with a two year contract the cheap price doesn’t mean it’s a cheaply made phone.  It’s a sturdy little thing and packs a bit of power.

The phone features a colorful 320x230 touch screen display with support of up to 65,000 colors, a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity, and a built in GPS.

Being that you have a touch screen on the Palm Centro you can easily navigate via its various menus with your fingers, stylus or the directional button just under the screen, there are also 4 hotkeys around the directional button which give you quick access to your calendar, text messages, home screen and the phone function. I don’t believe you are able to edit the hotkeys, I had the phone nearly 3 weeks and was unable to figure that out.

Browsing the web on the Centro is very fast, it uses AT&T’s 3G network.  I had download speeds of over 300 KBps in various speed tests. While the browser appears to support full HTML it compacts everything into the size of the screen and there is no way to zoom out or in which kind of sucks but if you stick to mobile websites which I mainly do it isn’t an issue.

Texting on the Centro is also easy, and with threaded texting you don’t have to exit out of a text and check your sent text or old received text to wonder what was said previously. It’s all listed there in front of you in one txt.

There is also a built in GPS that works great with TeleNav (extra charge), and it worked pretty good, it didn’t have a difficult time finding any satellites to connect to like some Motorola phones I have used in the past.

Overall the phone is great, but not for a seasoned smartphone user, it’s great for teens and people starting out with smartphones or someone who doesn’t really need one but wants one. It works well, fast and looks really cool.

The Palm Centro we reviewed is for AT&T wireless but it is also available from Sprint.

Post Tags: review  centro  smartphone  at&t;palm 

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