Palm Centro : My dirty little secret

In one word: Tiny. The Centro by Palm is the newest release of a Palm OS based handset (Access) by the manufactuer to date. It comes on the heels of the windows mobile European released Centro, but unlike the windows mobile big brother the Americans did not get the same love. Currently the device is exclusive to Sprint, but we will surely see the device hit on other U.S. Carriers most likely Verizon since it shares the same CDMA technology.

I really wanted everyone to see how small this device is in comparison with a few of the common phones we see out and about in public on a daily basis. I used the standard black Moto RAZR, the Moto RAZR 2, and the trusty nokia 6102i all from AT&T. I have no preference to AT&T devices I just happened to be at Fry’s Electronics and felt it would be a good opportunity to snap off a few shots of these comparison sized devices together (the pictures were taken with the HTC Mogul).

Overall, the device performs like any other Palm OS based device such as the Treo 755p, but seems slighltly snappier performance especially when moving from the web browser to an alternate program. One issue I had with the transition from the web browser(Blazer) to the email client (Versamail) or the text messages was a 3 second delay in the device. This delay has been almost eliminated completely by the Centro. Also notable is the screen no longer losing a pixel boarder which is probably even more important when you are dealing with a much smaller device. I’m sure many agree that the Treo 700wx 750 and 755 can afford to lose a pixel boarder of real estate.

The big question people will ask themselves before buying the Centro is the keyboard. Many of you like myself depend on text input on our mobile devices as much as we depend on the voice calling. Sending out a hundred emails and a hundred SMS messages per day really requires an efficient keyboard. Does the Centro fit the bill? Yes and no. It is definitley a fully capable device like all Palm OS based handsets, but the keyboard is cramped to accomodate the extremely small dimensions of the device (Dimensions 4.22″ (L) x 2.11″ (W) x 0.73″ (D); 4.2 oz). If you have big hands like myself you will need some getting use to in order to be proficient on the handset, but it is possible to almost reach typing speeds of the big brother Treo 755p. So yes it is possible to reach fast typing speeds, but no it will not seem that way immediately out of the box when you begin typing.