Palm Centro Cell Phone Review
By Alfredo Padilla
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
Published on November 09, 2007
The Palm Centro is a budget smart phone. You can pick it up for $99 with a two-year contract. Though the Centro is a business device, it certainly doesn’t appear as such; its bright red plastic makes it look like a toy. It’s a bit thick, but is smaller than the Treo phones Palm also offers and sits well in the hand. The downside to the smaller size is that its QWERTY keyboard is very difficult to use, since the keys are so small.
The Centro can make calls faster than most advanced phones, but only if you start with it on; the Centro has a very long boot-up time. We were surprised some call management features on the Centro were missing, such as timers and call recording. Most smart phones have these. The Centro does manage contacts like a business device, however, providing 30 fields for each entry. The rest of the organizational software is great, too. The Palm OS really shines here by making everything simple, whether it’s entering a new business contact or scheduling an appointment.
The Centro has good audio quality. In our tests, we found it generally does a good job with incoming voices, emphasizing received frequencies the proper amount and generally staying within the desired limits. The Centro has a bit more difficulty with the user’s voice, however, and we saw it tends to overemphasize mid-range frequencies. This could result in your voice sounding tinny. Side tone, which refers to how loudly the phone plays back your own voice, is about on par. We measured the Centro’s side tone at 17.86 decibels, which is pretty close to the ideal measurement of 18 decibels. A Centro user won’t feel as though he or she is shouting or whispering.
Imaging on the Centro is a mixed bag. On one hand, it has great color representation, but on the other hand it has atrocious resolution. Taking sequential shots isn’t something the Centro does well, and it takes the phone almost 18 seconds to take five pictures. Typically phones can do this in less than one-third the Centro’s time. Also, it takes about 0.88 seconds to take a picture once you’ve pressed the shutter button, which is fairly slow. The Centro does better with video capture, however, and is one of the rare phones with video resolution higher than still capture resolution. As for video playback, the Centro dips again into subpar performance, as it offers virtually no organizational software. Its music software is much better, and is impressive for a business device.
The Centro is a good messaging phone if you can get over its keyboard. The Palm OS again makes everything simple to do, and it scored very well on our timing tests. It supports push e-mail via ActiveSync Exchange, and integrates MMS and SMS well. The rest of the software is even better; even though the Palm OS is somewhat old, it remains responsive and intuitive. The browser is powerful, but has a less-than-perfect interface. Here’s where the Palm OS shows its age. The iPhone’s Safari or Nokia’s proprietary browser have set very high standards for what a phone browser should be. The Centro falls far short of these standards.
The Centro has average battery life. It has a call time of 4 hours and 8 minutes, and was able to play music continuously for 6 hours and 47 minutes before its battery gave out. When constantly Web browsing, the battery lasts 4 hours and 22 minutes. Again, these are all average times.
The Centro isn’t the best business device out there. It has myriad problems, brought on by its relatively old operating system, bad camera, and cramped keypad. It is, however, a good business device that costs $99 with a contract, after a $100 rebate. This is simply a good value. Sure, it can’t compete with some other business devices, but those devices cost hundreds of dollars more. The Centro is an affordable business device with more than enough functionality to merit its $100 price tag.For a more in-depth review, visit the palm Centro Review at our partner WirelessInfo.com
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