Response to the Palm Centro

The centro will be available through Sprint in minOctober for $99.

The real question everyone has is “how easy to use is the keyboard?” and I gotta tell ya, despite what you may have heard, it is surprisingly easy.

The lack of changes to the O.S. is a little disappointing.

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I’ll cover additional features like the camera, all of the included software, and whether or not I still like the basic design after weeks of use in the next installment, which should follow sometime in the next 30 days.

It feels incredibly solid in the hand -- this is a "phone" form factor and I had forgotten how nice standard candybar phones feel.

At a first glance, it's pretty clear that the $99.99 price point will leave you hungry for accessories if you sink your teeth into the Sprint-only (for now) phone, as the box has the bare minimum included -- they don't even throw in a cheap set of earbuds. Other than that it's pretty standard fare.

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Sprint Nextel has announced the launch of the Palm Centro smart device for USD 99.99, available exclusively from Sprint for a 90-day period. Available in black or red, the device has voice, text, IM, email, web, contact and calendar capabilities, a full-colour touch screen and full keyboard. Sprint hopes the lightweight device will attract new users to the smartphone market.

We think the Palm Centro is going to redefine the value of a smartphone. For $100, this is a remarkable phone. It does everything the Treo 755p can do, and that phone costs two and a half times as much.

The Palm Centro is coming soon to Sprint at only US$99, but James doesn’t think it will have much of an impact on the smartphone market.

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I like the buttons layout, I like having everything so nicely labeled and available, I’m just not quite used to it,but then, I have only had the device for a day.

Though it is only hours and I haven’t really tested it yet I can tell by the devices new slimmer size, much improved screen quality and quality of build Palm and Sprint will sell a TON of these.

Well, here's the shiny little Centro, in all its slightly-less-than-breathtaking beauty. Truth be told, the phone doesn't look or feel too bad -- we still don't get the gray stripe through the middle, but what can you do? The keyboard is unbelievably tiny, but we'll take it where we can get it. The surface of the cherry red or metallic black phone is quite slick, and we suspect will go tumbling out of sweaty hands like gang busters.

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So far, we don't have any gripes about the keyboard. It's much more usable than I expected still -- though more testing is needed before I can give it unqualified approval.

The screen, although 0.3 of an inch smaller in diagonal than that of its Treo siblings, is accurate at responding to stylus taps and renders fonts and images crisply. It ﾕ s bright and can be seen both indoors and out, even when in direct sunlight. In fact the quality of the screen really blew us away

Google Maps with traffic and sat view, but NO GPS!!! I was sad when it hit home, and confused: I thought EV-DO chipsets from Qualcomm had a GPS in there by default.

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You can easily setup email in VersaMail without using a PC ﾑ a scenario I suspect is more relevant to Centro buyers than to Treo buyers.

Three different review samples showed up. Yay! I have to say though that the most exciting sample was a shiny Red Palm Centro from Sprint. I've only had a couple of hours to play around with it, but the Centro is making me consider that maybe we've (I've) been counting Palm out of the mobile phone game entirely too soon... This little phone is a real cutie! And at $99 (with a wireless plan), I think it may prove to be quite popular.

Like Brian said, that keyboard is seriously tiny. It's much easier to use the screen to type in phone numbers, for instance, and in general, it's significantly more cramped than a Treo.

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So the Centro is cute, and it has a lot of new software. But overall, the Centro is definitely old wine in a new bottle, much more so than Palm's Europe-only Treo 500v, which was released two weeks ago.

For people thinking of stepping up to a smartphone, Centro would be a good choice since, aside from the stylish compact design, you can have it for an incredibly low price. And since Centro comes with the Palm OS, it offers all of the great organizer functionality that Palm is renowned for.

The keyboard is absolutely tiny…they’re actually fairly difficult to type with.

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Though we may have been hoping for a more advanced Palm device, with a spanking new OS, the Centro is a phone that will pleasantly surprise the right user.

The little red Palm Centro just arrived, and we're still convinced this $99 wunderkind will go places.

I have to say, Palm is headed for trouble. Yes, the Centro is certainly refreshing, but can it really save Palm?

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