New Palm Centro

For years I used Palm devices, starting with an IBM Workpad provided by my employer back in the 90s, a Palm III, some Palm that I got for free for opening a online stock account, and finally a Handspring Visor Edge that has served me faithfully for several years without rebooting once.  I’ve been itching to get a Treo smartphone for years, but held off since I couldn’t get one cheap as an upgrade from Sprint.   I was unsuccessful in getting Sprint to give me a Treo 650 when I moved to the SERO plan, but the transition was bungled by the wonderful Sprint CSRs and the inflexible computer system which they use.  Finally I got a mailer from Sprint offering me a Palm Centro for $99 if I signed a two year contract.  My SERO plan, especially with corporate discount, is too good to lose, so I went with the upgrade.

There are so many reviews on the phone since it was release 4Q07, so no need to give another one here.  Let me just summarize the pros and cons of the phone as I see it.

Pros:

- It’s very small, not much bigger than a traditional phone

- Reception seems to be quite good, better than my old Samsung A620, almost as good as my Sanyo MM8300

- The Palm OS is fast, especially compared to Windows Mobile, and seems to be pretty stable.

- There are a plethora of applications, some free, others paid.

Cons:

- Battery life is nothing to write home about.  I can barely get a day’s worth of use without recharging.

- The keyboard is small and the alternate characters, accessed by pressing the white key in the lower left corner, are even smaller.  I’m having a tough time reading them with my Lasik corrected near vision.

- The power connector is different than all the other Sprint phones that I’ve had.  They do provide one adapter with the phone, but it makes it difficult to use all the accessories that I’ve accumulated over the past decade or so with Sprint.

So far, I like it a lot.  I’ve upgraded to SplashWallet v.7 from the old V.2 on my Visor, so I can can carry my passwords and account numbers with me securely.  In subsequent posts, I’ll describe the applications as I add them in.