Palm Centro

The Palm Centro is one of the newest smartphones available on the market today. Very few people know about the Palm Centro because it’s release was greatly overshadowed by the new Apple iPhone. The Centro is much smaller than previous Palm smartphones, weighing in at only 4.2 ounces. As with nearly all Palm smartphones, the Centro operates on Palm OS making it easy to download and install countless third party applications. Compared to the iPhone the 64 MB of internal memory on the Centro seems small, but with microSD cards that memory can be expanded up to 4 GB. The reason Palm decided not to go with more internal memory was the lack of necessity. The Centro is meant to be a phone and a PDA, neither of these require extremely large amounts of memory though they did keep expansion slots available for those who wish to use the Centro as a media player. The Centro has been designed to work with common applications such as Google Maps, AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and others. Along side these official applications is an endless selection of user-created and third party applications which can achieve nearly anything on a Palm device. Some of the leading features of the Centro are the touchscreen, 1.3 megapixel camera, a full QWERTY keyboard, and even a powerful and fast web browser which is capable of much more than the average cell phone browser. Depending on the plan you purchase from Sprint, it is even possible to watch live TV on the Centro.

Currently the Centro is only available from Sprint or directly from Palm, and as a result the phones are locked on the Sprint wireless network. There are currently no plans for the Centro to become universally available, so it is likely that it will remain a Sprint only phone. Because the Centro is made by Palm, there is a strong history of excellence behind the Centro. Prior to the Centro release Palm’s leading line of Treo smartphones had dominated the smartphone market. Perhaps one of the best aspects of the Palm Centro is its price. For a qualified buyer who signs a wireless plan with Sprint the Centro is available for as little as $99.99, even without a plan the Centro is available for as little as $399.99. Both of these prices are very competitive in the market, and for what the Centro can do these prices are very good. If you are looking for a touchscreen phone, which can compete with the iPhone the Palm Centro might be a good phone to checkout. With nearly all the same features as an iPhone, as long as you don’t plan to listen to music on your phone for hours the Palm Centro will provide exactly what you need both as a phone and a PDA.

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