Palm Centro Onyx Red Review - Conclusion

Treos made a big name for themselves as the original Email phone of choice.  Their combination of a usable Email and PDA client married to a solid cell phone was revolutionary in its day, and Palm’s stable, usable, and expandable smartphone platform appealed to power users and consumer Email junkies alike.  Unfortunately the once-mighty Treo got lost in the shuffle during the amazing period of mobile phone innovation that’s come upon us in the last two or three years.  Compared to the Apples, HTCs, and Samsungs of today, Treos look like clunky relics of an era gone by.

Palm may well have found new life for the still-usable Palm OS and Treo hardware formula in its newly minted Centro.  A smartphone marketed more towards consumers than business users, Centro takes the ease of use and functionality that made Treo so popular and packs it into a shrunken down - if still chubby - form factor dressed up in flashy colors and packed by Sprint’s high speed data network and burgeoning mobile entertainment options.  Perhaps most importantly, Sprint’s Centro is priced to move.  At less than one hundred dollars, Centro packs the power of a smartphone, usability of a consumer device, and add-on entertainment options of Sprint’s Power Vision network at a price in line of handsets that can’t do half of what it can.  Though Sprint’s really got to get their music store working on this thing.

Centro’s diminutive size and small buttons will make it attractive to some and unusable to others, and its plastic feel and retro graphics won’t win over any bleeding edge diehards.  But for 99 bucks Centro gives you access to much of what’s great about smartphones and Sprint’s network, with some cash leftover to put towards those monthly service bills.

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