Palm Centro, wierd, I kinda like it

Huh, well the Palm Centro’s all official and now we know it’s real specs. The wierd thing? I kinda like it.

Sure, sure, it’s still hobbled by Garnet. But that was never in question. Sure, sure, it’s running the same ARM processor that Palm’s been using since the 650 lo these many years. But here’s what I like. At least Palm is trying something new - this one’s shape is fairly different from their Treo line (hence it isn’t branded a Treo at all, interesting…) and they’re going for a smaller more pocketable form factor. An ideal to be applauded.

Also it’s only $100 (although I think I read it’s $299 without 2 yr contract). That’s a big deal, I think, for a touchscreen smart phone. No? Another thing they got right was somehow cramming 320×320 pixels in that small screen - that’ll keep it sharp and god knows more pixels is always better on these screens. And having it rock out on EVDO could make the online experience more tolerable. Sure you’ve still got Blazer which valiantly tries but ultimately fails as a browser (although it’s tons better than that Blackberry one), but if it’s fast enough maybe it’ll work out.

I think, it’s real problems are two fold (skipping the fact that Palm is still pushing Garnet which is a real and true anchor around Palm’s neck) one is it isn’t thin enough and two is it has crappy battery life, these are probably related. This phone is only slightly thinner than a 680 and if you compare it to the iPhone by volume it’s actually about a third bigger. A third! And the iPhone boasts a significantly larger screen, so you have to believe that there’s a long way for Palm to takes it’s miniaturization process. Thinness counts in pocketability, dontchaknow. Well… dontchaaaa?

This thing also only gets 3.5hours talk time (compared to the iPhone’s 8 hours). I suspect there’s two forces at play here, one is obviously the Centro’s smaller battery (clocking in at 1150mAh) v the iPhone’s 1400mAh. But that’s only a 22% size increase, I suspect the bulk of this difference in power is because of EVDO - 3G is a real power drain, just like Jobs says.

One bonus bigger picture problem, as Scott brought up when we were chatting about this, is that with Palm’s most recent two releases (the other being the Treo 500v), it could be that Palm is racing to the bottom. Putting out cheaper, low end phones is a dead end strategy, because once you reach the bottom, there’s kinda nowhere to go, as Dell is discovering. It’s still early to see if this is Palm’s strategy and given it’s history, it may be optimistic to believe that Palm actually has a strategy at all, even a bad one, but we’ll see.

Still all that said, assuming that the Centro is about as stable as my 650 was in it’s early days (it become increasingly flaky) I think this is a pretty compelling device. It’s relatively small, it’s cheap and it’s got pretty fast net access with a touch screen. It’s by no means a perfect device but it isn’t horrible. Palm needs to hire some real industrial designers because their phones are all kinda ugly, but these ones are really no uglier than the Treos. It may be that my expectations are so low for Palm these days that even mediocre releases are good in my mind, or it may be that at this price point it really is an attractive buy. I don’t know. I’m so confused. Am I wrong?

(Oh, and I still don’t believe that this new ring style 5-way d-pad works anywhere as nicely as the one on the older treo’s. I’ll have to mosy over to a Sprint store to check one out.)

Sep 28th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: palm