Palm Centro

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Palm is most famous for its personal digital assistants (PDAs). Back in the days before mobile phones, these portable, pocketable computers could store your contacts, calendar, to-do lists, and various other bits and bobs, so you no longer had to rely on pen and paper. They were good, too, ruling the roost of digital organisers until the mobile phone manufacturers started including similar options on their ubiquitous devices. Palm has been playing catch-up ever since, reducing the focus on the one-trick PDAs and trying to keep abreast with its mobile phone offerings, to the extent that the latest Palm Treo uses Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system instead of Palm’s. In the shadow of the iPhone, however, Palm has taken a tangent with the Centro – an affordable phone that still uses Palm’s PDA software.

Features: 4
Most of the features you’d want in a smartphone are still present. The unit itself is smaller than you might expect and the stylus-driven touchscreen takes up a good half of the device, but gives up space to the rubber-buttoned keyboard. It’ll do everything a Palm PDA would, such as look after your calendar, contacts and lists, and synch it all to your PC, and the phone element ties in nicely with the contacts. Messaging is a breeze, though the email and web-browsing software feel like they could do with an update, and it has a low-powered but perfectly functional camera (video and still) along with a media player. Special mentions should be given to Documents To Go, which lets you create and edit Microsoft Office files on the device, and a version of Google Maps (sadly without a GPS or other location-finding service), to help you navigate through the real world.

Performance: 4
The phone functions perfectly – both voice and messaging options work very well. Palm’s operating system has been tweaked extensively over the last 15 years and the PDA function is as near-perfect as you’d expect from a mature product like this. However, the media-player aspect is unlikely to get people ditching their iPods quite yet. It’s a perfectly adequate way of listening to any music you may have on a MicroSD card, should you feel like it, though the non-standard jack means you can’t plug in your own headphones.

Ease of use: 4
Palm veterans will have no trouble finding their way around the phone, but newcomers will encounter a learning curve – it’s not an instant cinch like Apple’s iPhone. The buttons on the keyboard are incredibly small but they’re raised up from the unit so you can feel your way around them. That said, we found ourselves pecking with thumbnails for decent accuracy, which isn’t the most comfortable way to type. The beauty of the device is in the organiser functions though. The contact management ties in nicely with the phone, and the calendar, notes and to-dos are simple to manage.

Value for money: 5
It’s perhaps on price that the device has its keenest advantage. With Apple raising the game in terms of software, it’s good to see the Palm Centro, which essentially uses a souped-up version of an ageing operating system, comes in at a more reasonable price than the iPhone. At the time of writing, it wasn’t being offered at a discount by any operators, but its recommended retail price of £199 for an unlocked phone still represents excellent value. It’s worth shopping around, though – Expansys, who supplied the phone to us for review, is offering it for £20 less.