Centro - the better Treo?
When Palm announced the Centro smart phone recently, I was skeptical about whether it would be any good – the phone has a full keyboard (good) but the keys are even smaller than those of the Treo (bad?) which I use today. I would like to replace my Treo 650 because it is quite bulky and heavy for a shirt pocket, which is where I carry it most of the time. But I want to protect my investment in Palm applications which I have purchased over the years – dictionaries and translation software, password safe and so on.
However, Dave Pogue has just reviewed it for the New York Times, and he is convinced it is a big improvement. His summary:
Still, you’ve rarely seen so much utility in such a small package, and you’ve never been able to buy one for so little money. Palm may have created Centro by shaving down the Treo’s size and price — but in this case, tiny tweaks make all the difference.The Centro isn’t available in Europe yet, but when it arrives, it looks to me like a very interesting replacement for my Treo. And the Centro is selling for just $99 in the USA (but only if tied to a 2-year contract with Sprint – what the real unbundled price is, will only be known when Palm starts to sell the phone directly).