Palm Centro Smartphone Due This Fall

He's not jokin' about that younger demographic either. I'm thinking that keyboard should work well with the 4-7 year old crowd. Gosh, how on earth are even teenagers going to type on that? I'm also, not convinced that QWERTY is the answer for the texting youth crowd. These guys can smoke Mavis Beacon with a T9 keypad and predictive text already. I'm not sure they'lll care?

Who knows? Palm actually does market pretty well with the comparably limited resources they have.

Pat Horne

The problem isn't the software - although it could definitely use some more consumer-oriented apps - so much as the (IMO) fugly hardware. Small screen & tiny, barely usable-looking keyboard. Horrible colour. Stupid D-pad. Bleh!

Reason #2: So that I don't have to carry a 2000x microscope along in my belt case in order to actually read an e-mail or view a webpage.

Reason #3: So I can keep my music library, pix, videos, book library and 7 or 8 DVD movies on my 8GB real SDHC card. Ooops, that's my mid-range 680.

Reason #4: So I can watch movies, view pix, and paertially enjoy the web on a display that is already terribly compromised from my 2003 Palm device.

... that's from the specs that we probably know. Actually, I'd sya this one will get the "consumer" treatment (Zires) and not the "enterprise" treatment (Tungstens). Expect a focus on multimedia, entertainment, and texting, rather than business needs like documents, spreadsheets, PDFs etc. JMO.

Pat Horne

I'm holding out for the Foleo with built in cup holder, or will that be a Foleo companion add on device? The sky's the limit here Palm. Hey, I bet your LAPTOP doesn't have a cup holder.

Darn! It looks like the laptop companion accessory cup holder heater/cooler already exists http://tinyurl.com/2v7xxe

Guess I still don't have a reason to buy a Foleo.

PDA's Past and Present:
Palm - IIIxe, Vx, M500, M505, Tungsten T, TX
Handspring - Edge, Platinum, Deluxe
Sony - SJ22
Apple - MP110, MP2000, MP2100

"The company isn't yet willing to announce what the Palm Centro will sell for, but an unofficial report says its price will be $99."

http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13272

Hmm... at $99 (plus at least a 2 year contract, I'm assuming) this may have a shot. Not gonna fly with anyone business-oriented, but as a young "prosumer" yuppie phone it may gain some traction. Certainly no "iPhone killer" though. That screen is just way, way too small. I'm 33 with decent eye-sight and I can hardly stand looking at my wife's z22, and this thing looks comparible.

ACK - horrible thought. What if they're going to use the same screen as on the z22? You know, the one with like 160x160 resolution? And poor lighting? That would be awful!!! I haven't seen/read anything that says it is 320x320, and this does look like it will be pitched to the z22 crowd.

Again, ack.

the gadget will sell for only $99 with contract

BUT when as I feared from the pics earlier, folks are saying the keyboard is infinitesimal, not only won't I be able to see the screen, I won't even be able to properly push the numbers to make basic phone calls! I already have trouble with feeling which button I'm pressing on the Nokia number pad. How in the world is this thing going to work?

And I really have to agree that if my two "kids" are any indication, they have no need for a qwerty keyboard to fly through all the text messaging they do.


Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

Sorry dude.

1. Foleo connectivity. This is, IMO, by far the most likely possibility. However, NO kid is gonna drop $600 on a Fooleo. Especially a Fooleo that cannot do YouTube etc. No kid has that kind of dough laying around if they do it's gonna go to an iPod/iPhone/real laptop/PS3/car

2.wi-fi connectivity (HAH!)

3. A2DP and/or a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack for the hipsters. Unlikely on both counts based on Palm's track record and the limitations of FrankenGarnet.

4. Voice dialing? Possible, but then this would combine with the new phone app and much lower pricetag to totally take the wind out of 755p sales.

5. A pre-paid handset? Possible....especially if Palm markets this as a usable PDA/PMP/mp3 player even if there is no wireless service on the device.

If I were Palm, I'd drop the Z22 down to $75ish and intro a version of the Centro as a retail-oriented PDA. Replace the EVDO radio with wi-fi and add a 3.5mm headphone jack. Sell it at $120-$150, bundle it with all kinds of cool software and/or have it include a memory card or a bit of internal flash space and target the kids that might otherwise buy a Nano, Sandisk, or iRiver flash-based mp3 player. Tout the device's capability to play MP3s while little Johnnie is pecking away furious to his l33t friends.

I really have no beefs with this device in theory, aside from the atrocious styling. I'm just worried about the size of the keyboard and the screen. And the battery life, of course. I've seen how my 700p can burn through a 3200mAh Seidio battery during a day of heavy usage. Palm really should have made this thing a bit wider with a standard-sized LCD, even if it meant sacrificing EVDO in the process.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

I get tired of the whinging too, and I've been pleased as punch with all the Treos I've owned thus far. But Palm are not completely blameless: they haven't updated their OS in years and killed off the PDA without providing an equivalent Treo (as in, landscape screen, wifi, graffiti). Is it really so hard to see why the company's oldest fans are frustrated with the lack of diversity in the Treo line?

This device is a welcome first step in said diversification (despite the hideous colour), but Palm still have a ways to go. Until then, we can expect the bitching to continue.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

I'm certainly a member that falls into the pattern the good Doctor identifies. Just a recent example: waited about 10 months for a basic firmware update to fix the bluetooth pairing and lag (and hopefully other issues) with the 700p's I owned. Didn't want to buy yet another Treo to get what was allegedly a feature of the one I already owned (BT headset capability). No firmware fix. Instead - new model Treo 755 which apparently included the fix that by all rights should have been released to 700p owners *first*. I desperately wanted a stable 700p but instead of honoring their warranty commitment and fixing the 700p, Palm shystered many users into paying yet again for the fix by purchasing the newer model. The 755 is inferior in many ways to the 700p: less battery life, lousy MiniSD rather than SD, etc. But Palm is the ONLY game in town for us old timers that have been with PalmOS since the Pilot days and just want functional smartphone device that runs our PalmOS apps. So, we will reluctantly buy the new device to get what Palm refused to fix by design*.

But I damn well reserve the right to "whine" (aka express my discontent with Palm and Sprint with their actions on this matter). After all, Palm's inability to fix the 700p's bluetooth pairing cost me over $1600 and an additional year of contract commitment to remedy. And I *still* have only 50MB of RAM to work with and am stuck with less battery life and purchasing all-new crappier MiniSD cards in order to function.

And, like it or not, Palm *occasionally* pays attention to these forums and our "whining." i.e.: We were the first ones to tell them they screwed the pooch with the 650 NVFS memory - took them a week to finally acknowledge it but I and others who "whined" to them were apparently the only thing protecting the general public from buying a bad implementation that may never have been ack'd or fixed.