On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Angus Scott-Fleming <[email protected]> wrote: > The Palm Centro is the only other possibility but I haven't heard > anything positive about it.
I recently got a Centro 690P (CDMA Verizon) new. About 1.5 months ago. I have never used a Treo for myself, so I can't compare it to that. My previous PalmOS handheld was a Sony Clie PEG-TG50 (no phone), running OS 4.x. So far, I like the Centro for what it is. Screen: A little smaller than my Clie's was, but it's the same resolution (thus, higher DPI). Color is good enough. Digitizer (touch screen) works, feels nice. Most on-screen controls are now too small to finger, but the stylus works. The big buttons in the Datebk6 alarm screen are fingerable. Stylus: The stock stylus is a flimsy piece of plastic and worthless. I picked up a 3-pack of metal replacements for a few bucks. Nice. Keyboard: Tiny buttons. Worse, much too close together, and the wrong aspect ratio. Far from the best mobile keyboard I've ever used, but not the worth, either. They're at least raised enough to feel that, and they have a good feel for chiclets. Backlit, at least. I miss the keyboard on my Clie. 5-way nav: Took some getting used to after the jog dial on the Clie, but it works well. Most UI elements respond well. Some older games don't recognize it, but that's about it. Phone: Works well. Dials from contacts; type to search for name. Can assign speed-dial hard keys and "favorites" GUI buttons. Or dial manually. History works well. You can tap to call back for missed calls. SMS/MMS: Comes with an app for this. Internal audio: Built-in speaker is tiny, of course. Not good compared to any real radio, but good for what it is, and can get loud enough for alarms and hands-free phone. Earpiece is a bit quiet at max volume, not great in a noisy area, but otherwise okay. Mic seems fine. External audio: 2.5mm 3-conductor jack. It will accept a mono hands-free kit (earpiece and mic), or stereo headphones (no mic). Phone switches based on what is plugged in. It's hard to find headphones with a 2.5mm 3-conductor jack, so I bought an adapter to 3.5mm. Sounds good with my $250 Sennheiser phones. :) Bluetooth: Handsfree phone works great. I haven't tried data linkups yet. Supposedly you can Hotsync via Bluetooth; I want to try that. No stereo (for music) natively, but a third-party product supposedly adds this and works well. Haven't tried that yet, either. Data/browser: I'm not on a data plan, so I don't do any of this. But I've used Palm web browsers before and they stunk. Slow. Unstable. And thanks to the dated PalmOS and its spiffy lack of memory protection, when the browser crashes the device reboots. Wifi: Doesn't have it, can't have it. This part sucks. (Someone hard-hacked a Treo wifi sled to fit the Centro, but it looks ugly and cumbersome at best.) IR port: Has one. Haven't used it. Mute slide switch on top; sets phone/alarms to vibrate. Nice. No reset pin switch. You have to do a battery pull. Not nice at all. Fortunately, I haven't had any lockups since I first was playing around with it and was trying silly stuff. Keyguard: You have to press one button, then another, to unlock the keypad. Prevents butt-dialing, for the most part. I miss the hard "Hold" switch from my Clie, though. Construction: I haven't had it long, but it feels pretty solid. I bought a transparent plastic shell protector for it anyway. Plus sacrificial screen protectors. Internal memory: About 68 MB available to OS. Plenty adequate for all my apps. Not really enough for multimedia, unless use is real light. Card: microSD up to 4 GB. I have one. The card slot is a major pain to get to -- you have to pop the back over and remove the battery. But I never plan on changing the card, so not bad in practice. Native software won't export the card as a filesystem to the host PC via USB, but I found an app, "Card Reader", from "Mobile Stream", that does it. Works for 'doze and 'nix. Camera: Standard issue crappy cellphone camera. No optical zoom. Camera shake is a problem for stills for me, but I'm twitchy. Movies have poor frame rate, and unless ambient audio is perfect the built-in mic will just record unrecognizable noise. Can save to internal or card. Has an organizer app that's okay. Software: Most of my old PalmOS-based apps still work. The strength of the PalmOS platform has always been openess. There are huge numbers of apps out there -- prolly more than the iPhone, despite all the hype. They're not as flashy as the iPhone, but they get the job done. And unlike the iPhone, apps can fix system deficiencies. See above about Bluetooth and card reader. "There's an app for that", and you don't need Apple's permission (or jailbreak) to run it. Conclusion: If I wasn't a long-time PalmOS user, and a DateBk addict, I wouldn't want it. But as the only option left, it's not bad, and could be a lot worse. FWIW. YMMV. HTH. HAND. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
