DailyTech - Palm and Sprint to Offer $99 PDA Phone

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Gadgets Palm and Sprint to Offer $99 PDA Phone
Purav Sanghani - September 28, 2007 3:53 PM

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20 comment(s) - last by augiem.. on Sep 30 at 2:54 AM

Palm Centro in Onyx (Source: Palm, Inc.)

Palm gives the smart phone another go with the Centro

Palm, Inc., once a leading manufacturer of smart phones and PDA devices, is giving the mainstream cellular phone user market a try with a new phone/communication device called the Centro.

The Palm Centro is targeted at the average phone user with intuitive text messaging and emailing capabilities by way of a QWERTY keypad, web browsing capabilities with the built-in Blazer web browser and mapping features with Google Maps. The Centro will also be able to take snapshots with the 1.3-megapixel camera. Sprint will offer TV channels through the Sprint TV service on the 320x320 color touch screen.

The Palm Centro has 64MB of onboard memory -- similar to many PDAs on the market -- and features applications that help take advantage of the multimedia capabilities the "smartphone" has to offer. The Centro also has a microSD slot built-in to store additional videos, photos, and MP3s.

The technical specifications boast 3.5 hours of talk time and up to 300 hours of standby time with the removable 1150mAh lithium-ion battery. The Centro also has built-in Bluetooth v1.2 to support wireless headsets and wireless data transfer between other devices.

The Centro will come with a $99 price tag (with a 2-year service contract) and an option of two colors: ruby (red) or onyx (black) which Palm hopes will entice the younger crowd.

It looks like the Centro is planned to be a Sprint exclusive and will operate on Sprint's cellular and data network. Availability is slated for mid-October at both online and brick and mortar-based Sprint stores as well as Palm stores

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Web browsing

By augiem on 9/28/2007 4:58:04 PM , Rating: 3

I've been waiting for the web browsers to get better before jumping on the smartphone bandwagon. After the IPhone and Safari, the other browsers are going to HAVE to mature. I wonder if they've made any improvements in this area yet.

Otherwise, this one looks to be a decent size. And I'm glad it's not a touchscreen. (I assume)

RE: Web browsing

By darkpaw on 9/28/2007 5:01:40 PM , Rating: 2

I've been running Opera on the Q for a while now and it is pretty good for mobile web browsing. It's not great, but better then anything else I've used on a screen this size.

That said, I don't see why this phone is really news. The Q has been offered at that price point or less for a while now. Its not the greatest PDA phone, but decent for the price.

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RE: Web browsing

By spluurfg on 9/28/2007 7:05:39 PM , Rating: 2

Yeah, I've been pretty happy with Opera/Operamini and the Symbian Series 6 nokia browser. Pretty functional, I find. The only thing that can be irritating is form entry.

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RE: Web browsing

By Treckin on 9/28/2007 5:04:11 PM , Rating: 2

it is a touch-screen.

It would be reallllllyyyyyy gay if it didn't have one.

The whole point of having a touch screen is to speed-gui user input... Selecting with a highlight box and directional arrows goes way against that principal.

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RE: Web browsing

By Quiescent on 9/28/2007 5:08:18 PM , Rating: 2

Just as long as it doesn't have a touch-screen keyboard, it's all good. It took me a minute to type out the entire URL of Maddox' home site on the iPhone. I can assure you I have a better cpm than that.

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RE: Web browsing

By augiem on 9/28/2007 11:08:02 PM , Rating: 2

Clicking links with a touchscreen with your finger is near impossible. I had a horrible time doing it even on the IPhone. Websites are designed for higher resolution than these screens can provide when using capacitive sensors and your fingertip. (like the iphone) Styluses don't work on capacitive sensor screens, so it's really hard to get any accuracy. Resistive sensor screens can't really pick up your skin touch very well, but they work with your fingernail or a small stylus, which works better for clicking web links, etc.

As long as you can do ALL your navigation BOTH ways (using arrows or touchscreen) I'm okay with it. I'd love to see a thumbwheel as well (like the blackjack) -- that triple combo would be killer.

Touchscreen keyboard? NEVER!

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RE: Web browsing

By Hare on 9/29/2007 4:42:42 AM , Rating: 3

quote:
After the IPhone and Safari, the other browsers are going to HAVE to mature. I wonder if they've made any improvements in this area yet.

You might want to check out Nokia's browser. Also based on Safari components. Javascript and flash is not a problem...

Without a touchscreen it's not as fast when it comes to navigation but renders pages perfectly and is not cripled when there is javascript functionality on the pages.

http://www.s60.com/browser

quote:
Web Browser for S60 is based on the WebCore and JavaScriptCore open source components that are used by Apple's Safari Internet browser. These components are based on KDE's Konqueror open source project.

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RE: Web browsing

By augiem on 9/30/2007 2:54:32 AM , Rating: 2

Wow that does look like what I've been looking for. Most of the phones S60.com lists are not available in the US, but I did see the N75 in the list. I'll try to take a look at that at an AT&T store. I probably wouldn't buy the N75 though because it has no keyboard, but maybe it's a taste of things to come soon...

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Competition

By MADAOO7 on 9/28/2007 7:10:43 PM , Rating: 2

I can see this phone being competitive with Sprint's BlackBerry® 7130e and the other carriers Blackberry 8100 Pearl. Personally, I think the Blackberry has a much better design and OS. I wonder how fast the processor is? I know my pearl has an XScale 312Mhz processor, which makes everything very snappy.

RE: Competition

By retrospooty on 9/28/2007 10:46:45 PM , Rating: 2

wow, you are the first person I have ever seen that prefers BB OS to Palm (or windows or Symbian for that matter). BB OS is a joke. They have by far the best email app and service, but the rest is just so-so.

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RE: Competition

By audiomaniaca on 9/29/2007 2:46:04 PM , Rating: 2

Palm OS is crap. I don't know how crappy is the BB, but from a Palm OS point of view, everything is amazing.

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RE: Competition

By retrospooty on 9/29/2007 6:09:28 PM , Rating: 2

It's a bit outdated, but not crap. If it had a little UI makeover (add eye candy), and fixed the ability to use wifi and cell on the same device, and had better multitasking it would own the market totally.

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pigs are flying high tonight

By Gul Westfale on 9/28/2007 10:23:37 PM , Rating: 2

OMFG. palm may actually launch a product that makes sense... wow. only took them, what, 5 years? ;)

if this is essentially a tungsten E with phone features i might buy it- $99 isn't much, and if it offers the same functionality as the tungsten E (movies, music+ all other palm apps) and has decent battery life then i'm sold on it. it certainly seems like a much better deal than the iphone, and the keyboard remedies the one great flaw the tungsten E had (because data entry with graffiti is a pain in the ass).

RE: pigs are flying high tonight

By retrospooty on 9/28/2007 10:45:25 PM , Rating: 2

Yup, it looks pretty cool. Not the latest greatest features, but for the price, its great, and shorter, thinner and less wide than the Treo's.

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RE: pigs are flying high tonight

By PrinceGaz on 9/29/2007 10:58:50 AM , Rating: 2

One feature I'd want that seems to be missing is Wi-Fi support. GPS would be nice too, but I can live without that.

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RE: pigs are flying high tonight

By Targon on 9/29/2007 9:04:57 PM , Rating: 2

GPS and WiFi in a $99 phone?

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How is this a good deal?

By Marlin1975 on 9/28/2007 8:27:38 PM , Rating: 2

My Blackjack was Free and my Wifes Blackberry 8100 was $99. Not sure why they think this is such a new/great thing? Heck newegg had ALL there phones for free last month, including the 8800 and all the othjer high end phones.

RE: How is this a good deal?

By soydeedo on 9/28/2007 10:04:25 PM , Rating: 2

Because neither of those have touchscreen functionality. Those two are more in the smartphone segment while this is kind of bridging the gap between smartphone and pdaphone. I, for one, will never buy either of the devices you mentioned since I'm so keen on the touchscreen interface.

The centro is essentially a baby palm and is starting out with their lowest initial price point of any of their models while keeping pretty much all the functionality of a full-sized model. Sounds like a bargain to me, and it'll only go down in price.

As for Newegg, well you can always get better deals on new contracts through third parties - that's nothing new and Sprint will undoubtedly have the same sort of thing through their third party suppliers. But when you compare this $99 to ATT's corporate pricing then it's mighty competitive.

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RE: How is this a good deal?

By retrospooty on 9/28/2007 10:43:55 PM , Rating: 2

I am not sure what you mean by someone thinks its a great new thing either, but it is a pretty good phone at a good price. The others you mentioned were alot more at the time of release too. This will be free w/ 2year contract soon enough I am sure. All phones drop massively within 1 year. Also, Palm OS, although old, is still the simplest, easiest most intuitive UI in the non-$400 category (iPhone). I would buy one.

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