We’re just days away from the launch of the iPhone in Canada, and the media buzz may have you thinking that it’s the only smartphone in town. However, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing with the Palm Centro, which launched to much less fanfare last month in Canada, and I’m willing to say you’d get more bang for your buck with this baby.
The Centro is Palm’s smallest and lightest smartphone and has sold more than one million units worldwide. It will fit into the smallest clutch, but has a complete (and useable!) keyboard.
I have used a Palm PDA in the past, and always appreciated how it kept my life organized with contacts, calendar and to-do lists all together. The Centro does all this, hot syncs to my home computer, but also allows me voice, email, text and web capabilities.
Picture me…sitting in my hairdresser’s chair, checking e-mails, drafting a list of things to pack for our long weekend road trip, and playing solitaire. Talk about multitasking!!
Said road trip was much more enjoyable with the Centro. The built-in camera (1.3 megapixels with 2x digital zoom) gave my three-year old daughter something to do while her brothers played on their Nintendo DS. The photo on the left shows her view of the roadtrip.Then she found the stylus and the photo below shows her creativity on a photo of her brother…
I’ve used the Palm Centro to send a grocery list to my husband by e-mail, to record the name and artist of a song I heard on the radio, to search for the closest Starbucks while driving through Quebec, and to get play-by-play instant messaging from my sister on history’s longest Wimbledon final (while enduring history’s longest drive home). Every day that I’ve used my Palm Centro, I’ve come up with another idea of how it can help me. They don’t call it a smartphone for nothing!
The cobalt blue Palm Centro smartphone is available now for $199.99 with any three-year voice and data plan renewal with minimum $45 monthly service fee for existing Rogers Wireless customers. New customers can purchase the Palm Centro for $299.99 with any three-year voice and data plan activation.