Palm Centro - Best of Both Worlds
Affordable way to manage your social life and work life.
It’s been well documented that Palm’s marketshare has been declining over the past few years as RIM/BlackBerry and Windows Mobile have taken a more dominant chunk of the US smartphone market. However, the market for smartphones has been extending into some uncharted areas of late as devices become more powerful and more affordable at the same time.
Palm seems to be capitalizing on this trend, along with the recent strides in social media, by targeting their new Palm Centro to a younger crowd. While we have seen several smart devices at a similar price point ($99 w/ contract) I don’t recall seeing many so clearly targeted at a younger audience. Their messaging and ads focus on the social, ‘web 2.0-ish’ uses of a smartphone and this mentality extends to the included software and design as well. Apps for IM/text, music, pictures, video, web browsing as well as some vibrant color options will certainly help reign in the high school/college demographic.
While they may be focusing mostly on the younger audience, the Centro is certainly a viable solution for the price sensitive corporate user, too. The QWERTY keyboard, inclusion of DataViz Documents To Go and the plethora of third party apps available for Palm OS make this an affordable enterprise phone as well. Palm takes some hits from time to time for their aging OS, but there are a lot of people who have experience with other Palm devices will surely appreciate having little to no learning curve.
The Centro has been available through Sprint for a few months and was added to AT&T lineup last week. There are plenty of reviews out there so we’re not going to reinvent the wheel. Here are a few good reviews to take a look at:
Engadget - Palm Centro Review
PalmInfoCenter - AT&T Palm Centro Now Available
Treonauts - Palm Centro Review
If you own a Centro, make sure you’ve registered your copy of Documents To Go and take a look at the free 30 day demo of the Premium Edition!