Palm Centro: Too Little, Way Too Late

If Palm had introduced this little smartphone a year ago, I would probably have been over the moon -- actual advances on their Treo technology (instant messaging software with support for MSN, Yahoo, and AIM?!) in a sporty new shell, and all for a hundred bucks. It's aimed squarely at the mass market, those folks who live on SMS and AIM but have never owned anything remotely approaching a Blackberry. I have a feeling, however, that it's all going to amount to a hill o'beans.

Yes, because of the iPhone. The iPhone lured me away from Palm (I've been a loyal Treo user for five years or more) and didn't even have to try to lure me away from Sprint. Hell, Sprint practically pushed me away by "upgrading" my broken phone to a different model which required a new, more expensive data plan. Paying the early termination fees to break my contract seemed like a bargain just to be shut of the nation's most arrogant cell phone carrier. Sprint's customer service was so deplorable I practically kicked my heels together upon crossing the threshold of the Apple Store.

But Sprint's crappy service isn't the reason that I think the Centro comes too late to the party. I just can't imagine that anyone, having seen the future of honest-to-god, uncrippled email and web surfing on a cell phone, would be satisfied with the half-assed experience that the Palm operating system provides in comparison. No, you can't install your own programs on the iPhone (yet). But the myriad of web sites I can get to from anywhere I'm likely to be are more than replacement for the tip calculator and password storage program I lost when I made the leap.

There are a million little niggly points you could bring up when comparing the two phones, but let's try to stick to the big picture: technology choices are about user experience and utility, and the iPhone has it all over the Treo/Centro phones when it comes to that. Yeah, it's $300 more, but I think you get your money's worth. I hope for Palm's sake that the Centro is a success and that somehow they rededicate themselves to advancing the state of portable computing, instead of rehashing a decades-old operating system. But even if they do have something interesting to say in the future, they'll have to fight pretty hard to get me to listen.

Oh, by the way, David Pogue has a review of the Centro on the New York Times.