Product Reviews

Mobile phone manufacturers have spent a large proportion of their evolution slimming down, but smartphones have had a more troubled history.

It's far more difficult to produce the ultimate in slim, sleek phones when you need a big enough screen to write and read email, and a keypad that's usable enough to tap out more than the odd brief SMS.

It's a challenge that Palm's latest handset - the Centro - tackles head on and it's one, at first glance, that Palm has negotiated successfully.

It's not exactly the slimmest or smallest smartphone around - that accolade goes to the Blackberry Pearl and HTC Touch - but for a device with a full qwerty keypad it's remarkably pocketable. More so than even our favourite business email phone, the Blackberry 8820. It's very light, too, at just 124g.

Usually, a keyboard this small turns out

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to be fiddly and unusable and that was certainly the case with the Treo 500v, which looks like the Centro's big brother, but it's not nearly as cut and dried with the Centro.

It's still fiddly - and you need good eyesight to prod the correct buttons - but the rubbery keys provide enough tactile feedback that knocking out emails is much more comfortable than with the Centro than on the 500v.

It's a more pleasant experience than using a numeric keypad and T9 word prediction too, or even the aforementioned Pearl's pseudo qwerty pad.

Another difference between the Centro and the 500v is that it runs on Palm OS instead of Windows Mobile 6 Standard. This, coupled with the device's usable touchscreen, means the Centro is both responsive and extremely easy to use.

It doesn't have push email out of the box as Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices do, but the VersaMail application that is included is both easy to set up and use, it has Google Maps preinstalled, and document compatibility is excellent too thanks to the inclusion of the highly-capable Dataviz Documents To Go.

The relatively slow GSM/EDGE data connection and small 2.2in screen ensure that web browsing isn't a particularly enjoyable experience. The lack of Wi-Fi and GPS means it's not the all-singing smartphone that the TyTN II is.

But if you're looking for a compact email phone that offers ease of use and simplicity coupled with a reasonable SIM-free price - just £153 - it's a good choice.