14 DAY TRIAL // AT&T, the largest mobile carrier in the US, will offer Palm's Centro handset to its subscribers starting tomorrow, 19 February 2008, for $199 with a $100 mail-in rebate and a 2-year contract. Apparently there will be a white, a black and a pink version of the Centro, which is pretty cool, as users have more colors to choose from.
Palm Centro was first released in the US in September 2007, exclusively via Sprint, the third largest carrier in the country. Since Sprint's exclusivity expired this month, it's no wonder that AT&T releases the handset too (and it seems T-Mobile will follow soon).
Measuring 107 x 53.5 x 18.6 millimeters and weighing 124 grams, Palm Centro offers features that make it a mid to entry-level device. It runs on Palm OS 5.4.9 and offers a 320 x 320 pixels TFT color touchscreen, a full QWERTY keyboard, 5-way navigation button and a 1.3 Megapixel camera with video recording. Furthermore, we have EDGE, GPRS (no 3G unfortunately), MP3 player, document viewer/editor (PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint), Bluetooth 1.2 with A2DP, WAP 2.0 / HTML browser (Blazer 4.5), email capabilities, full PIM functionality, handsfree, voice memo and microSD card support for extended memory. A Li-Ion 1050 mAh powers the handset, providing up to 3.5 hours of talk-time and up to 300 hours of stand-by time.
While some users don't like the Centro at all, seeing it as "ugly", others simply love it. Anyway, Palm officials said the device exceeded their expectations in sales, which can only mean that it is a successful handset. After all, it has an affordable price and its features are not that bad. The Centro was also released in Europe, in a quad-band GSM version, and Palm expects it to be as successful as in the US.