So I recently got a Palm Centro on AT&T and decided to write up a little review of my own on my new cell phone.

First off, the phone itself: My phone costed $200 with a $100 mail in rebate thru AT&T. Does anyone else hate mail in rebates? They’re somewhat retarded in my opinion. Obviously, I’m giving AT&T tons of money as it is already, seeing that I just renewed my contract with them. Hopefully my world will still be delivered when I move to Williamsburg Virginia, and I won’t have dropped calls that they insist do not happen often. The Centro is a pretty cheap phone for all of the amazing gadgets that come along with it. This is my first smart phone, so I was a little lost at first… I decided to do the geeky thing and actually go through the tutorial and read the handbook. Everything seemed pretty easy to do.

Although, I did have a rough time at first. I started out with a different palm centro. With my first one, I had downloaded hotsync and synced my phone with my computer. Luckily, all my contacts were saved onto my computer after I moved them to my phone from my sim card. A day later, my Centro continuously tried to HotSync even though my comp wasn’t hooked up to it. Weird, eh? After Darren did some very helpful research, I discovered this was very rare, but it’s happened before. I simply went in the next day and traded it in for one that works. This time, I didn’t set up HotSync. In fact, I didn’t even unwrap the USB cable for the phone. Evilness. So now all my contacts are gone, but still saved on my computer. I’m adding them in as I need them.

Buttons: I love the buttons on this phone. Once I started to do some SMS on the new Qwerty keyboard, I got used to it pretty fast. The buttons on the keyboard are a little small, but perfect for a girl with nails, like me. You can personalize the keys as much as you want! I took Darren’s advice and stuck the camera to the side button, and changed my main buttons to whatever I use the most. The camera looks great.. It takes about 3-4 seconds to run the camera.

One of my favorite parts of this phone is the ringer/vibrate switch. Since I have classes, I love the fact I can just switch a button to turn off the ringer. It’s easy.

Centro’s also can take micro-SD cards. Luckily, I had one from my handy dandy mod chip for DS, so I simply stuck some songs/pix on there, stuck it in the phone… oh yea, this was the aggrivating part. It took FOREVER to figure out how to copy those songs/pix onto my phone to use as ringtones/wallpapers, respectively. You have to go into the Web app, and link to the file, then save it as a ringtone, image, etc… It takes way too long to add pictures and songs to the phone…

I love the firmware. Palm is so user friendly. Everything you need is at your fingertips. Each menu item has a cute lil picture to help you figure out what it is. Each application has information available, and each menu page has helpful tools to guide you through your first time with the system.

I love the schedule/calendar. It’s so helpful. I found an easy way to set alarms by setting a calendar event and telling the phone how soon I want an customizable alarm to go off. All in all, great operating system, and great hardware. It’s so cute. Everyone I’ve shown my new phone to loves it. It just looks techy and geeky, and perfect

But one of the downfalls is the battery life. I read some reviews online before buying my phone and everyone said battery life isn’t that great. I can usually have mine last about 3 days, then I have to charge it. My old phone could run 5-6 days without a charge, so this is a little annoying for me…

All in all, I’d give the Palm an 8/10. I LOVE IT! It’s not perfect, it has flaws, and it takes some getting used to, specially if it’s your first smart phone. But the device is very user friendly and incredibly customizable. And I love it

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