#1 is the battery life. Having the Bluetooth receiver on, infrared receiver on, surfing the net and having the screen brightness turned up is going to chew up your battery. Simply adjust these, turn them off, and use a laptop/desktop for casual websurfing will provide you with enough battery power.

#2 It IS Vista 64 compatible. However, you can only sync using Bluetooth. I had to by a bluetooth dongle for about $20 for my laptop. Full details are available at Palm’s website. It may take a bit of looking but it is there.

#3 It is slow to surf the web. Keep in mind this is a smartphone not a laptop/desktop connected to high speed internet. You can’t expect the same performance from the Centro. The Centro has a much smaller screen–just in case you didn’t notice , slower processor (312 MHz Intel PXA270 XScale) , and little memory (128 MB) so don’t expect it to perform like a regular computer because it can’t. It’s not a computer, it’s a PDA.

#4 The picture quality is pretty good. It has a 1.3 megapixel camera so too much shouldn’t be expected. Granted it is not like my $800 digital camera but it is still pretty good. It has video but don’t expect HD quality (video or sound) from it either.

#5 The keyboard is small but it’s a small phone. I do have what can be considered larger than normal fingers but with a bit of practice the keyboard is not a problem. As well I compared this to other devices with keyboards on the front and there is not much of a difference. Remember, it’s not a computer.

Call quality is good and coverage is excellent as usual (I’m in Western Pennsylvania).

Nice thing about the Palm platform is that it is well supported by thousands of applications. You can find an app for nearly anything you could want and a lot of them are free. The included programs are great for music, pics, and even video.

If you’re looking for a high performance, web surfing, picture taking phone this is definitely not the one. If you need to keep in touch, organized, consolidate your life, and NOT spent $30 a month for a data plan you’ll never use then this is the phone for you.

My advice is to take the time to read in detail the owners manual. Use Palm’s website and forums and just take the time to learn how to use this phone.
Rating: 5 / 5

Considering that the documentation says that the standby phone time for the phone should be better than any phone I’ve had, I was very disappointed since some of my phones would go up to 3 days before recharging (I have gone at most 2 days on the Centro.)

The Centro pauses for 4 or 5 seconds sometimes when in contacts. Don’t know what causes it. Of course it remembers all the clicks made during that time so it sometimes takes a long time to recover. I have to remember to stop doing anything on it until it gets caught up. It’s not a show stopper. Just somewhat annoying.

By the way, I use the phone on the PagePlusCellular network. At first it didn’t look like it would work on that network but we eventually got it to work by doing a manual program of the phone (*228 wait for the prompt and then press 1). At first it didn’t look like the manual program would work either (it wanted to stay on the Verizon network), but after a few minutes it worked properly. My son uses his phone on the Verizon network.
Rating: 2 / 5

For one thing, the keyboard is really small, but that’s fine. After a little while, you actually get used to it. While it works just like my previous treos, I have some beef with it:

1. It works just like the previous treos. There is nothing unique about this model except it is smaller. The software is pretty much the same as models from 5 years ago. Considering how long this OS has been used and what is available, I would expect more.

2. The unit is cheap as all getup. It feels cheap, it looks cheap, and it acts cheap. If you get this, buy the insurance. Trust me.

3. I lied. The software has changed; it’s worse. I’ve never had to return a phone or get one fixed in all my years using a cell phone, and yet I’m on my fourth centro. If you want to use it as an MP3 player, it will not allow you to use the speaker when you make cell phone for a period of time after. Now, when I say period of time, I mean anywhere from a few seconds to a few weeks. That’s right, a few weeks (hence why it had to be returned). Sometimes this is fixed with a hard restart, other times it’s fixed by a return. Customer service acknowledged this issue and said hopefully that will be fixed.

I don’t mean to complain, because at the end of the day, it’s still a decent phone. Just given what’s available on the market, I just hope Palm can save itself with the Pre.
Rating: 3 / 5