I've been using a Centro for a little over a year. Have had a love/hate relationship with it, and have decided to upgrade in a couple of weeks from now.
I think I've narrowed things down to a choice between a Pixi Plus and a Bold 9650 (I have Verizon).
The things I like about my Centro:
1. The calendar. I had a Palm Pilot before, and it had been my savior. After years of missing important appointments, the combo of my PP and my PC synced to one another was a godsend. When I got the Centro I was able to use the same calendar and could ditch the Palm Pilot.
2. Has both a touch screen and a keyboard.
3. Small, very pocket-able. Looks nice.
4. Keyboard is an excellent one.
5. May sound silly, but it's a smartphone. My first one. So, it does all kinds of things that none of my phones before it could even think about doing.
Dislikes:
1. It's not a very good telephone. Earpiece volume is inadequate for calls made while driving or outside in wind.
2. Need three hands to use it. One to hold it, a second to use the keyboard and a third to hold the stylus.
3. Battery doesn't even last one day on a charge. Don't even think about using bluetooth.
4. OS is clunky to use. Not intuitive at all for me. Things I could even begin to tell you how to do even after over a year of use include moving icons around on the main screen, removing icons from screen, changing changing my home page on my browser, bookmarks.
5. Hangs way too often, even when doing simple things like making phone calls.
6. Screen is too small and often requires using stylus.
7. (Should be number 1) Palm has abandoned it. In fact, I got mine soon after Verizon made it available, and it seemed as though Palm had already moved on. No updates ever since I got it. No new software.
Despite so many negatives, the bottom line is that I've kind of liked my Centro. It's obviously very old and obsolete, though.
An upgrade that would make sense would be a Pixi Plus. But will Palm go bye-bye soon, and will I have another orphan?
I have also had my eye on a BB Bold 9650. I think I would really like the emailing ability that it would have, and the better battery life. Screen looks way better than my Centro, too. Keyboard looks good, but no touch screen.
I think you're pretty spot on with your assessment of the Centro. Palm seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur.
I went from a Palm 700 (it was a pretty good phone but it died and I couldn't get it replaced) to a Centro. I hated that phone. It was actually a demotion from the earlier device. Then I got a Storm because I'm a touch screen person. Now I'm going for a Droid X. It just seems like I quickly outgrew the Storm.
It sounds like the Blackberry platform might be a logical next step for you! Good luck with it.
If you head over to precentral.net, you'll see a lot of coverage concerning Palm's future, and HP has made it clear they will support Palm's continued production of smartphones. Palm is not, as the poster above said, going the way of the dinosaur by any means. I recently abandoned BB for a Palm Pre, and I adore this phone. LOVE. It's gorgeous and the OS is a thing of beauty.
Don't give up on Palm yet. I love the looks of the Centro too, but having never had a Palm device and going to it from a crap OS like the BB one, the WebOS truly is wonderful.
I actually think the palm web os is nice but unlike bob feel the bb os is nice too. I have the 9700 and love it and have heard many good things about the verizon bold. The verizon bold should also get BB os 6 so you might want to take a look at that. Either way I think you'll be happy. Good luck and enjoy whichever phone you choose!
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com
I just switched to the Pre Plus as my primary phone. I have both the 8330 Curve and 8830 WE bb's.
I had a Palm 755 on Alltel up until a year ago when we switched to VZW. Now here I am a year later back on Palm. Just as reenee said, check out Precentral.net. I looked hard and studied the Pre Plus before I switched. I think we are in for some awesomeness with Palm. The patches and homebrew applications make the Palm platform great! I have been very pleased with mine so far.
I wouldn't have any reservations recommending the Palm Pixie Plus or even better the Pre Plus.
You don't want to do document editing on a device with no key navigation anyways... It's seriously a nightmare. They need a device with some kind of navigation keys...
You don't want to do document editing on a device with no key navigation anyways... It's seriously a nightmare. They need a device with some kind of navigation keys...
Actually, using the silver/orange opt key makes text editing easy.
