Sprint offers Palm Centro in new colors and lower price

(Credit: Palm)

Just in time for the holiday season, Sprint announced on Tuesday that it will offer the Palm Centro in two new colors. Starting October 19, you will be able to get the entry-level smartphone in vibrant rose or olive green, in addition to the carrier's red, black, and pink models. According to Palm, the colors chosen based on fashion trends for this season as forecasted by the color experts of the Pantone Fashion Color Reports for fall 2008 and spring 2009. How chic.

In addition to the new hues, Sprint will lower the price point from $99.99 to $79.99 (with a two-year contract) during the period of October 19 to January 10. It's a darn-good value, especially when you consider you get a couple more features too, including Facebook for Palm, Google Maps with the My Location feature on the device's ROM, and twice the storage of the original Centro from Sprint. Not too shabby.

[zarrik]

The problem with the Centro is that is uses Palm's outdated OS.

[ewl88]

Yes Palm's OS is old. But it is very functional and intuitive. I have a Treo 755 with Sprint (used for medical marketing research purposes) and a Blackberry 8830 with verizon. I find myself preferring the Treo for most functions. I don't love the blackberry os. I haven't tried the new BB with touchscreen but the Treo is intuitive and suits me well. Neither os multitask well or have good browsers. The BB 8830 does have a superior push email system that works with my hospital's BB enterprise server but otherwise, I like the treo better. No doubt the palm os needs to be updated but it works well still. For the new smartphone user, the palm os is good enough. (I have had good stability with the Treo 755 [better than my old Palm T X] which hopefully translates to stability with the Centro) Haven't had enough time with the Iphone or windows mobile to comment.

[Zeeshan47]

I love my centro. It does everything I need it to, and my needs go beyond just text messaging. The browser is slow and there is no 3G, but the sheer fact that the OS is more responsive and has a far better library of apps made me choose this over WM. Oh and I have never had a crash, and I've had this phone for about 8 months. The green looks pretty sexy. I'd trade in my white for that.

[IowaNinersFan]

No complains here about my Centro. It does everything that I need and then some.

[JCPayne]

I would suggest anyone thinking about buying a Centro would use it before they buy. I have thick-thumbs so I found that the keyboard was way to small for me to use on an on going basis. Also the device doesn't have the 'back button' in the best spot. I thought the big red button should have acted like a back button and an on/off button. e.g. press the red button quickly to go back. And press down and hold to toggle the power.

[NorthWakeDad]

Like my Centro a lot. In a world where phone UIs and operating systems change so quickly, its nice to have the familiar Palm OS. I first used it on my ancient Palm IIIx, and by now its an extension of the way I think and organize.

[amlepa2]

It's October 21st now and the Sprint representative I'm chatting with says he "doesn't see that phone in his list". Any news on when these will be available?

[ladybug979]

I have a Centro and It doesn't work. The first one I had stopped working in less than 3 weeks, it was replaced, I have the second one less then 6 month before it stopped working. The people at sprint said if it is even in the kitchen when you are cooking the steam from the food can cause corrosion on the inside which will void any warranty. I din't know about you but i hold my phone to my mouth when I talk and my mouth is humid. Be warned.