High Quality AT&T GSM Centro Picture Spotted

Pat;

The general sentiment amongst the online crowd is that this is a pre-production model. IE: this is one of the ones produced BEFORE Rubinstein made his famous trip to China back last summer. Recall that story?

I really don't mind the aeshetics etc. of the Centro. It's just that TO ME PERSONALLY the keyboard is way too small for anything approaching efficient typing and the screen is impossibly too tiny. And the weak battery capacity is a killer on a CDMA/EVDO device. I expect the GSM Centro fare a bit better in regards to battery life.

At any rate, it'll be interesting to see if the Centro is a one-off model or if Palm really is going to try to begin differentiating their smartphone lines.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

ANYTHING is easier to type on than the iPhone/iPod Touch!!

I could probably SMS faster on a dumbphone keypad than I could type on the iPhone! My fat thumbs do NOT co-exist well with Apple's onscreen keyboard. I'd give ANYTHING for a good metal stylus and Graffiti 1 on the iPhone (HAH!).

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

I've tried both an early production run iPhone AND a recent "fresh" version AND and a Touch. Unless the ones in the Apple store were somehow wildly out of "calibration" (is there even such a thing on these devices?) It's not that I couldn't type QUICKLY (I could). It's just that I made SO many errors that constantly having to backspace & correct slowed my pace to a crawl. Are there Prefs/sensitivity settings for the auto-correct?

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

The ideal, world-beating device would be:

-iPhone FF (or a tad larger), LCD, & build quality

-Small Treo 750/755-style d-pad and 2 or 4 "action" hard button along the bottom where the iPhone's single button is now

-A stylus + silo (retractable boing boing T|T stylus would be perfect)

-User-selectable "stylus" or "finger" input methods with corresponding shrinking/growing dialog boxes, fonts, windows etc.

-User-selectable onscreen character input (Graffi 1/2/Decuma, Apple thumboard etc)

-FULLSIZE SDHC slot, side-mounted & behind a door ala Treo 680

-Removable battery at least 1600mAh

-Offered in both GSM & CDMA formats with full 3G

-DUN/tethering etc.

-Non-recessed 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. Also full A2DP BT support

-Linux-based OS w/ Palm PIM apps

-At least 4gigs of built in storage

-Treo's top-mounted ring/vibrate switch

-The usual voice recorder, voice dialing etc.

-A clean, elegant, Mac *AND* Vista-friendly desktop software component that puts both iTunes & Palm Desktop to shame.

-Native "drive mode" or UMS functionality

Basically, such a device would be a blend of the best part of the iPhone *AND* the Treos.

It's just too bad Apple will never give us all the "little" stuff that the Palm OS diehards are used to and Palm'll never give us the biggies (good camera, solid build quality, robust OS, big screen, wi-fi & BT) that Apple tantalizes us with. The current smartphone market is series of lose/lose scenarios for everyone other than teenyboppers, IMO.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

And was this iTunes running on a Mac or PC? I have never had a problem running iTunes on a Mac. If this was on a PC then I would understand.

PDA's Past and Present:
Palm TX (Number 2)
Palm - IIIxe, Vx, M500, M505, Tungsten T, TX
Handspring - Edge, Platinum, Deluxe
Sony - SJ22
Casio-EM500
Apple - MP110, MP2000, MP2100

^^ Thanks for the advice folks, but I think I've reached the limit of effort that I'm willing to invest to get it to work properly. (a couple of plus hours of my life that I'll never get back...) I just don't have the time to screw around with PC's that I used to, shame.

That said, while I think the program itself is junk, the music store is very, very well designed. My sister (aged 10) had it sussed in two minutes flat, and she hates computers.

Having now owned an iPod Touch for a few months, I am very handy with the keyboard. A few observations-

1. It is decidedly un-Apple-like in that it requires a bit of practice to get used to.

2. The spell checker is critical, lucky it works very well and is good at predicting what you meant to type based not only on general spelling, but using proximity of probable missed letters.

With the above, I am generally able to type faster on this keyboard than with my old Sony CLIE TG50. I can really get into a rhythm since my fingers just need to softly touch the screen rather than click a button down. The counterpoint to this is when I make an error, it's typically a huge error that the auto-correct was not able to fix, and I sometimes have to backspace and re-type entire words.

I prefer a real (well-designed) keyboard to the soft keyboard. But I prefer the big iPod Touch screen to my Sony TG50 screen. My PDA needs aren't that great though these days, a hacked iPod Touch gives me all the functionality I need.

Considering how heavily Sprint is advertising the Centro, I'm guessing that they want to have the Centro name on their devices only. It's just one more sign of how firmly Palm is under the thumb of the carriers. In any case, T-Mobile coverage tends to be better and stronger than Sprint in Chicago, so I'd much rather have a GSM smartphone regardless of the name.

I do believe there was a grainy screenshot from back in the fall that showed it having the 680's dialer. Supposedly (according to what a Palm spokesperson told Ryan a while back) the new dialer is "hardcoded" to the GSM radio in the Treo 680 and that it would not be possible (ie: it's cost Palm $) to port it to CDMA Treos. That's probably why the 755p and CDMA Centro have continued on with the lame old phone app.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

I've never seen a good picture like that of the Centro... thanks. Glad I never took time to go look at one. Well, hell, it still has POS 5... I think there has to be a record for the number of devices this OS has endured.

Vote for John Kerry... best man for the job.

Frikkin-A. Now we need to depend on Chinese leaks. Malaysia's now out of the loop. Philippines too.

And HTF did he get a FOLEO?!!? ARGH!!