Palm Centro Guts Dissection Pics
Pictures of the disassembled circuitry of the inside of the Palm Centro have been posted online courtesy of the FCC. The images are a required to be submitted as part of the FCC approval process and show a up close, inside look at the device. Read on for the full gallery.
Getting ready to go under the knife.
Back cover and battery cavity removed.
Rear circuit board and shielding.
front facia and lcd screen removed.
Camera and rear speaker array.
Circuit board closeup.
More chips.
Palm Centro guts up close and personal.
For more information you can read our Palm Centro review, or take a look at the additional FCC documents.
For more "guts galleries" check out: Treo 680, Palm TX, Tungsten T5 and the Treo 600.
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White?
I wonder if this is going to eventually appear on other carriers (Verizon, Alltel, Telus etc)?
We've seen the GSM version in white before but this one's definitely not that.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: White?
I did keep the black antenna when I rolled the old modem over to a new Cingular case/mobo. Of course there are very few people that would ever notice such a thing. Not like case mods are tough with these things, buy one and spray it blue/black/gold.
I plan to roll my LifeDrive over to a 4 gig CF card as opposed to the *slow* HD when the cost drops a bit more.
RE: White?
Go read Mike Cane's blog somewhere on the net (uh...if it still exists).
RE: White?
It appears the LD has problems (random crashes/resets etc) that are NOT solved by moving from a MicroDrive to a CF card. Performance is greatly improved, yes, but it still is unstable & buggy.
A TX + 4gb SD card is a much better overall solution than a LifeDrive, but you probably already figured as much.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: White?
Nokia is releasing it's OS2008 for the N800 any day now (and Canola2 is on the same, vague timeline) with the advent of the BT drivers finally working and the Garnet emu working for what I need I fear the LifeDrive is not long for the device scrap pile.
Spending $200 on a TX would be just silly. You can get an N800 for that now (in which you can slap *2* 8gig SDs)and all you have to do is watch video on that screen once and you'll never see a Palm/WinCE device the same way again. The new N810 just shames it in even more ways (size, GPS, screen, keyboard, etc) As a Palm developer I can bail today, hack in Linux for while (*today*) and *if* Palm ever resurfaces with a Linux based OS, I'll be somewhat fresh. :D
RE: White?
That won't help. I have a CFed LD. Well, let me put it this way: if you *liked* the HDed version, you'll probably like a CFed one.
Me?
I hate the damned thing! Even with CF it is slow as hell. And there are times when it gets so slow, I have to do a soft reset to flush whatever crap is clogging it up. (Hm, that's probably on the HDed version too...) And I never had it with an HD. I bought a dead one off ebay and its only problem was the HD. I had someone put the OS on CF for me and swapped it with the dead HD. So when I say slow, I mean slow as in *real-life* slow, not as-compared-to-HD slow.
He won't find that out on my nearly-static (3 recent posts in past month) blog. I shut it down before I got to post about how much I hate my LD.
Oh yeah, I just love (NOT!) the times I want to quickly look up something and it's taking FIVE FREAKIN SECONDS to switch between apps! And I mean one of the FOUR CORE APPS. The only app I've put on it is TCPMP. And I've gotten so fed up with the entire device I've even stopped watching vids on it. Haven't in 4-5 months now!
COLLIGAN: RESIGN!!!
RE: White?
I will say the single biggest flaw on the LD is the fact that it is *not* setup ala the T5/TX et all. i.e. The harddrive *should* have been a separate drive and the main OS in RAM like every other Palm. I expect slow on the HD access, but not on the main functions of the dev. Hence the failure.
LD bashing aside, again I will say that Palm dropped the ball on the LifeDrive, I was watching TV quality video with bluetooth headphones a year before the iTouch or the iPhone existed. Early 'leaked' photos of the video iPod *were* images of the LifeDrive, 'shopped. Rather than *killing* the PDA, Palm could have pushed the portable media angle and ran with it. Now it's Apple's market. (The PDA is dead, long live the iPod.)
I'm guessing the thing will still function for a while, at some point my kid can watch Curious George on it on the way to grandma's house. I have a lemon, I'm making lemonade. :D
Modem is not on a daughter board
This basically means that they can't just fab one board for CDMA and GSM, and can't reuse a possibly existing spec for a radio board. This is the norm in phones, but you lose the flexibility.
The other big blow from a production standpoint was the stupid 240x240 limit on WinCE. They had to fab all new screens/drivers as opposed to just flashing one WinCE and the next Palm (or even waiting on the case/ROM and filling on demand based on sales). Alas, such things just drive up the cost of the unit which either we get to pay or Palm gets to eventually eat in margin.
I would argue on that one that the held FCC device was a GSM Centro, but perhaps that is just wishful thinking. (Dunno why FCC would hold a boiler plate modem though).
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That's some significant shielding