The No-Brainer $100 Treo Upgrade

After deliberating all the different smartphone choices in recent weeks, I finally came to a decision. Or in some sense, the decision came to me through the convergence of two events: The antennna on my long-suffering Treo 650 broke off and AT&T shipped a GSM version of the Treo Centro.

If you’re looking for the latest dope smartphone (is that an oxymoron?) with state of the art UI, Wi-Fi capabilities, high-speed browsing or Windows Mobile then skip out and don’t bother with the Centro. But if you’re a long-time Treo user, then let me tell you why this is a no-brainer upgrade.

I’m a long-time user of the Palm OS, going back to the original Palm Pilot. I’m not only a loyal user, I’m probably too loyal. But my guess is that there are a lot of other long-time users of the Palm Treo who could benefit from the Centro. Here’s what you get:

-Weighs only 4.2 oz (50% lighter than the 650)

-Smaller than an iPhone

-No bulky external antenna

-Decent keyboard for email, messaging

-Standard palm apps for calendar, contacts, etc

-Miserable crappy slow browser

-Same old Palm OS but more stable (not a single crash in 2 weeks)

-Better voice quality than the Treo 650

-Slightly better camera

-Slightly faster email using AT&T’s Edge non-3G network

If you’re on Sprint or AT&T it’s a $100 upgrade to get a phone that is smaller, better, more reliable and faster. And if you’re upgrading from an existing Palm device, it’s relatively painless: Backup, resync and get back to work.

The only drawbacks I’ve found are:

-The Centro uses a Micro-SD card, not the older, large SD

-Battery life is shorter, so spring for a spare

-My wife called it a “chick phone”

I can live with that.