At least access to most of the services was extremely easy thanks to a dedicated tab on the touchscreen. The usual options such as voicemail, messaging, email, etc could all be found and quickly accessed here. The 1.3-megapixel camera and pTunes media application were also found here, as was a web browser link and a very useful dedicated Google link. It’s a shame the link to Google Maps was hidden on the second page of the deeper Home menu.

Curiously, it’s impossible to turn the phone completely off. The marketing suits at the Centro’s UK launch assured us this wouldn’t have an adverse affect on the battery as it consumes so little power in the background. We have to admit it didn’t seem to run things down and we didn’t find ourselves charging it more than other similar smartphone models. And don’t worry, it’s possible to put the phone in plane safe mode if you don’t want to have to pull the battery out every time you’re boarding.

As well as a very decent battery life, the device also handled all the tasks we threw at it very well. The 312MHz processor made sure we never hit a whirling circle of loading doom the whole time we used it.

Its worst problem by far - at least on the model we tested - was the fact it may crash when someone calls you. OK, so it’s a quick turnaround to dunk the battery out of the back and reboot everything, but this is still a major flaw. Oddly, if we’d been using the Centro just before a call it never crashed. If it had been sitting in our pocket unloved for a good few of hours it was almost certain to do this. A quick Google search doesn’t throw this up as a widespread problem, so perhaps it was just our model. But having switched to the Palm Centro for a month from our regular phone, it was this issue which made us switch back to the HTC Touch.

Overall, despite being Palm’s smallest and cutest device to date, this is still a fairly average entry to the smartphone market. However, the low price point of £199 RRP without a contract will no doubt help get it into the hands of users.

VERDICT: 5/10

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