Palm's beefed up Centro with more memory is a worthy contender

LATELY you'll only hear about Palm Inc because of its poor financial results and its delayed Linux based OS, aka Palm OS 2.0. Yet, the upcoming shopping season finds the firm with new Centro versions which double the memory sporting new colours and not so bad news from an on-line adverts firm.

The first relatively good news came from PalmInfocenter on Tuesday which cites the latest AdMob Mobile Metrics report where the Palm Centro ranked number six in the firm's Top-Ten, placing it third below RIM's Blackberries and Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

The stats also show Palm's position is much better in the US than in Europe. Still, in the same report Apple's Iphone OS ranks fourth one per cent lower than Palm's, with Symbian at a distant two per cent. Remember these aren't straight market share numbers but mobile adverts served by this advertising giant.

The second relatively good news came from HTLounge, where we learn about Palm's new Centro offerings with two new colour schemes what it dubs " Spinach green" and "Rosy red" which looks like pink. The major point with these new Centros is the addition of more RAM, now upgraded to 128 megabytes, which for a Palm OS based phone is a lot, as applications are very small on this platform compared to its WinMob counterparts.

We also find CNet's senior editor Bonnie Cha over over here recommending a reader to take a serious look at the Palm Centro as the natural upgrade path from a PDA, saying this entry-level phone gives "the familiarity and benefits of the Palm OS and PIM (personal information management) tools, but also get voice features and a full QWERTY keyboard in a device that is the size of a PDA." For an OS that many consider dead already, it's been doing pretty well. Sometimes the "less is more" philosophy applies.

But to keep with our unbiased style, we also include some bad news for Palm Centro users to the mix: Google released last week its "mobile GMail 2.0" Java ME application, but some Centro users whom have attempted to force-install it into the device using IBM's J9 Java VM have found that it doesn't work. We wonder how long it would take for someone to fire up JAD and find out why version 2.0 hangs on the log-in screen.

Speaking of the Centro smartphones and GMail, we did test the previous release - version 1.5 - of GMail's Java software and it works well on the Centro provided you install the unsupported Java VM as explained over here, it is a nicer experience than using IMAP with VersaMail.

In any case, keep in mind it's an unsupported configuration as J9 is not included any more so you will have to find it yourself.

Good old OSs are hard to kill

A review at PC Mag for the Centro praises it saying that "like most Palm OS devices, the Centro feels really fast. Applications respond quickly to taps, and the screen redraws instantly, especially when compared with much slower Windows Mobile gadgets" but then cites the OSs age as one shortcoming: "the Centro runs the four-year-old Palm OS 5" only to acknowledge later that "at $99, that's enough for folks who just want to check e-mail and surf light Web sites."

Former INQster and PalmOS Treo user John Oram added: "As far as an operating system being put down/trashed just because it is old; what about DOS, COBOL, UNIX, SUN's Solaris, IBM products like OS/2, mainframes and mid-sized computers. All of them have operating systems which are older in basic structure but updateable functions have been added to them all."

He also mentions this incredible story by PC Mag's lead mobile analyst considers Palm OS is not a player anymore since it "no longer enjoys a significant market share" despite the fact that it actually gained market share with the Centro compared to a year ago. Yes, indeed it's in the single-digit figures, but a lot of companies would love to have that much market share and that amount of third party software available.

In short: there are still too many players in the mobile OS arena: the ever-growing RIM, Windows Mobile, the unstoppable Symbian steamroller, LiMo, Google's Android, even ALP is still a contender, we are now shocked to read. Our crystal ball still cannot foresee any clear winner. What is clear is that in the current economic climate, "less is more" and a thin OS like the venerable old Palm OS means a $99 phone has more chances of selling well than the most expensive of smartphones.

Like a certain OS from IBM which was pronounced dead by pundits again and again for about a decade - if not more - before IBM pulled its plug for good, good software often survives for a long long time on its virtues alone.

No wonder some people are amazed at the ability of running Palm OS on Nokia's Linux based tablets. Mark this scribbler's words: the Centro still has a lot of steam and potential as an entry level smartphone. µ