Gadgetory

this is terry davis for pocket now calm and this is one of the video review for the UK sim free palm centro now pick this device up about a week or so ago at the UK launch and i've been using it ever since i must admit i am really impressed with the phone it's small it's a nice for fight so the refer to it as a candy bar because it is not much bigger than a mars bar if it's nicely in your hand if it's nicely in your pocket i even carry this in my shirt pocket and and it's not as if it weighs it down or anything it's great now let me run around the device and i will show you some of the hardware features that it's got in part one and that will probably give you some idea as to why i like it so much starting with the top there's a switch which is common to quite a lot of palm devices and it's a mutant vibrate switch and you switch it from one side to the other and amuse the device and switch the inter vibrate mode now that's brilliant why more phones don't have that i have no idea when you're in a meeting and your phone goes off you slip your hand in your pocket you flick it across and that's it that's all you need do you don't need to take it out your addy pocket with my with my titan if it goes off and I've forgotten to mute at first I have to fiddle around switch it on I have to have to tap the icon and and mute the device and switch it off and with this it's it's as simple as putting my hand in my pocket it's great really really common sense device that on the side here they've got the infrared saw adapter the infrared socket which again I said I don't know what thinking is behind putting this on here because I don't really know anybody that uses it's much much more and more phones now are phasing out the infrared in favor of Bluetooth too and I wonder if they'd have lost this could there spend that money that in the cost on upgrading from bluetooth one point to which this is to a Bluetooth to chip which would have given things like a2dp but they obviously had their own reasons just below there we have the microSD socket now they've limited this to four gigabytes which again is I think a little bit strange considering the fact that this is aimed at a younger market where they're used to having media on their phone be it movies music photos videos that kind of thing i find that four gigabytes runs out very quickly especially if you're on the move as well i mean i watch movies and things on the train when i'm traveling to work and having it reduced to four gigabytes from one used to in my tight and eight gigabytes is is a bit of a backward step for me but anyway it said still it's still fogging still sufficient from first for most people's general usage now you can see I've got some thumbnail but getting this thing out is actually quite difficult and it's a little bit fiddly you have to poke your thumbnail in there and then and then pull the flap down and then you can just see inside there is the socket now trying to get that out on a train station is to switch it for another four gig one with music or something else on is is not the easiest thing to do and you liable to you lose it so the easiest thing to do is just slip the back off there and then you can see you can access much more easily and it just clicks in once got the back off there you can see the battery it's 1150 milliamp hour battery and just below that is the sim card ok just put the back on here so just moving on to the back of the device here you can see the camera lens there which is a 1.3 megapixel camera which does still photos and video and as you've seen in the example that I put in my review it's a fairly good quality picture with the two times digital zoom next of that is the speaker which is used for media playback and for speaker phone which is it's a really good quality speaker it's it's clear and its sound is fairly loud too in the top corner on the back there we have the stylus its full length plastic stylus which just slots in the corner there because this is a 320 x 320 touchscreen as I've said and I must admit I haven't used the stylus very much because the configuration of the keyboard and the keys is so well well laid out well thought out that I times even forgotten needs it's a touchscreen phone and I've relied on the touchscreen very little which is says a lot about my time because i use the titans touchscreen an awful lot and perhaps that's because the d-pad being at the bottom makes it difficult to use and then constantly switching around to flip the keyboard this is is is great the bottom of the device is the one thing i don't really like there's a series of proprietary connectors as you can see that's a standard connector that's 2.5 millimeter jack club which will take stereo headphones or the motto headphone the supplied next to it though there's a proprietary charge and sync in line connector now there are enough manufacturers out there at the moment that I've managed to figure out how to make a phone use a mini USB socket which will both charge and sync from the same thing so why on earth other manufacturers can't do it I don't know come on lets you know stop doing this everyone's got loads of USB sockets lying around the house and they might as well all be standard and the only reason I can think of doing it is laziness or perhaps there's plenty of profit in selling on cables next to there you can see the power connector which is for the wall socket which again is a proprietary connector it seats not something I've ever seen before it's a square bizarre configuration and I've got nothing like it around the house now there's no reason to have that it could be integrated as one as one piece is he just takes a bit of thought I know if I can just switch it on and I'll show you the keyboard in action and I'll give you some idea then as to as to as to how it does actually work in practice so if i switch it on and i'm in the memo is there so just try it type a quick message here and i'm going to see how well i can do it and what if I typed it says terry says hi to all our readers now there's no spell checker on there there's nothing i just typed that straight away now I felt my thumb hit a couple of keys equal of times but it's still accurate enough to pick up exactly what I wanted to say and I'm really impressed with that is great for typing text messages or for jotting notes just like this really good well thought out well it very usable so that's part one in part to what I want to do is show you the media capabilities of the phone but this is the end of the first part of the video review for the UK sim free palm centro thanks