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Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic Palm Centro hits two-million sales mark, “beats” iPhone
Fuzzy Logic Palm Centro hits two-million sales mark, “beats” iPhone | Palm Centro hits two-million sales mark, “beats” iPhone |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 30 July 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 Given the Centro costs AUD $299 to purchase “outright” from Telstra (an unlocking fee still applies should you wish to use it on other networks), it’s certainly cheaper than the iPhone to purchase outright. Olivier Rozay, regional director of Asia Pacific for Palm, Inc said: “Consumers are ready to do more on their mobile phone, and Centro has struck a chord around the world. Centro has everything a person needs to stay connected with everyone who is important to them -- and at a price point and size that make smartphones more attractive to a much wider audience.” Palm again quotes AdMob figures suggesting that it actually is at the No.3 spot worldwide for “mobile advertising reach”. The AdMob report “analyses worldwide data to gauge mobile Internet use among devices able to receive mobile ads, also noted that 24.3 percent of worldwide ad requests in June were from smartphones, up from 22.4 percent in May.” Palm says: “As more consumers leave their traditional mobile phones behind in favour of moving up to phones with greater functionality, mobile web usage is expected to increase.” Palm uses its Blazer 4.5 browser to give users access to the Internet, and for many years this was the best mobile browser out there. Although it squishes web pages to fit in a smaller mobile screen, it always did this much better than Internet Explorer Mobile. While Blazer is no longer the best mobile browser, far surpassed by the Safari browser on the iPhone, Treo and Centro users still have the ability to use Opera Mini 4.1, giving a much more Safari-like experience, even on an operating system that is a decade old. Opera Mini 4.1 requires Java, however, and there are tweaks needed to install it, plus it’s known to crash on occasion. But hey, so does Safari, on an all-too regular basis, so Opera Mini is still a winner and a great alternative for Treo and Centro users wanting browsing choice. A website at “Howard Forums” has the details on what you need to do to get it installed, which involves downloading a Java VM for the Palm, something that apparently isn’t included as standard, although let’s not forget the iPhone has no Java support, either. The Centro comes with 64MB on on-board memory, but can be expanded with a 4GB MicroSD card, giving you much more space to transfer and store music, videos, books, audio books, voice notes, playlists and other data. It's not a 3G phone so no super fast data speeds - just GPRS and EDGE, but EDGE speeds for mobile browsing is still good enough for more people. No video calls either, no Wi-Fi, and only a 1.3 megapixel camera amongst other features you can see here - but yet it still does all the major features you'd expect from any smartphone. So, the iPhone may still be the prettiest smartphone out there, but it still faces strong competition from the traditional smartphone manufacturers, also equipping their phones with Google Maps, Facebook, better organiser features, physical keyboards, Gmail support and plenty more. The force is certainly strong with Apple, but the force certainly hasn’t ditched Palm either, as the global battle for smartphone supremacy continues unabated!
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