The Palm Centro

The two companies most often associated with corporate-issued devices, Research In Motion Ltd. and Palm Inc. are anxious to convert people like my friends. This week I tested Palm’s new attempt: the Centro (www.palm.com/centro). It looks like a hip, miniature version of the more expensive Palm Treo, with most of the same functions and only costs $99 after rebates and a two-year contract. The Centro comes in onyx and ruby, though the latter won’t be sold until next month.

Overall, I liked the Centro. It has plenty of pluses, including a touch screen, easy email set-up for personal accounts like Gmail and Hotmail, built-in instant messaging for three programs, a camera for still shots or video and expandable memory. It’s available now and runs on Sprint’s fast 3G network, costing at least $15 monthly for data on top of your voice plan. Like the Treo, it has a tiny stylus for detailed screen selecting and an on/off ringer switch.

RIM should be credited with introducing one of the first hip, mini smart phones to the demographic of 25-to-30-year-olds without smart phones. About a year ago, it brought out the $200 BlackBerry Pearl 8100, which is narrower than traditional BlackBerrys and is easy to mistake for a stylish cellphone. It uses a condensed keyboard with two letters per key that works using auto-correcting SureType technology, and has a glowing trackball for navigation.

For Palm’s Centro to compete with the Pearl, it, too, needed to be thinner left to right. But instead of doubling up letters per key and using SureType like the Pearl, the Centro has a shrunken version of Palm’s full keyboard; letter keys are squeezed so close together that large-fingered users will likely have trouble. I found the Pearl’s keyboard easier to use because its keys are flatter and larger compared with the Centro keys, which caused me to mistype messages. But the Centro’s tiny keyboard could be a real step up for people who still use their cellphone’s numbered keypad to type text messages.

The Centro’s touch screen saves time and makes navigation easier. The BlackBerry Pearl doesn’t have a touch screen, forcing users to do a lot of scrolling with the navigational trackball.

A success with the Centro would be much needed good news for Palm, which hasn’t had an easy go of it lately. While RIM has been cranking out more stylish BlackBerrys, Palm’s solid Treo hasn’t changed all that drastically in the past couple of years. Even loyal Treo users are starting to complain about Palm’s old operating system crashing. Of course, the popularity of Apple Inc.’s iPhone only rubs salt in the wounds of this once unstoppable company.

RIM will bring out a new Pearl, the 8130, next month to step up its game. This Pearl will be the same physically, but will have some internal changes, including the ability to work on the CDMA network, built-in GPS and upgraded software.

I tested a stylish ruby Centro and also got my hands on an early version of the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 from Verizon Wireless. Lined up side by side, the Palm Centro looks like a chubby version of the Pearl. The Pearl looks and feels sleeker and sharper than the Centro, due in part to the Centro’s rounded edges and tiny, bubble-shaped keys.

The Pearl is just a hair smaller in all directions — width, height and depth. The Centro is almost a full ounce heavier than the Pearl, but each weighs only 4.2 and 3.4 ounces, respectively. The Centro’s 320×320 resolution screen looks brighter than the Pearl’s 240×260 screen.

I focused on the Centro, setting up two personal email accounts on it in just a few minutes. I started out typing very slowly on the keyboard, which has keys made of a slightly sticky material. The more familiar I became with it, the faster I could go, but I’m still not completely comfortable using the keyboard.

I quickly navigated through the Centro’s menus using Palm’s familiar operating system. The touch screen saved me from arrowing around to select an icon or menu; I just tapped the screen using my finger or the stylus. First-time smart-phone users will appreciate this aspect.

I made calls on the Centro, pressing the phone shortcut key to get started. The keyboard’s number keys work just as they do on a Treo, but I preferred using the larger virtual buttons on the touch screen. The Centro felt like a normal cellphone in my hand and against my ear, especially compared with the clunky, rectangular Treos and BlackBerrys. The tiny Centro fit into the smallest purse I own.

An icon on the home screen marked “IM” linked me directly into a screen where I could log in to and use three instant-messaging programs simultaneously: AOL’s AIM, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. I jumped between IM sessions using the left and right navigation key buttons. But a faster way to do this was just by touching the screen to select a program. I also tapped the screen to select names of friends before IMing them. Again, the touch screen saved time and took out the guesswork of which key to press to navigate.

I played preloaded music on the Centro and BlackBerry Pearl; both have built-in speakers that sound remarkably good for such little devices.

Battery life on the Centro is estimated at 3.5 hours of talk time and up to 12.5 days of standby time. The Pearl 8130’s talk time is expected to fetch 3.8 hours before quitting, but its standby battery is expected to last only nine days. I didn’t perform rigorous battery tests, but found that my BlackBerry Pearl needed to be charged before my Palm Centro after a weekend of using them for roughly the same amount of time.

The BlackBerry Pearl 8130 comes with only RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger program. Both the Pearl and Centro have 64 megabytes of internal memory and the ability to expand that using microSD cards.

If you’re considering the leap from a cellphone to a smart phone but don’t want the bigger, geekier look of one of these helpful devices, the Palm Centro is a good option. Its keyboard will take some getting used to, but its touch screen will win you over by providing a simpler way to navigate — especially for smart-phone novices.

-Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

This week, I tested a product that marries prints with the digital frame: Hewlett-Packard’s $249 HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center.

The A826 is the latest in H-P’s series of compact countertop home snapshot printers, meant to turn out small photos quickly. But it has an unusual form, with a large seven-inch screen that also allows for images to be displayed in slide shows, like a digital picture frame. This touch-screen also lets users edit shots using a finger or stylus. Pressing one button prints the image in about a minute and a half.

HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center

This new model, due in stores this weekend, is meant to work as a home photo kiosk, so it’s a bit bigger than H-P’s compact photo printers, which have built-in handles for portability and take up less space. The A826 is also pricier than these smaller printers — $70 more than the newest model.

I liked the idea behind this photo printer, editing station and digital frame. Its large screen, 5.6 inches of which are used for the photos, was a welcome change to most photo printers with preview screens that can’t be seen without squinting. But I was disappointed by some of the A826’s features. The newly added ability to draw on images, for example, yielded results that looked fine on-screen but printed out looking like scribble. Removing red eye didn’t seem to improve images on the screen; only when printed did these shots appear red-eye free. And the touch-screen wasn’t as sensitive as I would’ve liked, requiring a few tries to get some buttons to respond.

I couldn’t help but compare the A826 with standalone digital frames. Unlike almost all such frames, the A826 lacks internal storage meaning that in order to keep a slide show going, a memory card, USB drive or camera would need to be plugged into the device. Some digital frames also come with built-in wireless networking to pull images from the Web; the A826 doesn’t have this capability.

This device is hard to miss. Its rounded edges are covered in a stylish white plastic, and the screen is surrounded by black and a pretty shade of pale blue, making it look like a prop from the Jetsons cartoon. It measures roughly the same width as H-P’s compact photo printers, but stands more than twice as tall with the screen at the top so users don’t have to bend as far down to see images. Photo paper measuring 4 by 6 or 5 by 7 inches feeds into the back of the printer in a neat, enclosed compartment that holds up to 100 sheets.

A tiny speaker on the front side of the A826 emits cutesy chimes whenever the device powers on or finishes printing a photo, which I liked. It also uses its large screen for illustrating how to perform tasks like loading paper or inserting a print cartridge.

I got started using the HP Photosmart A826 for its digital frame capabilities, inserting my digital camera’s SecureDigital memory card into a slot below the viewing screen and queuing up about 400 images from my memory card. Images appear on the screen six at a time and in the bottom left corner of each there is a white circle, which can be touched to give it a red checkmark, putting it in the slide-show queue. Tapping the center of any shot magnifies it for editing.

I marked about 30 photos and played them in succession by touching a Slideshow button on the far right edge of the screen. This touchscreen button and others — representing Menu, Back, Print, Scroll Left and Scroll Right — line the left and right black borders of the screen. Only the buttons that make sense to choose at any given time will glow, so users know which ones can be selected and, therefore, can navigate a little easier. For instance, in the Get Creative editing menu, only the Scroll Left, Scroll Right and Back buttons glow.

I folded up a flap that covers the memory-card slots and left my slide show playing for a while on my kitchen counter. It worked like a digital picture frame, for the most part. If the A826 isn’t used for about 10 minutes, it will automatically switch into slide-show mode — a feature I found useful for moments when I didn’t remember that I left it on. This automatic slide show switches over to a black screen after about an hour, though programmed slide shows stay on until turned off.

Touching the screen when an image appears, mid-slide show, will pause the slide show for editing or printing. I used my finger to do simple editing, and most options are offered in large touch-screen buttons, though in more than one instance I had to press buttons with my finger a few times to get them to work. A small white stylus helped, especially for drawing on photos.

I drew cartoon bubbles coming out of people’s mouths and wrote little messages like, “Hey y’all!” bubbling from a Texan friend in a shot from her trip to Europe. These touches can be done in different colors and line thicknesses, and mistakes can easily be erased. They looked good on-screen, but when printed, turned pixilated and detracted from the photo.

I tried some more normal photo editing, such as cropping photos, enhancing a photo’s brightness and removing red eye. The last of these options didn’t work so well in my photos, seeming to leave eyes glowing on the screen. When I printed these shots for the sake of testing, I realized that red eye was actually removed in almost all instances. But this is confusing for users who don’t want to waste ink and paper finding out whether or not the image was corrected.

I found the A826’s most useful photo-enhancing option to be the ability to add captions to shots. These can be entered by using an on-screen keyboard, choosing from five fonts and six colors. The caption can be dragged around the screen to test where it will look best. These typed fonts looked professional and neat, especially compared with my own drawn-on editing.

Printing on the HP Photosmart A826 worked without a problem. It comes with five 5-by-7-inch sheets of paper enough ink for 20 4-by-6-inch prints. Value packs of paper and ink for 120 4-by-6-inch prints cost $35. The printer automatically detects whether it’s loaded with photo paper measuring 5-by-7 or 4-by-6 inches, and prints accordingly. A 5-by-7-inch shot takes a bit longer to print, but looked rather good.

The HP Photosmart A826 seems like it was designed with good intentions, and its large touchscreen is an improvement all on its own. But too many features of this device didn’t work the way they should, from red eyes that didn’t appear fixed on-screen to the touchscreen that didn’t always respond right away. H-P will find an eager audience with this home photo kiosk, but it needs improvement.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com