When Palm first announced the Centro on Sprint last fall, Palm OS enthusiasts were less than thrilled. They wanted a real high-end Treo replacement—not a budget model. But it turned out to be a pretty good handset, offering nearly all of the Treo's power in a smaller, lighter body, and at a low price ($99.99 with contract, and after a mail-in rebate). Now AT&T has its own GSM version, which is all-white and reminiscent of Apple products of old. In this new guise, the Centro is rather nice handset for 99 bucks, and offers much of the same power you'd get with Apple's baby for a quarter of the price—call it the poor man's iPhone.

Really, I'm not crazy: while it doesn't do everything the iPhone does, the Centro does do lot of the same stuff for a lot less. Admittedly, it could use a little tweaking here and there, mainly because of the outdated apps Palm bundles with the handset. But the Centro is also pretty good at messaging—in extended use, the Centro's small, gel-like QWERTY keys aren't as off-putting as they look—but I wouldn't want to use either handset for long missives.

The Centro's touch screen requires the stylus, since most of the interface elements are too tiny for your finger. (The iPhone, by contrast, doesn't need a stylus and doesn't include one.) The 2.2-inch, 320-by-320-pixel LCD is sharp and bright, only a few tenths of an inch smaller than a regular Treo. The glacier-white handset itself measures 4.2 by 2.1 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.4 ounces. There's a hardware ringer switch on top (yay! all phones should have them) along with a well-placed, well-balanced array of hard and soft keys. Getting around the device is an exercise in simplicity. The cheap quality of the included plastic stylus is a downer but not a deal breaker.

Voice calls sound clear and crisp for the most part, though during testing one was choppy enough for a redial. The small body is easy to hold comfortably for however long your conversation lasts. The Centro sounded clear and powerful when paired with a Plantronics Explorer 370 Bluetooth headset. Its speakerphone was okay, but not quite loud enough for outdoor use. On the plus side, the Centro now has a voice-dialing client.

The GSM-based device is quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and supports both GPRS and EDGE data protocols. Even though the Sprint version of the Centro supports 3G, the AT&T version doesn't. And this is where Palm OS rears its ugly, outdated head, as it lacks support for UMTS and HSDPA data networks. (This is the reason the Palm Treo 680, which debuted almost 18 months ago in AT&T and unlocked versions, also lacked 3G support). Unlike the iPhone, the Centro doesn't support Wi-Fi, either. Ouch.

Speaking of Palm OS, we've gone over various issues with the five-year-old operating system before—check out our recent reviews of the Centro for Sprint, the Treo 755p for Verizon, and the Treo 755p for Sprint. Suffice it to say that aside from being very easy to navigate, the Centro offers a decent POP/IMAP e-mail client along with AT&T XpressMail. Palm's calendar and contacts programs are always excellent. The Blazer Web browser is fine if you stick with WAP sites. The bundled Documents To Go Professional Edition views, creates, and edits Microsoft Office documents and can preserve tracked changes in Word.

But Palm OS's main draw remains its killer software platform, which is compatible with thousands of third-party applications. And like the iPhone, the Centro is a good choice for Mac users; Palm has supported the Mac platform for over a decade, dating back to the OS 8 days. I mention this because with many smartphones—particularly Windows Mobile and BlackBerry OS models—you'll need a third-party client from Mark/Space or PocketMac if you're a Mac user, even for something as simple as synchronizing contacts.

The Centro doesn't play video out of the box; download TCPMP for that. There's a 3-day MobiTV trial that I wasn't able to activate on my review unit, so I couldn't test it. But I wouldn't expect much from the $9.99-per-month service, because of the slow EDGE radio. AT&T also bundles a three-day trial for 25 channels of XM radio, along with access to AT&T Music. The built-in PocketTunes worked with both MP3 and unprotected AAC files, including some from iTunes Plus. Music sounded horribly tinny through the built-in speaker, and Palm OS still doesn't support stereo Bluetooth, so wired earbuds are the only practical option for music listening. For data storage, the Centro supports microSD cards up to 4GB—my 4GB Kingston card worked without a hitch.

The Centro's built-in camera is unimpressive on paper, offering a middling 1.3-megapixel sensor and no autofocus or LED flash. It took decent shots, though, with good sharpness and white balance, if a little flat in color. The videos were well lit and nicely sized at 352-by-288, but they were too jerky. The Centro's battery life was disappointing, lasting just 6 hours and 46 minutes on a talk time rundown test. While it's not horrible, EDGE-based GSM devices usually do better, often by several hours.

One big draw for the Centro is its low, low price. At the advertised $100, it competes mainly with low and midrange feature phones like the Sony Ericsson w580i. On occasion, more powerful handsets like the Samsung BlackJack II go on sale, and at the time of this writing, it was also available for $100. If you can find it at that price, I'd easily recommend it over the Centro. Regardless, if you're expecting the latest in cell-phone technology—such as a fancy camera with autofocus, voice-guided GPS, high-speed Web browsing, or stereo Bluetooth—the Centro isn't your handset. But as a lower-cost alternative to the $399 iPhone, it makes good sense. Now about that new version of Palm OS…

Compare the Palm Centro for AT&T with several other mobile phones side by side.