Following my article about the iPhone, Nokia N95 8GB, Palm Centro and TyTN II, and the reaction to the fact that the N95 and Centro both received 8/10 for price, here is today's question. What score out of 10 would you give your smartphone / PDA for value?

I stand by my figures of 8/10 for the Centro and N95 8GB because they are very different smartphones with different capabilities, and the pricing choices offered put them at the high end in value terms. Murray also wrote an article on Palm-Mac (which was wrong by the way:)) about my previous comparison.

The Palm Centro has burst onto the UK market with barely a whimper, and is not setting the global smartphone market alight with stories of massive sales and a whole new generation of smartphone users loving their first smartphone. This is to be expected in a world of multi-connected smartphones that include GPS chips and all sorts of other gimmicks that make so many of us trade up so often.

The Centro is not a Treo but it is still a smartphone, and it is one that is aimed at the growing number of people who are curious about the smarter phones they see in the mobile shops. It is aimed at people who want to manage their contacts, calendar and other information in a phone that will not look out of place in a trendy coffee shop or in a meeting room, and Palm has succeeded in that aspect. The Centro is a lovely piece of kit to hold and it is just as good to look at.

The silver edging seems to work within the overall form factor, despite the fact that it is a touch dominating, and even the glossy finish adds a certain something to the look. The Centro feels too small to be a smartphone and resembles a normal feature phone more than the Treo line, and this is a very good thing.

The Treo keyboard was a classic and one that is difficult to emulate in a small space, and so Palm has had to completely redesign the keyboard materials and size to make it fit on the smaller Centro real estate. The keys now feel like rubber and are much closer to each other with less travel than previously which should make for a slow data input experience. Strangely, it does not and I have had few issues with this keyboard design. After a few minutes I managed to respond to emails and add calendar appointments with few mistakes, and the Centro keyboard has a lot of ‘Treo’ about it.

The navigation and call buttons above the keyboard are very flat, but also quite big and I personally like this set up. Everything here works well and within minutes I knew where everything was and was able to keep up to my usual Treo speed. The actual navigation button is quite small and those with big thumbs will not be overly keen on it, but I’m alright Jack:)

The stylus is poor and is made of bendy black plastic. I understand the need to make a thinner stylus, but it could be a lot more rigid than the included one. Hopefully a third party will design a metal one.

The screen is smaller than previously which will be a disappointment to some, but there are other issues that are a little more annoying than the size- the edges around the screen are quite high and this hinders finger navigation most of the time, and in some applications it is noticeable that the text hits the ‘very’ edge of the screen which makes for uncomfortable viewing. It also stops you from copying a whole line of text with the stylus which is a poor show.

On the left side are volume up/down buttons and a voice record button. I did my usual and installed TreoKeyHack to make the volume buttons scroll up and down and have found it more than comfortable enough for eBook reading. On the right is a microSD slot which strangely requires the battery cover to be taken off to insert a card- not a huge deal because you do not need to remove the battery. Finally, the classic slider mute key still adorns the top of the unit which is one of the best parts of any Treo- so simple, yet so necessary.

So, that’s a quick look at the hardware and tomorrow I will look at my first uses to see how well it compares to the Treo 680. I have to say that my first impressions are extremely positive and that, from a design point of view, the Centro is a classy little smartphone that outshines most of its rivals.

Agendus for Windows Mobile version 2.2 has been released with the following changes-

Added mobile Active Sync Provider supporting transfer of Icons and Day Color between Agendus for Windows Mobile and Agendus for Windows Outlook Edition
Added Power Search 411 and Power Search Internet facilities and integrated both with Power Search Local [Professional Edition]
Task/Contact Views: Added 'Expand All/Collapse All' control appearing when the list is grouped
Added a new option in Contact preferences allowing to disable the dialing confirmation dialog if desired
Added 'Choose Date' to the date picker drop list in many views in which it was missing
Date picker dialogs: Using 'Done' after selecting a date or selecting 'Today' with tap or dpad is no longer required
Date picker dialogs: Added 'Input Date' to the right soft button menu to quickly jump to the date input box
All Views: Added a new menu item called 'Edit', which provides menu access to the same items in the context menu when using tap/hold or dpad/hold on an individual record. Cut/Copy/Paste were subsequently added to the new 'Tools' menu item.
Added 'Set Day Color' and 'Remove Day Color' to the right menu in 'View Options' in supported views
Reduced size of icons on the toolbar buttons, providing easier determination of dpad focus
Meeting Attendees: Added the on-screen buttons to the right soft button menu of the Attendee selector dialog for easier one-hand access

Improvements and Functionality Refinements

Task alarms: Improved default alarm date to always be the same as the due date, unless the due date is in the past
Context Menus: For sub-menus, corrected using dpad->right/left dismissing the menu when used, rather than expanding the menu as expected
Today View: Resolved a stability issue when a birthday or anniversary were present
Split View: Corrected 'Auto-size' tables causing the divider bar to sometimes obscure meetings
Block Views: Corrected 'Export as vCard' in the context menus not working as expected
Week 7 day grid: Corrected category filter not being applied [Professional Edition]
Contact Views: Corrected input focus not defaulting to the lookup field if the main Agendus toolbar was hidden
Contact and Task Views: Grayed out 'Go To Date...' since it's not useful in these views
Meeting/Task Edit Dialogs: Repositioned the Icon picker to be right of the Category Picker
Corrected a misspelling of 'Auto' at Preferences->Agenda Views->Split View settings

Gavin has recommended Ariel Battery Monitor v2.0- "Apart from its incredible low CPU usuage and it is totally colour customisable, tapping on it reveals the memory stats."

Ariel taskbar battery charge monitor/indicator/gauge replaces the "Start" button Icon at the taskbar with battery info icon.

Main features:
-Makes good use of the unused space of the "Start" button icon.
-Battery power is always visible, because it is on the taskbar.
-Very low CPU consumption (Only about 0.001% !!! Much less than any other battery monitoring program !!!)
-Tiny memory usage, Much smaller than kBattery, pBar, magicbutton, batmon or xbutton.
-Just put it on StartUp folder or link to it, and it will do the job!
-WM2003, WM2005 (WM5) , WM6 ( Now fully compatible ).
-Full control of all displayed colors.
-The gauge can be moved to replace any icon on the taskbar
-VGA screens are supported
-Landscape mode is supported

New version of Qt from Trolltech will support Windows CE (and thus Windows Mobile too)! is good news over at msmobiles. Thanks to Luca.

"Nokia recently decided to acquire Norwegian Trolltech company, that is making, among others, multi-platform developer tools for Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Unix and Linux.

Interestingly next week Trolltech will announce something very interesting for developers:

Trolltech's Qt - by now supporting development of programs for full version of Windows, Mac OS X and Unix/Linux, will now also support Windows CE and since Windows Mobile is based on Windows CE, it will also support Windows Mobile! In other words: big number of applications developed with Qt will be easily portable to Windows Mobile and new kind of applications will be created - such that can run across several platforms, including Windows Mobile, and such that expand services to..."

Industrial conglomerate Siemens AG will cut 7,000 jobs at its corporate telecommunications unit Siemens Enterprise Networks, officials with knowledge of the plans told The Associated Press on Monday.

The cuts would amount to about 40 percent of the telecom unit's worldwide work force of 17,500 people.

SEN designs large-scale communications systems for corporations, but has come under pressure from the availability of cheaper Internet-based telephone systems which has eaten away at its customer base and sales.

The Munich-based company intends to announce the cuts Tuesday after a meeting of its economic advisory committee, according to the officials who asked not to be indetified by name because the official announcement had noy yet been made.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported the planned cuts on Sunday.

Siemens, whose diverse products include trams, turbines and telecommunications equipment, will eliminate 4,000 jobs in the unit worldwide with 2,000 of those cuts coming in Germany, its home market, according to the officials. Another 3,000 workers, including 1,000 in Germany, will be shifted to other units owned by Siemens or to company partners, they said..." More at cellular-news.

Congress May Force Telecoms to Offer Phones without Contracts is a good read over at Brighthand- "Under a proposed U.S. law being debated today, telecoms would be required to offer handsets without requiring users to sign a service contract to get them.

Despite what some have said, this law wouldn't require telecoms to offer unlocked phones that can be used with any telecom, but it would force them to sell all their devices without forcing users to agree to multi-year contracts.

The most obvious example of a product that would be Apple's iPhone. The only way to get this model in the U.S. is to sign up for two years of service with AT&T..."

Today's free eBook is The Four Hundred Thousand "I stand on the balcony outside my parent’s cinder-block apartment, watching contrails drift apart in slate skies. My left hand grips a just-delivered letter, crushes it. I can’t help it, the tracking device that the officer has shot into my hand makes it impossible to uncurl my fingers just yet. It burns.

By direction of the President… the following personnel are ordered to active duty… on that date, the named will proceed to ______ __ Military Facilities for the retrieval of said personnel out of Jet Oberaan(yr-15)/ovaries-2:

In the living room, a printout of number and letter combinations sits on the couch: four hundred thousand, one name for each egg follicle inside me, one name for each potential soldier. I’d stopped reading after the fourth page–there are one hundred and nine pages more. By my calculations, and the doctors’ latest report, I’m twenty-six healthy divisions full of death to our enemy. No surprise I’ve been called. I always sort of knew. I just thought I had more time. I have five days..."