Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time Palm sat in regal American splendour. With an innovative and groundbreaking PDA it took the world of written diaries and to do lists and tore it to shreds. Life was good. UK-based Psion tried to storm the US and failed. A nail in Psion’s coffin, a smile on Palm’s face.

Then Palm got nailed by another company - Microsoft. Windows Mobile rose and rose, and eventually even Palm gave in and produced WM-based devices. The rise and fall of upstart company Handspring formed by Palm execs and the splitting of software and hardware development into separate companies did Palm no favours either.

Which brings us neatly up to date. The Palm Centro is Palm’s first Palm OS-based smartphone to hit these shores for absolutely ages, and while its outward design might look like the Windows Mobile -toting Treo 500, the innards are Palm through and through.

And that means there is both good and bad to contend with.

The bad mostly comes in terms of specifications, the good in terms of the sheer and undeniable beauty of the Palm operating system, and its ease of use.

No Wi-Fi, no 3G

Palm has never liked Wi-Fi, very rarely putting it into a handheld device. So the odds were always stacked against the Centro getting Wi-Fi, and the odds have proved reliable - there is Bluetooth here but not Wi-Fi.

Palm also shows a distinct reluctance to get into the 3G side of mobile comms, and has not included that in the Centro. This is a quad-band mobile with GPRS and EDGE but not 3G.

And then there is the camera. Almost every smartphone around has a built-in camera and the Centro is no exception. But Palm has really let itself down by using a 1.3 megapixel lens and not bothering with a flash for low-light conditions.

1.3 megapixels might be fine for an entry-level non-smart mobile, but any smartphone worth its salt should surely offer more. With 5 megapixels the current high tide mark, we’d expect two and hopefully three megapixels from a quality smartphone these days.

Get over these problems, though, and you do start to realise that the sheer and undeniably beauty of the Palm operating system and its ease of use make for a device it is difficult not to like, despite its failings in the specifications department.

Light and comfortable

First let’s look at the design. It doesn’t blow your socks off with its originality but it is pretty neat nonetheless. Black and silver are the colours of choice - again not original, but tasteful. And the Centro is fairly small at 107mm tall, 53mm wide and 19mm thick. It weighs 124g which is on the light side for a smartphone, and the Centro feels very comfortable in the hand. Very phone-like, in fact.

The buttons are large and neatly designed giving access to commonly used smartphone features like calendar, email and voice dialing. There’s a small Qwerty keypad and a touchscreen. On the top edge is a ringer mute switch and on the left edge is a button whose function you can customise.

The keypad is probably as small as can be managed on a smartphone and to be honest we found it a little fiddly to use. You are going to need very small hands to get on with it at speed. The screen measures 2.2 diagonal inches and is square, its 320x320 pixels looking clear and sharp in their relatively squeezed surroundings.

The screen is touch-sensitive and there's a stylus if you’d rather use that than a fingertip to get around. But frankly we found a fingertip was fine most of the time.

The design is pretty much spot on, but for one small flaw. You can boost the internal 64MB of memory with microSD cards, and we were initially pleased to see that the slot is side-mounted. This allows for quick swapping of cards rather than having to remove the backplate or battery to get to the card slot.

But not so fast - although the slot is side-mounted, we found it impossible to lift its lid without removing the backplate first. Very frustrating.

If it aint broke...

Moving on to the software, the first point of note is that at its core little has changed since the last Palm-based outing, the Treo 680 which appeared in late 2006. But don't be put off by Palm OS 5.4.9's apparent longevity.

Software-wise the smartphone essentials are here along with some useful extras, so you can sync with a PC out of the box, and we’ve got calendar, contacts and tasks applications, all of which make really good use of the screen space available.

There is mobile email support via the very good VersaMail and for seriously heavy users Documents To Go lets you create, edit and view Word and Excel documents and view PowerPoint and PDF files. There is a reasonable Web browser and Google Maps is built in. Music fans can use the built-in player, though it is disappointing that the Centro has a 2.5mm connector and Palm deigns to include only a mono earphone. Oh, and the Bluetooth doesn’t do A2DP.

Smartphone essentials like a note taker, voice memos, world clock and calculator are also here.

We appreciate the simplicity of the display in applications, the lack of whizzbang features that detract from good usability, and the straightforward way information is displayed. Like we said, and it bears repeating a third time, we really like the sheer and undeniable beauty of the Palm operating system, and its ease of use.

So where does this leave us? Well we really can’t help liking the Centro. It just shows how advanced Palm was back in 2006 and how little the competition has done to come up with something better. Even way back in 2006 Palm had threaded SMS messaging, and it is back here. Windows Mobile has only just cottoned onto this with the recent release of WM 6.1, and only the iPhone has really managed to come up with a genuinely new approach. And look at how everybody is scrabbling to imitate that.

On the other hand the absences are glaring. No 3G, no Wi-Fi, poor camera, useless mono earbud, no A2DP. Palm was ahead once, but is no longer in that position. The Centro is a good but not a great effort. Let’s hope Palm pushes further ahead next time round.