The Motorola Razer is the thin flip phone that teens love to carry around. While  there have been phones with similar functions on the market for a long time, the RAZR was the first to offer a sleek tiny form factor.

What the RAZR lacked was simplicity. A whole generation of teen cell phone users learned to text on the RAZR but the process was so tedious that it required using a whole different language full of short works and abbreviations. The other functions such as camera, calendar and entering contacts consisted of wading through multiple layers of menus.

Enter the Palm Centro [1]. A Smartphone that combines an easy to use cell phone with the functionality of a Palm. No one has had more practice making smartphones functional than Palm and it looks like they got it more right than ever with the Centro. While the Centro is targeted at teens and parents, it's specs are the same or better than it's current older brother, the Treo 755p.

The specs are listed below, but here is a short summary of what you can do with a Centro:

Work on Word or Excel documents, SMS, browse the web at broadband speed - not slow EDGE speeds like the iPhone, take pictures, watch movies, listen to MP3s and other audio files, voice recording, email, beam information via Bluetooth, add programs like games and record keeping (There are thousands of Palm programs on the market. Almost any program made for Palm devices will work on the Centro), check stock tips, sync with the calendar and contacts on your computer (You can sync with Outlook, Google Calendar, the included Palm scheduling software and almost any other calendar and contact manager), record short videos with the camera, Instant message via a number of IM services, use Google Maps (including lookup addresses in your addressbook on Google Maps at the touch of a button), record memos - voice and written, etc., etc., etc.

While the buttons on the QWERTY keyboard look small, anyone who doubts their accuracy has never used a Treo. The software and hardware design are developed from the ground up for large fingers. Mis-typing is almost unheard of, even if you have large hands.

All this and memory expansion, a user replaceable battery, no antenna, and a touch screen for $99 with activation (the same as a RAZR - less than an iPhone). Currently it is only offered on Sprint, but Verizon is expected to have it within the next few months.

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