Palm Centro 2 leaked, lacking QWERTY? (update: nope)

As good as it looks, we're not going to get too carried away with this supposedly leaked Centro 2 image. While the mockup certainly looks professional, there's no way of knowing at this point whether or not it's from Palm official or just the dream of a downcast fanboy. If true, then we're looking at a new, presumably QWERTY-less touchscreen device with what looks like an Opera (not Blazer) browser, dedicated media keys, and Bell Mobility Canada branding. A design which would certainly be "breakthrough" and "revolutionary" for Palm smartphones. Hit the read link for a bigger pic while we shake-down our sources for more input.

Update: Sigh, it was too good to last. Turns out that it's just a Photoshop project. Palm, do the right thing and hire this guy.

[Thanks, Robert and Joe F.]

[Gunn @ Aug 11th 2008 6:18AM]

Actually great ad!

[Orpheus @ Aug 11th 2008 6:22AM]

If it's a fake then Palm's advertising department should probably hire this fanboy.

[John Gardiner @ Aug 11th 2008 8:22AM]

I know the guy who made that ad, he was in my marketing class at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The project was to create, or recreate a marketing scheme for a current product. He also made a very impressive commercial and a few other ads for new palm products he had envisioned. I wonder if he knows this is out there!!

[Ignatius @ Aug 11th 2008 8:47AM]

If this ad is fake, at least it'd explain that two-tone arm and hand. That creeps me out. It's like he wears gloves 24/7 and tanned his arms.

[Anthony @ Aug 11th 2008 10:53AM]

@Ignatius: Go to your local coffee shop on Saturday morning, befriend a few road cyclists. We all have "white hands & tanned arms". Some of us have white hands, tanned arms & fingers. I've tried to remedy it but you just get used to it after a few years.

[Tonicboy @ Aug 11th 2008 11:49AM]

Clearly a Photoshop job. The silhouetting between his arm and the background, while decent for a student, isn't even close to professional quality.

[Alberto @ Aug 11th 2008 3:15PM]

Palm doesn't have an ad dept. They do use a Ad Agency. Am sure this kid already on the road to a great firm.

[Alberto @ Aug 11th 2008 3:11PM]

Even thou this is a bit 101 when it comes to ad layouts. The person did an awesome job. As far as quality, it is pretty professional looking to me.

"good for a student". Actually, whoever did this...did a better job then the majority of posers i have to deal day to day claiming to be professional designers.

Yeah, It's not genius work... and this layout has already been done for Post-It years ago. So it's not an original idea.

But it's well done regardless.

Who ever say, "good for a student" except for wannabes.

[Gunn @ Aug 11th 2008 6:21AM]

As a treo user, I'd rather call it a "break-heart".
Without a QWERTY? That's just hypocritical.

[Christian Walters @ Aug 11th 2008 7:50AM]

Just what I was thinking man...the keyboard is the ONLY thing that the Treo line still has going for it! Best thumbboard in the industry IMHO.

[Tim @ Aug 11th 2008 6:25AM]

That look very fake for the simple reason that all pictures of the phone show the same screen. Surely if you are paying for a print ad, you show off a couple of different screen shots i.e: 'Phone'!!!!, 'Messaging', 'Browser', 'Media Player', 'Camera' etc... and that browser shot in the big picture is just absurd, that can hardly be the way they want to portray themselves, you need to have a loupe ready just to look at the ad...
I say it stinks!
So there.

[Tim @ Aug 11th 2008 6:28AM]

Also, if one side shows 'chaos' with all your scribbles and doodles on your arm, how does a web-browser create 'order'?
They are showing you a problem, then something that does not solve it, great ad indeed...

[zomg0t @ Aug 11th 2008 6:32AM]

It's a pun: There's a bunch of writing on the individuals palm, and the solution is to get another palm. At least that's how I interpreted it.

[Tim @ Aug 11th 2008 6:36AM]

True, that would be fun if they actually put those notes in order in an orgaizer program on you new palm, rather than going from being soo busy with all your stuff to totally slacking off on youtube, but you're quite right with the palm/palm thing. did not think of that.

[zomg0t @ Aug 11th 2008 6:38AM]

I suppose they could have shown something that provides more organization than youtube, though; something like a to do list... Damnit, I really must avoid the bad habit of double-posting, even if the content is quite different..

[Kamokazi @ Aug 11th 2008 8:46AM]

1) It's not real

2) If it was, 90%+ of the people who saw the ad wouldn't even notice anyway.

[John @ Aug 11th 2008 6:30AM]

Ya, YouTube is going to bring order to your life!

[Austin @ Aug 11th 2008 6:30AM]

If this was real, I'm assuming that Bell would use their new corporate logo on the device...not the old one.

[GORF @ Aug 11th 2008 6:35AM]

Whoever did this, I want one of those hands.

[L @ Aug 11th 2008 6:44AM]

Looks fake to me - those player control buttons alone are 'shopped for sure...

[ghostsfp @ Aug 11th 2008 6:48AM]

It's not real, here's the original:

http://koreansensation.deviantart.com/art/Palm-Centro-Magazine-Ad-70375854

[Andrew @ Aug 11th 2008 6:50AM]

Having the benefit of just a little bit more "insider info" I am rather confident that this is a genuine article and that Palm will soon make this Centro2 available...

Here's my longer take:

http://blog.treonauts.com/2008/08/palm-centro2-fi.html

Cheers, A.

[L @ Aug 11th 2008 7:42AM]

Haha, pnwed...

[TheGasMan @ Aug 11th 2008 8:14AM]

FAIL.

[ScOObyDoo @ Aug 11th 2008 8:34AM]

How embarrassing.

[Eric M. @ Aug 11th 2008 10:31AM]

"Having said this, if my sources are correct we should still all have news of a possible new Palm device coming out in the next few weeks…"

My sources tell me that you're full of it.

[unkone @ Aug 11th 2008 11:24AM]

FAILBLOG

[Kris @ Aug 11th 2008 1:07PM]

"insider info"? Do you mean "Engadget.com"?

Douche

[Jamie M @ Aug 11th 2008 6:50AM]

I don't believe that it would ship in those colours.
Furthermore, the choice of hard buttons would be odd - there seems to be redundancy with the red and green side buttons vs the two blue ones under the screen. It would be unusual for a manufacturer to have both sets. Look at the touch diamond, for example.

[Mobius_1 @ Aug 11th 2008 6:55AM]

Whoa, that looks SLICK! Kinda reminds me of my old Zire 71, but with much nicer buttons and shinier designs (in the really good way)

And if it has a good, clean, fast OS I will definitely consider it when the times comes to upgrade my phone

[collegekid13 @ Aug 11th 2008 6:57AM]

whys the arm orange and the hand pink

[Stiv @ Aug 11th 2008 8:17AM]

b.c it's not a real ad. Someone did it for a class project. Seriously.

[Harry S @ Aug 11th 2008 6:59AM]

It is definitely a fake. Under the groceries list on the hand "luck charms" are written in. Lucky Charms is a registered trademark which would require extensive permissions to be used to promote another product. Nice fake though.

[blomster @ Aug 11th 2008 7:08AM]

Fake or not, I want one. I was just looking at the LG Dare and thinking it'd be so awesome if that came with Palm OS and a touchscreen.

[torqueo @ Aug 11th 2008 7:16AM]

Engadget fails.

[Andrew @ Aug 11th 2008 7:41AM]

@Robert

LOL I was indeed fooled!

Shame because I would actually really have liked to see a touchscreen-only smartphone like this come out from Palm...

At the same time, my sources continue to indicate that we should expect a new device announcement from Palm very shortly but I guess that it will not be the Centro2...

Cheers, A.

[TareX @ Aug 11th 2008 7:43AM]

Why would Palm roll out a touchscreen only device before the (iphone killer) Palm OS II is out?

it won't be a killer, but it's designed for smooth touch... so that photo didn't make sense. And yes they should hire the guy.

[Les @ Aug 11th 2008 8:59AM]

This would be really hot with a slide out keyboard (sideways) and a landscape screen. Add dedicated navigation buttons or trackball on that keyboard!!! Ohhh BABY!! LOL.
Why do us Palm/Treo users always have a Christmas list of what we want out of our devices? (You'll shoot your eye out!)

[giuliop @ Aug 11th 2008 9:30AM]

I like the fact that when you use the new Centro, not only everything you wrote on you arm goes into the little device, but whole cities get annihilated and the world disappears into a black - err white hole.

[TL @ Aug 11th 2008 10:28AM]

lol

[Ploskinj @ Aug 11th 2008 12:32PM]

Palm needs to update their OS and get a new Java client and a new browser before refreshing the hardware again. I love my Centro, but their Blazer browser is awful and because they don't license the IBM WebSphere Micro Environment Java Virtual Machine anymore Opera runs horribly and crashes constantly on the old version that must be found via nefarious methods.

http://www.palm.com/us/support/jvm/index.html

No Java support on a phone this expensive is insane, I hope they fix this soon.

[Za @ Aug 13th 2008 8:39PM]

I paid $53.55 for my Palm Centro. That's far cheaper than what most standard dumbphones run for. Now it's fine that you are complaining about performance, but when you say "in a phone this expensive", I have to say that's ridiculous. If a sub $100 phone doesn't render beautiful webpages, then I think I could let it go. You're not going to get Porsche 911 performance for the price of a Nissan Sentra, for example.

[NxP3 @ Aug 11th 2008 1:12PM]

Palm was crappy enough already...palm without keyboard is going back to the 80's. No one in the corporate world would buy this...or should buy it. It's a horrible idea.

[blomster @ Aug 11th 2008 9:45AM]

Centro's not targeted at corporate, and it's selling like hotcakes! Gimme, gimme, gimme!

[Matthew C @ Aug 11th 2008 1:52PM]

LOL

its from 11-22-2007 !!!

This dude had some great ideas tho...

[siostra-rana @ Aug 11th 2008 2:31PM]

Sadly, there was already a commercial like this a couple of years back -- but with Post-It's note

[avirji @ Aug 12th 2008 12:10AM]

The top of it looks sort of like an iPhone (but it has some LED lights and such.. same receiver though)

[CraigJ @ Aug 12th 2008 6:24PM]

Palm made touch screen devices mainstream (OK, so it was US Robotics / 3Com) albeit with a stylus. This is fake, yes, but the concept is one Palm should be able to execute on, and do it well if they can pull their collective heads out. This is the right direction. Folio, not so much.

[Andrew Jo @ Aug 13th 2008 3:42AM]

Hi Thomas, I'm the person who designed that ad and uploaded it on my gallery on deviantART (username: koreansensation).

I was on a long drive to Ottawa without Internet and just found out this ad got featured here from a tip I got from my good friend who seems to read Engadget regularly (thanks Andrei!) and would like to clear up some few things.

First of all, I am not a professional graphics designer. This was merely a quick mockup ad I created for my final group project at marketing class at University of Waterloo in Canada. As John Gardiner has said in the earlier comments, the project was to create or recreate a marketing scheme for a company. My friends and I chose Palm because we felt Palm was always lacking in their marketing department as well as failing to come up with a device that is appealing to many consumers (especially Gen Y+).

Secondly, the device was SUPPOSED to have a slide out keyboard sorta like AT&T's Tilt. However, due to time constrictions with approaching project deadline, I did not have time to whip that up in Photoshop. I have personally used iPhone's touchscreen keyboard and found it extremely annoying. My teammates also agreed with me that a slide out hardware keyboard with keys are *much* easier and faster to type for people than having to learn Palm's "graffiti" writing.

If you are interested in forwarding this to Palm's marketing department or Palm's design studios to make this device into a reality, please let me know.

In the meanwhile, I will be uploading an actual mockup to my deviantART gallery with more detailed specifications of the "Centro 2" which is what I'd like to see in a modern mobile device.

Please stay tuned and can someone please explain how my ad got ended up here?

Thanks.

[Jonathan Kwong @ Aug 13th 2008 1:09PM]

Andrew just told me about this. I was part of the group that made up this ad. I was one of the main sources for the idea actually. I think at the time we assumed most people knew what the original Palm could do. Keeping lists isn't exactly the newest technological idea. A nice browser view of youtube is a little prettier than black and white lists of phone numbers, groceries, and things to do. So that explains that.

Also, that's my arm in the ad (some of you are mean, if you're keeping score at home, commentors 2, my self esteem 0). I wrote on my arm, partly because I thought we could get more marks, partly because it was partially my idea. We could have easily just used a piece of paper, but that wouldn't have shown as much commitment to the project. About the comments about the odd colours (from that spelling, I think you can guess I'm Canadian and just so you know I am indeed attending the University of Waterloo) of my arm; I believe that the permanent marker was dying on me after I finished writing on my hand, so colour adjustments had to be made in photoshop by Andrew. I assure you the colour of my entire arm is far more natural than it seems in the ad. PLEASE BELIEVE ME! PLEASE!

By the way, what makes Andrew's design work so amazing is that he was ridiculously tight on time. I still don't know how he got it done so quickly and so well. Palm or any company for that matter, are you listening, amazing results under tight deadlines. Can you say IDEAL WORKER?

Now, I'm not great with computers but throw me in a think tank and maybe I could spit out some better ads for Palm (or another company in need of some marketing assistance). Worse comes to worse you can use me like a blackboard, at least my left arm anyways.

P.S. Will someone protect me from GORF (August 11th, 6:35AM)? He evidently wants one of my hands.