In case you missed yesterday’s announcement, Palm just unveiled a new smartphone: the Centro, which goes on sale in two weeks for the tantalizing price of $99 (with a two-year Sprint contract). Like its big brother, the Treo, the Centro runs the Palm Operating System, meaning it’s compatible with thousands of third-party applications. Here are five awesome freebies you’ll want to install right away:
- Directory Assistant Business, residential, and even reverse-lookup listings are just a few taps away with this handy tool. It lets you dial numbers directly from the results screen, get driving directions, and see locations on a Google Maps map. Nice!
- eReader When you’ve got time to kill, nothing beats a good book — make that e-book. eReader is the viewer that makes reading possible on your Centro; eReader.com is the site where you can purchase thousands of mainstream fiction and non-fiction titles. Reading books on your phone may seem a bit awkward at first, but give it a chance. You won’t be sorry.
- Mundu Radio Stream thousands of Internet radio stations straight to your phone. Should work very nicely over Sprint’s speedy EVDO network.
- SplashNews This free (but ad-supported) RSS reader lets you subscribe to and read all your favorite blogs, news sites, and the like. Don’t forget to add Business Hacks!
- Watchmaker A robust alarm-clock program that lets you set daily/weekly, one-time, count-up, and count-down alarms. There’s also a quick-set “flash alarm” feature that lets you set an alarm to go off any time within the next hour.
You may also want to consider Softick Audio Gateway, a utility that wirelessly streams audio to Bluetooth headsets. The developer hasn’t announced yet whether it’s compatible with the Centro, but it does work with most Treo models. Well worth the $19.95 registration fee if you’ve got a stereo headset.
Any must-have Centro/Treo apps you want to recommend? Hit the Comments and tell us about ‘em!
