When I heard that Palm would no longer be making the Centro I bought an extra one because I liked my existing Centro so much. I had to get an olive green Centro as my extra one since that was the only color left in stores last November. The olive green has the soft touch rubberized feel to it. A few months ago the Palm Store had a clearance sale, and I got a deal on a leather side case for the extra Centro. I stored the phone in the side case thinking it would be ready and waiting and still like new when I needed it. Here's the problem: After several weeks I removed the phone from the side case to swap out the battery, and I found that the phone was mottled with ugly spots that look like black mold (the photo I've attached below shows some of the spots). I've never had any mold on anything else in my home, but I guess it grew on the Centro because of the very tight-fitting leather side case and the chemical composition of the soft touch coating on the phone's green plastic parts. I called Palm's customer service department and got nowhere. They said that I could get a refurbished phone for $150, but they couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't get another green phone. Also, the phone I have is one of the later, "refreshed" models with 128MB of memory, and they couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't get one of the older Centro models with only half the memory. Why should I pay more for a refurbished phone than I did for the original when it might have inferior specs compared to the phone I bought? Also, why doesn't Palm customer service take into account that a Palm accessory used with a Palm phone caused damage to the phone? Yes, the damage is "cosmetic," but who wants to use a moldy phone? P.S. If you have a leather side case, don't use it with a soft touch model Centro.
Post relates to: Tungsten T3
