I agree. I had a Palm III, then a Centro. The Centro HW was crap (bits and pieces were falling off after a few months), but the OS and apps were very usable and accessible. Hardware controls may not be sexy, but I could use the phone with damp hands, something I can't say for my Android device.

By "crufty", I mean that there wasn't a lot of shine or bling. Instead, Palm's engineers realized they were working with a very limited environment and kept things both simple and easy to use.