After the early morning early release of Sprint’s Centro website, the official announcement came later in the day. The Centro will have a 90-day exclusive with Sprint. The Centro is Palm’s smallest, lightest, and least expensive smartphone ever – yet it is still very capable, with the features of a larger, more expensive Treo. The Cetro is 4.22″ x 2.11″ x .73″ and weighs only 4.2oz. It has a 320×320 color (16-bit/65K colors) touchscreen, a 1.3 megapixel camera with 2x zoom, 64MB of available storage, BlueTooth v1.2, microSD slot (up to 4GB cards), and runs Palm OS 5.4.9 (Garnet). You can have any color you want – as long as you want Ruby (red) or Onyx (black). As it runs on Sprint’s network, it is a CDMA2000 EvDO phone which should make web browsing fairly speedy.
It also comes with a lot of pre-loaded software including Documents to Go Professional Edition 10, Google Mobile Maps, Instant Messaging, Nuance Voice Control, PocketTunes Deluxe, Sprint Mobile Email, Sprint Store, Sprint TV, Sudoku, and VersaMail 4.0.
The best part? The price. It is only $99.99 after a $100 rebate and a 2-year service commitment with Sprint. That’s a great deal for a very capable smartphone. You get all of the features you’d get from a more expensive model, such as the Treo 755p for much less. Actually, you get more features as they’ve bundled entertainment software, IM clients, etc. And it supports thousands of third party Palm OS applications – like SlingPlayer Mobile.
You can pre-order it now and get free shipping and a free vehicle power charger (a $29.99 value).
