Palm Centro Announced

From Palminfocenter

Palm and Sprint have officially announced the Palm Centro smartphone at a press conference at the DigitalLife show in New York City. The Centro is a new brand of smartphones for Palm debuting at a $99 price point and targeting a younger audience and the larger feature phone market segment.

Centro will be exclusive through Sprint in the United States for 90 days and is available in onyx black or ruby red. The Centro features a new design and is the smallest and lightest Palm OS phone to date. Pre-orders will begin from Palm tomorrow, with expected availability on October 14.

The Palm Centro runs Palm OS Garnet v5.4.9. It has a Dual-band CDMA2000 EvDO phone radio, a 320x320 pixel touchscreen, Bluetooth v1.2, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera with video capture and 64MB of memory. It has a external microSD expansion slot that supports microSD cards up to 4GB.

The Centro has dimensions of 4.22" (L) x 2.11" (W) x 0.73" (D) and weighs in at 4.2 oz. It has a 1150mAh removable battery that is good for a claimed 3.5 hours talk time and 3 days standby.

"Palm Centro has the power of a broadband smartphone at the price of a standard 12-key phone," said Ed Colligan, president and chief executive officer of Palm, Inc. "People looking to have all their contacts and calendar at the touch of a button, plus YouTube streaming videos and the Internet can now get it in a small, cool design with the trademark Palm ease of use. If you're thinking about stepping up to a smartphone, the Palm Centro should be your choice."

Expected mid-October, the Palm Centro smart device will be available in onyx black or ruby red from all Sprint sales channels, Palm stores and online for $99.99 with a two-year service agreement, available discounts and promotions and required service plan. Centro customers may subscribe to any of the voice calling plans available on the Sprint Nationwide PCS Network. To take advantage of data capabilities, customers can add any of the available Sprint Power Vision packs, which range from $15 to $30 per month. Customer subscribing to any Power Vision pack plan of $25 or more per month will be eligible for the $100 mail-in-rebate offer. For delivering Centro users the ultimate value, Sprint recommends the Power Vision Pro Pack for $30 month, which includes unlimited text messaging, data access, web browsing, email, Sprint Picture Mail/Video Mail, On Demand, NFL Mobile, Sprint TV and Active Sync (data and content access without a Power Vision pack is subject to casual data charges).