Recent rumors claimed that another Palm device that would be smaller than the Pre was “very far along” in development, and would likely be launched this year.  According to the source of this new image, that timescale is narrowed down to fall 2009, although no specifications or details regarding the device were forthcoming.

The talk of a smaller device had led many to assume that Palm would be dropping the hardware keyboard altogether, and replacing it with an on-screen substitute.  That way, Palm could shave depth off of the device.  However the company appears reluctant to lose the physical keys, and as such this Palm Pre Centro – the official name of which is unknown – borrows from the form-factor of more recent entry-level smartphones from the company.

[via My Pre]

This unlocked GSM phone is available in glacier white, cobalt blue or ruby red, so you have some aesthetic options there. And while this isn’t the newest handset in the world–it was released in 2007–it still has many features people could find use for.

It has a full QWERTY keyboard, a 320 x 320 display, a microSD card slot capable of 4GB of external storage, Bluetooth, a 1.3-megapixel camera, your choice of 64MB or 128MB of internal storage, e-mail syncing and more. There is also Google Maps support, support for Office and PDF files and a web browser is included. While no official reason for the big time sale has been released, many think it’s due to the upcoming Palm Pre.

[via Gearlog]

The new Centro would allegedly leave out the hardware QWERTY keyboard and offer a larger touchscreen instead.  There’s no other information about what other features of the Pre might be included or left out of this rumored Centro device.

The phone would likely come out for Sprint, like the Pre, but would come out later this Fall instead of late Spring.  No word on a potential price, but keep in mind – the Centro is usually priced more inexpensively than other Palm offerings.

[via Electronista]

Unlike the Treo, Centro is targeted towards general consumer that wants to stay organized without having bulk functionality of business smartphones – which according to Palm contributes to its success. According to Palm, the Centro sells best among youngsters and woman.

It was first introduced exclusively with Sprint as carrier, and recently AT&T also puts the Centro into its handset lineup. However, only Sprint’s Centro supports 3G.

It was next to the GPS app stuff because you can put your phone in there and use the GPS hands free so it’s safer to operate, so on and so forth, you get the idea. It holds your phone so you can see it and still drive somewhat safely, that’s the gist of it.

I personally have no use for one even though I do have a Centro, but some of you that are more industrious with your Centro might find this interesting. I couldn’t find any pricing or availability information, and its not up on their site, so it looks like you’ll have to wait.

It works amazingly well. I truly was impressed, I have a Jawbone sitting around here, and the Palm, in my opinion, worked better than it. Part of that was due to the fact that the Palm headset has easy to use buttons, where as with the Jawbone I had to nearly drive the damn thing into my skull.

The other part comes from the fact that the Palm had better call quality, the Jawbone was a second hand device that I fear may have been mishandled before I got it, so it might have worked better for me out of the box as far as call quality goes, but the Palm’s call quality was amazing, provided I didn’t get too far away from the device. I don’t know what the advertised distance for the Palm headset is, but it worked really well at a range of up to about 15 feet, past that, it still worked, but there would be little clicks.

The battery life is good, I didn’t time it, but I used it moderately for about 3 days and still didn’t have to charge it, I just plugged it in because I thought it might be getting close. Now, onto how it felt to wear it.

Wearing the headset without the ear loop was fine, as long as I was sitting in front of my computer, if I went to actually do anything, it would fall out constantly, it might just be me though, because I can’t even get my iPod ear buds to stay in, but it was comfortable to wear with or without the ear loop. It comes with a few different in-ear gel-pad things for different sized ears, and you can easily switch ears with a simple twist of the ear-pad thing and then put it in the other ear.

Like I said, I liked it, it was easy to use, not heavy, or too large, and it lasted a surprising amount of time. It sounded good, and at about $70 you could do a lot worse, I still don’t like that it doesn’t come with a charger, but as long as you have a Treo or Palm Centro you should be set. I give it a 3.5 out of 5 gears.

Rating:

3.5 out of 5 gears

For those of you that forgot, the Centro is Palm’s latest contribution to Sprint’s lineup and has a touchscreen, 1.3MP cam, EV-DO, support for up to a 4GB microSD card, and a full QWERTY keypad. It really is quite an amazing phone, I can do almost everything, except type, with just the touchscreen, and I can even make phone calls with nothing but the use of the touchscreen.

The Sprint services are a major plus too; I am still listening to the Sprint Radio stations and watching TV on it in my spare time. Speaking of audio, the speaker on this thing is amazing, so if you like sharing your music with your friends or those around you, this is definitely the phone for you.

First off, I have a Helio Fin with a 3MP cam, and a Moto Q with a 1.3MP cam with flash, the Palm Centro, in my opinion, took a better picture than either of the other two. That amazed me.

Then I started playing with some of the Sprint specific services, I don’t know why I ever even thought about using AT&T in the past, first off I was able to watch an episode of Grey’s Anatomy that I missed right on the device. Actually I didn’t watch the whole thing because I didn’t really miss it, but I watched part of it just to prove to myself that I could in fact watch TV on this little phone.

Mostly I have been listening to the radio stations and other music channels that you can stream through the device, there are so many of them, you start with probably close to 100 audio only music streams and among some of those lists there are music video channels. After that, you can purchase, for a monthly fee, more channels including a set of 20 from Sirius. So as you can imagine, I have been listening to music on this thing since I got it. Sadly I didn’t get any headphones with mine, and it uses the smaller jack, for which I don’t have an adapter or any headphones that fit, but the quality, and volume of the built in speaker more than makes up for it, it really is amazing. I could literally hear music from 2 rooms away after I turned the volume up to max, and it was still understandable; there was some crackle in the highs when I cranked it up, but other than that, it sounded great.

Email was a breeze to set up using the custom Sprint Email application, there was another pre-installed email application, but I didn’t even bother testing it because the Sprint one was so easy, and it was free. For instant messaging there was another built in app that handled Microsoft (I think it was Live, I still call it MSN in my head), Yahoo, and AIM, once again, pre-installed, free, and great, it was easy to set up, and is easy to use, in fact it was almost exactly like using any of those apps on your desktop.

I don’t know how many of you have ever used a fairly recent version of Palm’s OS but I’ll go ahead and admit that I have never used a single Palm device in my life before, so I was like a kid in a candy store playing around with everything and trying to see what everything did. It’s easy to navigate and easy to use, I like the Palm OS. Now I downloaded a ringtone and wanted to set it to the default and I wanted to change the color scheme of the OS, the only hard part of either operation was finding the menu where those options were, but after I did that it was easy to change.

Now for the hardware, the touch screen is nice, I was jealous of my friend’s iPhone because he had touchscreen everything, well, now with this device, so do I. I can even dial numbers with the touchscreen, really the only thing you can’t do with just the touchscreen is type alphabetic characters. I haven’t really had much use for the stylus as I have managed to do just about everything with my fingers. Now for the keyboard, I’ll admit, I am Jimmy Fat Fingers himself, so typing on it hasn’t exactly been easy, I have come to the determination that the keys aren’t too small, there just isn’t any spacing between them, and that’s what makes it hard. However, as long as I haven’t been trying to multitask typing and anything else, as long as I have been paying attention, it hasn’t been too bad typing on it, and a keypad that requires you to pay attention to what you are doing isn’t an entirely bad thing, especially when it allows Palm to pack so much into something so little.

The microSD card slot is easy to access, even if you don’t have finger nails, you can remove the battery cover and gain access, but if you do have tiny razors on the end of your fingers, you can open it without removing the battery cover. The IR port is just on the side, I can’t readily think of any time I have every used an IR port except for that one time a network printer went off the network and the only other way to use it was through IR, but that’s it. The mute switch on the top, and the two volume buttons on the side are nice, I especially like the mute switch, I have never had a phone with a switch for that, its always been in the menu somewhere. I have classes a couple days a week, so being able to shut my phone up with just a switch, I think I could get used to that.

Below the two volume buttons is a side button that just about every other application on the device wants to map itself to, no not really, just the email app and the voice command app. I gave it to the voice command app, I have definitely seen better implementations of the voice command service, namely on my Helio and on the Moto Q, I love the voice command on both of those, the voice command app that’s available for the Centro, well it really kind of sucks.

Lastly the camera, its nice, its easy to use, and you can do stills and video with it. I have yet to try video with it though. I did take a still, and like I said at the top, I thought it was better than any other handset I have ever had. Even better yet, the lens is easy to clean. I know that with previous phones I have had, you put them in your pocket, and the lens gets covered with lint, well some of those phones had lenses so recessed you had to have a Q-Tip to get it clean, which sucked when you wanted to take a picture. Below is a picture I took with the Palm Centro (great beer by the way).

Well, that’s it, I love it so far. I can’t give it a perfect score, because the keyboard is kind of hard to use, but its up there. Personally, I would give it a 4, almost a 4.5, out of 5. I really do think that the lack of spacing in between the keys on the keyboard may be this things only downside. For less than $100 with a 2-year contract, you could do a lot, and I mean lot worse than this, in fact I don’t think there is currently a better handset on the market for the same price point as the Palm Centro.

So lets run through it real quick, it has a QWERTY keyboard, a touchscreen with stylus, a microSD card slot that supports up to 4GB of storage, a 1.3MP camera, and EV-DO. Furthermore its available in multiple colors, has an included messaging app, works with Sprint’s OnDemand service, and all that fits into a 4.3×2.1x.74-inch package.

It runs on Palm’s OS version 5.4.9 so if you are a previous Palm user, it should be at least moderately familiar. Its small, damn small for a smartphone, but they are targeting this device at fat fingered business people that their entire Treo line is targeted at, with a $99 (with 2 year contract) price point for the device, the multiple shiny colors, and the compact size, its clearly targeted at a younger generation with much nimbler fingers. Overall I think the guys who reviewed it liked it so far, they will have more to come after they have had time to better review the device.

Centro on Sprints mobile TV

Centro Unboxing

Palm Centro Review [via OnCentro]

Palm Centro Photo Leak [via On Centro]