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Palm shows off 'Centro' smart phone

The company's smallest Palm-OS smart phone yet makes an appearance at a technology event hosted by Sprint.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit

Palm's got a new smart phone in the works that could be its answer to the iPhone, the BlackBerry Curve and the Helio Ocean.

On Thursday, the company showed off a design called "Centro" at an event for media and analysts hosted by Sprint in Reston, Va., according to a Palm representative. At this point details are sketchy, and official photos are nonexistent, but Centro will be the smallest smart phone that Palm has released running Palm OS, the company said.

It will be targeted at the young'uns, which is probably appropriate, according to Gearlog. Gearlog's Sascha Segan, who was in attendance, said the Centro's QWERTY keyboard is "infinitesimal: it's actually impossible to type on this thing with two thumbs." Palm said the design also incorporates a touch screen, but it's not clear how large or what you can do with that screen.

Gearlog called the Centro "Treo 800" and "Gandolf," both names that have come up before among the Palm enthusiasts. It's also not clear if Centro will run Garnet, the decaying version of Palm OS, or a newer Linux-based version from Access or Palm. No further details were forthcoming from Palm, but the devices shown at the Sprint event were slated for this fall.