The "lightest and smallest" smartphone from Palm, namely Palm Centro, has reached the 1 millionth unit sold, according to an announcement made public by the Sunnyvale company yesterday. It's a good thing the announcement was not made today, the 1st of April, as many would have probably thought it's an April Fools' Day joke.

First released in September 2007, exclusively via Sprint, the third largest US mobile carrier, the Centro is now available via AT&T too, for the same price: $99, with a contract agreement. Starting with the beginning of 2008, the handset can also be bought via various carriers in other countries from around the globe, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Romania, Ireland, India, Singapore and Hong Kong.

The Centro is available in different colors, including white, black, pink and green, offering consumers a wider range of choices. What makes Palm Centro attractive for users is the fact that it can offer smartphone features at the price of a normal mobile phone. The device weighs 124 grams, measures 107 x 53.5 x 18.6 millimeters and packs a full QWERTY keyboard for easy text input, a 320 x 320 pixels TFT touchscreen display, quad-band GSM connectivity, GPRS and EDGE, handsfree, MP3 player, Bluetooth with A2DP, 1.3 Megapixel camera with video recording, and microSD card support for up to 4GB of expanded memory. Furthemore, the Centro comes with all the cool organizer functionality specific to Palm devices, including comprehensive contact list and user-friendly calendar.

"The Palm Centro is flying off the shelves because users who want to step up to a smartphone see it as the perfect first choice," declared Brodie Keast, senior vice president of marketing for Palm, Inc. "It has everything a person needs to stay organized and connected with everyone who is important to them. We're very excited about the Centro's near-instant popularity in the U.S. and think it's going to be a huge hit as it continues to make its way across the globe."

An interesting aspect about Palm Centro is that it was bought by more women than any other Palm handsets, and mostly by consumers younger than 35 years. Does this mean we could say it's a handset for young women?