Palm Centro, the tiny and popular smartphone from Palm, is now available in Canada, being offered by Rogers Wireless - the largest mobile carrier in the North American country.

The Centro can be a great acquisition for users who don't want to pay too much in order to have a smartphone. This is the reason why Palm managed to sell more than 1 million Centros all around the world, since the device was first released, back in September 2007.

Already offered in the US by Sprint, AT&T and Verizon, Palm Centro can now be bought by Canadian users too. The handset is available from Rogers in a single color, cobalt blue (just like the version released last week in the US via Verizon).

For already existing customers of Rogers, the Centro costs $199.99, but only with a contract implying a data plan of minimum $45 per month, signed for three years. For users who are new to Rogers, the smartphone is priced at $299.99, with the same contract and data plan conditions.

Brodie Keast, senior vice president of marketing for Palm, said about the new smartphone released in Canada: "Traditional cell phone users are stepping up the Palm Centro in droves because of its cool design, full keyboard and ease of use. More and more people need voice, text, email, web, contact and calendar capabilities all wrapped in one compact device so they can stay connected with everyone who is important to them. Centro delivers all that and more."

In case someone doesn't know yet, the features of Palm Centro include: a full QWERTY keypad, a 320 x 320 pixel touchscreen display with 65K colors, Google Maps, email, document viewer, Blazer 4.5 browser, Music player, Bluetooth with A2DP, a 1.3 Megapixel camera and other useful features.

Although Palm Canada says the Centro is available as of now from Rogers, the new smarpthone is not yet featured on the carrier's website and only "old" Palm models are listed: Treo 680 and Treo 750. Anyway, the Centro is probably available via Rogrers' stores across Canada and it will pretty soon appear online too.