Palm Centro is the latest smartphone created by Palm Inc. and first released in the fall of 2007 in the US. At the beginning of 2008 the handset made it to Europe too, and as of yesterday, the 6th of March, it is also available for UK mobile users.

The smartphone was described in December 2007 as having the "most appealing innovative design" by a report from Strategy Analytics, a US based leading research and consulting firm, which says a lot about its look.

Weighing 124 grams and measuring 107 x 53.5 x 18.6 millimeters, the Centro runs on Palm OS 5.4.9 and comes with a 320 x 320 pixels transflective color touchscreen that supports 16-bit colors (up to 65,000), a 5-way navigation button and a full QWERTY keypad that will surely help those who send lots of text messages and emails from their mobile device(s). Furthermore, the smartphone comes with quad-band GSM connectivity (850 / 900 and 1800 / 1900 MHz), GPRS, EDGE, MP3 player, Bluetooth 1.2 with A2DP, handsfree, a 1.3 Megapixel camera with video recording and digital zoom, and microSD card support for up to 4GB. A Li-Ion 1050 mAh battery is included, providing up to 4 hours of talk-time and about 300 hours of stand-by time.

The Centro also comes with a wide range of useful software, including Google Mobile Maps, Blazer 4.5 Web browser, Documents to Go Professional Edition 10, PocketTunes, VersaMail 4.0, My Centro, Palm Files, HotSync, Quick Tour, Camcorder, Calendar, Calculator, Tasks, Memos and so on.

Palm Centro is available in the UK for a retail price of £199.00 (about 260 Euro or 395 USD) and you can buy one (or two or three or more, if you like) directly from Palm's UK website, found at this address. Palmerry shopping!