Update: Well, Happy Valentine's Day! Looks like you lucky folks in Europe are getting a sweet treat today as expected because the GSM Palm Centro is now available for pre-order!
The Palm GSM Centro's price is listed as £199 in the UK and 299 (including VAT) in other countries. Looking further down on Palm's European website, I see that for the same £199 price, you can get a special deal: Buy a Palm® Centro smartphone and get a FREE 2-in-1 Stereo Headset. Hey, that's the deal I would choose for sure.
Over at the Palm UK website, we see some great news - the Palm Centro will be available on GSM networks on February 14th. This appears to be for Europe only, although it's a fully unlocked, Quad-Band GSM phone so it will work on any GSM network including AT&T and T-Mobile.
Initially, at least, the GSM Centro will be available only in Black. This is in contrast to persistent sightings and rumors of a white GSM Centro.
According to Treonauts, the cost will be 299/£199, which works out to around $400 US. That's about in line with the actual cost of the Palm Centro on Sprint before rebates. Unfortunately, the GSM Centro doesn't look to be available via any carrier agreements (including their significant contract discounts). It's not too surprising, however, since Vodafone has said that they will only support a few different Operating Systems, including Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Linux.
In either case, it's great news for PalmOS lovers. It's also nice to see Palm releasing phones fully unlocked.
The specs on the GSM Centro are nearly identical to the current Sprint Centro, with the obvious exception of the radio. As expected, the radio is a Quad-band EDGE phone, meaning that it won't work on the latest 3G networks but it has a significant battery-life advantage.
Full Specs
- Display - 320x320-pixel Transflective colour screen; supports 16-bit colour (up to 65K colours)
- Radio - Quad band (850/900-1800/1900) GSM/GPRS/EDGE Class 10
- Platform - Palm OS 5.4.9
- Bluetooth® Wireless Technology - Version 1.2
- Memory - 64MB available user storage
- Camera - 1.3 megapixels with 2 x digital zoom and video capture
- Battery - Removable 1150mAh, lithium-ion up to 4 hours talk time, up to 300 hours standby time
- Expansion - microSD card (up to 4GB supported, sold separately)
- Connector - Multi-connector
- Dimensions - 4.22" (L) x 2.11" (W) x 0.73" (D); 4.2 oz
- Colors - Black
Hopefully we'll be seeing a US release of the GSM Centro very soon!
Discuss the GSM Centro in our forums.
