Palm Gandolf Officially the Centro, Smallest Treo Ever, For Hobbits and Tweens

The Sprint Tech summit happened today and Palm unveiled the Palm Centro to analysts today. Gearlog has a hands on, saying that it runs on EVDO, is targeted at youngsters, and has a QWERTY and touchscreen, as we could have gathered from the leaked shots and carrier. The price? An unbelievable $99, and supposedly, it’ll be a Sprint exclusive for 90 days. The declaration that it’s the smallest Treo to date is new to us, though. Gearlog was there, and they got some hands on.

The Centro has possibly the tiniest QWERTY keyboard I’ve ever seen. It’s infinitesimal: it’s actually impossible to type on this thing with two thumbs. The keys on the model I tried were little clear rubbery bumps, below a cursor pad and the usual Palm OS quick application buttons. Seeing me get frustrated trying to puzzle out letters on this tiny thing, a Sprint rep stepped in to say that it was for the “youth market” – in other words, kids with nimble fingers and sharp eyes to read the small screen. On the other hand, it’ll fend off the argument about Treos being chunky, that’s for sure.

[Gearlog]