Palm has rolled out the Palm OS-based Centro smartphone in the UK, pitching the £199 handset as a yoof-oriented alternative to its more 'serious' Treo phones.

Centro uses the same layout and look as the recently released, Windows Mobile-based Treo 500, but it's rather narrower in profile and with a crisper, higher resolution display. The 500's screen is 320 x 240 to the Centro's 320 x 320, but the Centro display is physically smaller, indicating a higher dots-per-inch rating.

Palm's Centro: none more black

The 500 is thinner than the Centro, but since the difference amounts to just a few millimetres, there's really not much in it.

The Centro is has quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge connectivity, but no 3G. It's got just 64MB of user-accessible memory to the 500's 115MB, but it can take Micro SDHC cards of up to 4GB in capacity. Both devices have Bluetooth - though it's version 1.2 here, 2.0 in the Treo. The Centro has a 1.3-megapixel camera, but the Treo's runs to two megapixels.

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The Centro, which has proved particularly popular in the States, comes with Google Maps pre-installed and DataViz' Documents to Go for reading and editing Microsoft Office files, and viewing PDFs. It also comes bundles with PocketTunes for MP3 playback. There's a stereo headset in the box. The phone's Bluetooth link doesn't stretch to A2DP stereo streaming.

The Centro goes on sale today. Look out for Register Hardware's review next week.

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