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At the DigitalLife show in New York City's Jacob Javits Convention Center today, Palm and Sprint introduced the former company's newest smartphone, Centro, as expected.

Although the Palm OS-run Centro sports the Treo's hallmark touch screen and QWERTY thumb-keyboard, it is the first Palm smartphone since the Tungsten W not fall under that vaunted and aging line of smartphones.

And, at only 4.2 x 2.1 x 0.7 inches and 4.2 ounces, Centro is Palm's smallest and lightest smartphone ever.

It is also, at $99.99 with a two-year contract, Palm's least costly model yet.

With Centro Palm is targeting the mainstream and youth markets for the first time with one of its smartphones; or, to put it another way, 95 percent - the vast majority - of the mobile phone market.

Centro, which uses CDMA cellular technology for Sprint's wireless network, supports that carrier's high-speed cellular-broadband EV-DO data network.

Dial-up-networking via Bluetooth means you can use Centro as a modem to access the Web or corporate network. You can also use Bluetooth to connect to various peripherals, including hands-free kits, wireless headsets, and GPS devices.

Sprint will have exclusive rights to Centro for 90 days from the time it ships on October 14th, in 'onyx black' and 'ruby red': Palm said they would start taking pre-orders tomorrow.

We expect Verizon Wireless, this country's largest CDMA/EV-DO carrier, and maybe Alltel will pick up Centro when Sprint's exclusivity period ends.

The smartphone's 2.2-inch touch screen supports a 320 x 320 pixel resolution and 65,000 colors. That screen is powered by a 1150mAh removable battery Palm promises will supply up to 3.5 hours talk and 3 days standby time.

Centro’s got 64M of internal storage and a microSD slot for up to 4GB additional memory in a single expansion card.

Take picture and video with Centro's 1.3 megapixel 2x digital zoom digital camera. Bundled Pocket Tunes Deluxe software allows you to listen to DRM-protected audio out of the box for the first time with a Palm OS Palm device.

Centro may be small and inexpensive but Palm and Sprint do not skimp when it comes to messaging options. In addition to support for Microsoft Direct Push e-mail through the smartphone's VersaMail application, you can access AOL, MSN, Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! accounts.

There's also Palm's threaded SMS messaging client, in addition to support for multimedia messaging and AIM, Yahoo, and Windows Live instant messaging.

In addition to the usual array of native Palm OS applications and bundled software from Palm, including the Blazer Web browser and DataViz' Documents to Go Professional 10 mobile office suite, Centro will allow you to access MySpace, YouTube, SprintTV for live and on-demand video, Yelp and Google Maps!; all of which should perform smoothly over Sprint's EV-DO network.

To take advantage of all of Centro's capabilities you must sign up for a data plan, which Sprint calls Sprint Power Vision packs. They range from $15 to $30 per month. The $30 a month plan includes unlimited text messaging, data access, Web browsing, e-mail, Sprint Picture Mail/Video Mail, On Demand, NFL Mobile, Sprint TV and Active Sync.