Currently at The Palm Store you can save $25 off any order of $100 or more. And they’re offering free shipping on any order over $49, so you get double benefits. The offer includes the Windows Mobile Treo Pro and Treo 800w smartphones, the Palm OS Treo 755p and Centro smartphones, the Palm OS T|X, Tungsten E2, and Z22 handhelds, software, cases, accessories, and more. Just use the code ’25OFF’ when you check out to save $25 on your order of $100 or more.

According to The Official Palm Blog, Palm is releasing two new models of the Centro smartphone for Sprint, in Olive Green and Vibrant Rose. But new colors are the only differences, these Centros come with 128MB of memory, double that of the 64MB in all other Centros. They also come bundled with Facebook for Palm and Google Maps with the My Location feature, and a new low price of $79.99 (with a plan).

The new phones hit select retail locations on October 19th, and will be available online from Sprint and the Palm Store on November 2nd.

Palm has also released a new color of Centro for AT&T users. In addition to the existing ‘Obsidian’ (Black) and Glacier (White) AT&T colors, you can now get it in ‘Electric Blue’ (kind of a light, metallic blue). Prices start at $99.99 – after rebate and with qualifying service plan, and they go up to $349 if you don’t want to commit to a plan.

I still think the Centro is a great ‘starter’ smartphone, or a step up for anyone who is considering one of the ‘feature phones’ which tend to cost more but offer less flexibility. The 800w looks nice, and if I didn’t dislike WinMob so much I’d consider it myself. Well, no, because I’d wait for a GSM version, but you get the point. It does give me a little hope that, if Palm ever manages to release Palm OS II, they may once again have some really nice products. And if I haven’t jumped on Android by then I might even try them.

First off, I failed to cover this a couple of weeks ago. On June 12th the Palm Centro became available on the Verizon network. As is usual with the Centro, the standard price is $99.99 with a 2-year contract. But through July 6th it is eligible for the above deal, a $50 rebate that drops it to $49.99. And Verizon is offering a $29.99/month ‘email and web’ plan for the Centro.

And now, as of Monday, Palm is selling an unlocked GSM Palm Centro for $299. It is more than the $99.99 you can get with a subsidy locked phone from AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon, but those require a 2-year contract and only work on the purchase network. The unlocked GSM Centro has no contract requirements and it works on any GSM network, just stick in you SIM card.

And there’s more good news for all Centro owners. Google Mobile Maps has finally been updated for Palm OS, from 1.2.0.9 to 2.0.2.0 – including ‘My Location’. ‘My Location’ is a beta feature for Google Mobile Maps which uses the cellular network to estimate your location. It isn’t as accurate as GPS would be, but it can be pretty close. You can download it directly to your Centro by visiting http://m.google.com/gmm using the browser on the phone. Well, actually, I fibbed – it isn’t all Centro owners. My Location doesn’t work on the Sprint Centros – yet. Sprint users have to wait for a software update due this summer.

Actually, the update is available for all Palm OS Treo models as well. However, the ‘My Location’ feature only works on the Centro – for reasons yet to be explained. If you try to use it on a Treo, like my Treo 680, it tells you:

The My Location feature is not available for this device. It is available for Palm Centro phones.

Palm, and Google, claim that the issue is that the version of Palm OS on the Treo lacks the API’s required to support My Location. OK, well, I have an idea – update the blasted software to add the APIs! Is that really so hard? They’re doing it for the Sprint Centro!

Actually, it is worse than that. Reportedly the APIs are in the OS already, but they’re private so 3rd party developers like Google can’t access them. They’re used for the E911 location requirements for emergency services. So it would seem all Palm would have to do is make them public, as they are on the Centro.

I have a suspicion that it is really some stupid business decision to try to draw people to the Centro by giving it features the other models lack. Why do I suspect this? Because there is a freeware patch to GMM 1.2.0.9 for the GSM Treo 650 and 680 (sorry, not CDMA Treos nor the old Treo 600) which adds ‘My Location’ functionality! So, clearly, it isn’t a hardware issue on GSM Treos, and it isn’t even a big software issue if a 3rd party developer can hack together a patch! (It may well be possible for CDMA Treo’s as well, but the radio systems are different.) Even if the APIs used on the Centro are missing, it seems more like a convenient excuse. And, again, software can be updated. If Palm has any plans to do so it would be good customer relations to say so. At it stands it looks like they’re snubbing the users of their more expensive phones.

Things like this really make me less likely to stick by Palm, and more likely to jump to the first decent Android handset I can get. Heck, I’d even consider the iPhone now that it is 3G, if only they’d get it past 60GB storage so it could replace my iPod completely. And I’m not the only one upset by this, going by the comments on Palm’s blog. I’ll note that the moderate comments, so those comments are only those that Palm approved. And I know they haven’t approved all the comments they’ve received, because mine never appeared. Readers at Treonauts and Palm Infocenter are rather displeased as well.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive smartphone with a lot of capabilities, the Centro is the one I’d recommend. It has more features than many phones that cost far more. There are ‘feature phones’, which are a step down from smartphones, which cost more and don’t have as many features as the Centro, let alone the thousands of applications (many free) available for Palm OS. Palm could stand to improve their customer communications though.

Available on the AT&T and Sprint wireless networks (and expected on Verizon soon), the Centro joins the Palm Treo family of cell phones as a slimmer, sleeker entry, one we can more reasonably imagine carrying around as a phone for daily use. It’s a long time since the Motorola MicroTAC Elite seemed svelte, and too many smartphones err on the side of pretty chunky. By contrast, the Centro is narrow and easy to grip, similar in width to Motorola’s more recent offerings, such as the RAZR and ROKR.

The Keyboard’s Where it’s At — The only drawback to the Centro’s narrower design is that it sports the smallest keyboard Palm has yet offered on its handhelds. Having used a Palm Tungsten C for a while, I was used to the idea of teensy keys placed close together, but at a full inch wider than the Centro, the Tungsten has room for bigger, much more widely spaced keys. The difference is clear with sustained typing; only those with relatively small hands will be comfortable with much typing on the Centro. Even the extra fifth of an inch (about a half centimeter) of width on the Treo seems to make a difference in typing ease.

But, if you have relatively small hands or you’re dexterous with your big fingers, having a keyboard makes all the difference when composing email and text messages. I found that after a few minutes, I was pretty adept at punching out a few sentences at a time – also true with the iPhone, but even with the iPhone’s adaptive typing recognition, which guesses what you meant to type even if you miss every third letter, lots of users have said they prefer a real keyboard.

Purely Palm — Another key advantage for the Centro is its familiarity for those who’ve used Palm handhelds, often for many years or several models. Detractors say the gradually updated and incrementally refined user interface has fallen way behind, but I have to say that the Centro’s Palm OS offers a clean simplicity that shouldn’t be underestimated.

Anyone who used the original Palm user interface will immediately recognize it in what it’s evolved into; there are more icons on the Applications screen, but a few iterations ago, Palm made them sleeker and colorized them, as well as grouping them into (optional) categories for easy navigation.

As with other recent Palm handhelds, the Centro has an idiosyncratic relationship with Mac OS X, my platform of choice. The Palm Desktop software hasn’t been updated in years, but if you want to use it to manage syncing of your contacts, calendar, and other info between handheld and Mac, you can. Or, Palm’s HotSync software can now collaborate with iSync to allow users to stick with Apple’s Address Book and iCal. We suspect most Mac users will take this approach, especially if they don’t have a long-standing Palm habit.

The Centro includes a web browser and email client; neither is a spectacular example of its genre, but both are capable as handheld applications go. The web browser can display graphics but not much in the way of page layout; Palm web browsing hasn’t changed much in the several years it’s been around, though the Blazer browser is surprisingly adept at displaying Google Maps.

No Surprises — There’s not much else to say, if you’re familiar with using cell phones and you’re familiar with using Palm handhelds. (We suspect relatively few users are jumping on the Palm bandwagon for the first time by picking up a smartphone.) The audio quality is fine, the reception strength is reasonable even in fringe areas (easy to test in my basement, where the iPhone and my Verizon Wireless phone also have trouble), and the battery lasts one to three days of off-and-on use. (You’ll probably want to charge daily.)

What’s the best feature of the Palm Centro? I think it’s the ability to use the Palm OS version of SlingPlayer Mobile, the handheld version of Sling Media’s placeshifting video viewing software. With my Slingbox hooked to my TiVo, I was pleasantly surprised at how watchable both live TV and pre-recorded programs were. The delay in sending remote-control signals from the Centro to the TiVo via cellular connection wasn’t even significantly worse than using Sling’s desktop software via broadband.

Do You Want One? — There’s no question that the Centro is a capable phone, and a worthy successor to a decade of Palm handhelds. In a world with no iPhone, Palm’s Centro and Treo smartphones would be the clear alternative to the quirky Windows Mobile and the walled garden of RIM’s BlackBerry. But with Apple’s category-killer in the game, and an updated iPhone looming, the Centro will be most attractive to those with an attachment to the Palm way of life and those who just need a small dose of smartphone, i.e. those for whom the iPhone is overpriced overkill.

The Centro is most attractive of all right now, with a $50 rebate MegaZone noticed, making the phone effectively $49 instead of $99 through July 6th.

Additionally, through June 11th you can save up to 50% on select accessories and get a free Palm® Aces Texas Hold ‘em No Limit CD.

And if smartphones aren’t your thing and you still prefer standard PDAs, you can get a free Palm® Universal Wireless Keyboard with the purchase of a Palm® Tungsten™ E2 handheld.

It is currently only available in ‘Glacier’ (aka white) with green keypad accents. But in about a month it will be offered in ‘Obsidian’ (aka black – but not the same black as Sprint’s ‘Onyx’ Centro). The official Palm Blog also touted the AT&T Centro launch, including all of the features and bundled applications.

There are also some new features the AT&T Centro will be sporting right out of the box including:

* XM Radio Mobile – Allows you to stream commercial free music from just about any genre (hip-hop, pop, jazz, country and more); all for $8.99 per month.
* MusicID (a personal favorite!) – Helps you identify unknown songs by simply holding your Centro smartphone up to a speaker – it’s a really cool way to figure out song information for tunes you aren’t familiar with (title, artist and cover art, if available, etc.); all for $3.99 per month.
* AT&T Mall – You can buy ringtones, wallpapers, and other multimedia content and download over the air to the device.
* Push to Talk (PTT) – Not really new to the AT&T Centro since it was recently made available on the Treo 680 Update 2.11 for AT&T, but new and cool enough to be worth mentioning again! PTT works like a walkie-talkie to talk to an individual or a group of up to 29. The app also includes “status” icons so you can tell which of your family and friends are available before you call. Users can purchase unlimited PTT minutes with Nationwide Plans for $9.99 per month per line and with FamilyTalk for $19.99 per month per group (two to five lines). Customers also can use PTT on a pay-per-use basis for $0.15 per minute.

Personally I’ll stick with my AT&T Treo 680 – same OS, most of the same features (I have the latest firmware) and not much bigger. So I don’t have a real incentive to jump to the Centro. (And, frankly, if I was thinking about it, I’d wait for the Obsidian version.) But I have played with the Sprint Centro and it is a nice phone. If you’re thinking about getting a smartphone, definitely give the Centro a look. Especially if you’re getting a new plan, since it is hard to beat at $99.99. I’ve tried WinMob and Symbian phones, but they haven’t won me over from good old Palm OS.

Though I am feeling the siren call of Android. We’ll have to see how those phones look when they finally ship, but I’ve liked what I’ve seen so far.

Black Friday Special Offer – $50 off ($149 total) the Tungsten™ E2 handheld plus FREE hard case ($39.95 value). Offer valid 11/20/07 to 11/26/07.

Black Friday Special Offer – $100 off ($199 total) the Palm® T|X handheld plus FREE wireless keyboard ($69 value). Valid 11/20/07 to 11/26/07.

I do have to say that the T|X is a fine handheld, and if I were still using a straight PDA and not a smartphone, that is what I would own. One of my co-workers has one, and I’ve played with it. I think it is the best PDA Palm produced, but it appears to be the end of the line as they shifted focus to the Treo and Centro smarthphones. I’ve always been a fan of Palm, and I’ve used a Palm IIIx, Handspring Visor Deluxe, Sony Clie NZ-90, Palm Treo 650, and now a Palm Treo 680. But I have to say that I’m seriously eager to see what ships next year using the Google Android platform. That may be my next mobile platform.

Aside from the stock-clearing Black Friday specials, Palm also has general holiday specials on handhelds, smartphones, hands-free, stocking stuffers, and special offers.