Palm's miniscule and wallet-friendly Centro has managed to reach one million units sold since its launch last September. It got its legs working as Sprint and AT&T's gateway smartphone at that fantastic $99 pricepoint, and now it's making a bid for world domination in major markets in Europe and Asia. The one million sales have it nipping at the heels of recent superstar smartphones, the two million plus HTC Touch and the four million plus iPhone, not bad company in the least.

Wow, sure enough, those green buttons are straight up legit -- who'd have thought? The long-rumored GSM cut of the Palm Centro is now officially available on AT&T in the wake of Sprint's expiring exclusivity, giving a whole new world of customers access to the freakishly small (yet strangely adorable) Garnet handset. Unlike Sprint's version, the GSM Centro tops out with EDGE data for a moderately less snappy browsing experience; otherwise, though, your $99 on contract is going to buy you a 1.3 megapixel camera, microSD slot, Bluetooth 1.2, support for AT&T's push-to-talk service, and a full (albeit miniaturized) QWERTY keypad. So who's liking this more than the white / gray scheme we'd seen before?

Boy Genius just grabbed himself one o' them newfangled white Centros for AT&T for a good, old fashioned unboxing, and guess what? The keypad's green. Yep, we can't believe it either. Body's white, keypad's green. Seriously, we couldn't make this up. Before you run down to the store to pick up this $99 fashion statement, though, don't bother -- they're not on sale quite yet -- it's still looking like the 19th is the date you want to circle on your calendar (or program into your 680, as the case may be).

AT&T Palm users: the Centro is definitely on starting next week. We've gotten solid confirmation that next Tuesday (that'd be the 19th, as we heard) will, in fact, be the day Palm's budget handset launches on AT&T. We expect the price should be set at $99, no final word on colors (expect white); we'll check back in next week at launch time.

Can't you just feel the excitement in the air? AT&T stores are apparently starting to spout off about white, $99 Centros being available starting next Tuesday, February 19, and it seems like a pretty plausible date. We've separately been told that the cute lil' Garnet handsets are expected to be shipping to stores some time this week -- just in time to make the 19th a reality for customers eager to get their paws on the latest tech Palm has to offer -- while previous intel had indicated that it'd definitely be available some time before early April. In other words: yeah, we believe it.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Palm's GSM Centro has been about the worst-kept secret in the entire smartphone industry for the past few weeks, and indeed, it's now official -- for Europe, anyway. The unlocked handset features a quadband GSM / EDGE radio with nary a trace of UMTS in sight (this is still Garnet, after all), 64MB of user-available storage, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and a 320 x 320 display -- in other words, the same Centro we all know and love (or tolerate, or despise, depending on your point of view) with just a little bit less CDMA and 3G data to its name. It'll hit the British market on the 14th of the month and the remainder of Europe by the end of February for €299 or £199 (roughly $440 or $392); no word on when the official AT&T version will be available yet, but US folks desperate for one of these unlocked versions in the meantime shouldn't have a lot of trouble importing it, we'd imagine.

[Via Treonauts, thanks Andrew]

Although "innovative" isn't exactly the word we chose to use when summing up Palm's Centro, apparently the public at large sees things a little differently -- or, so says this report, anyway. According to a buyer behavior writeup from Strategy Analytics, the Centro "attracted the most attention from nearly half of the tested US consumers who are intending to purchase a new mobile device" in Q4, and it even ranked ahead of the second-place Samsung i760 in the "appealing" department. Both of the aforementioned handsets were hailed as the top choices (saywha?) for folks "seeking a multifunction, fully integrated device," while the Nokia Prism and LG Rumor also got a few props along the way. Of course, it's always best to take these "studies" with a healthy serving of salt, but if you wanted something to debate about, you've found it.

[Via MobileWhack]

Palm's Centro hasn't exactly lit the world on fire, but might it have if it were simply tweaked in a few key areas? As we've done a number of times before, we're presenting to you yet another Palm device that could probably use some refining, and we're curious to know what alterations you would've made if given the chance. It's been an interesting past couple of months for Palm, to say the very least, and while the firm's CEO has shockingly responded to an open letter, saddened us all by announcing yet another OS delay and inexplicably (okay, maybe not so much) nixed the Foleo during that period, it still found time to officially introduce the sub-$100 Centro at an admittedly underwhelming DigitalLife press conference.

We're not setting out to beat a proverbial dead horse or anything -- after all, you know precisely how we feel about the device -- but there's nothing like a healthy dose of criticism (or adoration, to be fair) from the masses. So, here's your chance to let loose and tell the rest of us Earthlings exactly how you would've re-engineered the Centro. Are those keys a tad too diminutive for your liking? Is the whole "Sprint-only" thing cramping your style? Or is Palm's latest darling exactly what your heart desired? Rant away.

Okay, now we know what you're thinking. Sure, we (lovingly) raked Palm over the coals in our open letter to the company, and yeah, we haven't been the sweetest of hearts to the crew from Sunnyvale (with good reason, of course). However, If you've paid attention to our past good-intentioned prodding, then you'll know that getting our hands on a new Palm device still gives some of us geeky chills.

After seeing scores of "leaked" photos of the Centro, and hearing enough internet chatter about the device to make your brain vibrate like a tightly-wound piano string, actually getting our hands on the phone was honestly a bit of a surprise, both bad and good. We're going to break it down piece by piece and hopefully give you a rounded impression of the smartphone crown-chaser (or at least princess-in-waiting).

Love Palm? Love the Centro? Love unboxings? Well, it's your lucky day, because we've got a lean, mean, eye-shattering gallery going on over at Engadget Mobile, featuring a full-on unboxing of the new Palm / Sprint entry. Direct your browsers this way, and prepare to have an out-of-body experience.

Welcome to Engadget: Bizarro Edition. Look, truth be told, now that the Foleo has been wiped from a foreseeable Palm future, we kind of wish we could get our hands on one (rare gadget collectors that we are). Well, at least one lucky, lucky gentleman has done just that, and he's been kind enough to share the pictures with the rest of the world. We're not sure how an individual goes about procuring this device, but we can honestly say we're pretty jealous. It's essentially like having an embalmed unicorn in your living room. But that's not all, kids. Take a long, hard look at that Centro in the photos (which is referred to as the Treo 500P) -- it's got AT&T branding all over that home screen. Is your curiosity piqued? Join the club. Take a look at the little curiosity after the break.

Well, here's the shiny little Centro, in all its slightly-less-than-breathtaking beauty. Truth be told, the phone doesn't look or feel too bad -- we still don't get the gray stripe through the middle, but what can you do? The keyboard is unbelievably tiny, but we'll take it where we can get it. The surface of the cherry red or metallic black phone is quite slick, and we suspect will go tumbling out of sweaty hands like gang busters. Of course, the EV-DO connection was snappy, but the thing we're most stoked about is the fact that Palm has finally eliminated that 2-pixel border around the screen. Hey, no new OS... but that border is gone. The Centro is due mid-October for the shockingly low price of $99.99, which should help push more than a couple of these out the door. Hit the gallery and check out all the hot photos.