Since choosing between a Treo and an iPhone is becoming the $400 question for the young glitterati, Palm has created a $100 smartphone, the Centro, available next month from Sprint.

Centro resembles Nokia's 5300 MusicXpress saddle-shoe aesthetics, with red and onyx (black to you and me) models, each with a white strip around the middle where its navigation controls are. It's equipped with a standard array of modern multimedia phone features — 320 x 320-pixel (around 2.2 inches diagonal) touchscreen, EVDO access, 1.3MP camera, PocketTunes Playsforsure-compatible MP3 player and Sprint TV compatibility. You also get push e-mail, including Microsoft Exchange, preprogrammed POP3 e-mail from Gmail and others, and AIM, Yahoo! and Windows Live IM, and access to Google Maps, YouTube, Yelp, MySpace and Flickr. It runs the Palm OS (thank goodness) on both Windows and Macs.

Just 2.11 x 4.22 x .07 inches and 4.2 ounces, Centro is pocket-comfy, but you of course pay for this miniaturization. In a fast "the quick red fox" typing test, the pimply QWERTY keyboard required a bit more careful tapping than a standard TREO. And there's no Wi-Fi, but what do you want for $100, not including service commitment rebates? — Stewart Wolpin

Via Palm

Sneak a peek at the black Centro after the jump.