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Sprint gave a sneak peak at a number of new phones at a Tech Summit in Reston, Virginia yesterday. Among these devices was a new smartphone from Palm called Centro, in addition to CDMA/EV-DO versions of the BlackBerry Pearl and HTC Touch.

That's right, not Treo Centro, not Treo 800, and especially not Gandolf; all names this device has gone by during months of rumor mongering and leaks. In fact, this will be Palm's first smartphone not to feature the Treo moniker in any way, shape or form.

Anyway, while it sports the Treo's hallmark touch screen and QWERTY thumb-keyboard, that's where the similarities end.

It is also supposed to be much smaller than a Treo, which are often maligned for their largish size, and is, in fact, the smallest Palm OS smartphone ever.

It is so compact, Gearlog's Sascha Segan, who had a chance to play with Centro during Tech Summit, described the keyboard as the tiniest he'd ever seen. So small as to be "infinitesimal" and "impossible to type on..with two thumbs." He described the keys as "little clear rubbery bumps," that rest underneath a curser pad and the standard Palm OS application buttons.

The smartphone, which uses CDMA cellular technology for Sprint's wireless network, supports the carrier's high-speed cellular-broadband EV-DO data network and is targeted at a younger demographic, those new to the smartphone space. From the sound of it that's about the only group that'll be able to use the keyboard without reading glasses or straining their eyes.

While no release date for Centro was announced, an unconfirmed report says it'll go for only $99 when it does ship. Sprint will have exclusive rights to the smartphone for 90 days, after which expect America's largest CDMA/EV-DO carrier and second largest mobile operator overall, Verizon Wireless, to pick it up.

Early rumors said Centro (Gandolf) would sport a microSD slot, a camera, and Bluetooth, all fairly standard in cell phones today. There's no way to know for sure at this time, as no specific specifications were offered by Sprint or Palm yesterday. We'll report more details as they become available.

Sprint Gets In Touch
According Segan, Sprint also showed off a CDMA/EV-DO version of the HTC Touch, a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone, and a CDMA version of the BlackBerry Pearl. Not much to say about the new Pearl at this time, other than it'll finally be available to Sprint and, presumably, eventually Verizon customers. The new HTC is a significant improvement over the original GSM model, however.

The GSM version of the HTC Touch (see picture below), for example, topped out at that cellular technology's 2.5G EDGE technology while the CDMA version is going 3G. The Sprint version doubles CPU power as well, jumping from 200MHz to 400MHz.

There's also built-in GPS, new 12-key and 20-key virtual keyboards, 128MB of RAM and a 2 megapixel camera.

As per its name, the HTC Touch features an advanced touch screen interface, called TouchFLO. It is supposed to be capable of recognizing and responding to the sweep of a finger across the screen, and be intelligent enough to distinguish between finger and stylus input.

You sweep your fingers across the display to launch an animated, three-dimensional interface comprising three screens: Contacts, Media and Applications. The interface can be spun by swiping a finger right or left across the display, providing what appears to be easier access to these features for consumers than a normal Windows Mobile interface would.

TouchFLO also delivers finger touch scrolling and browsing of Web pages, documents, messages and contact lists.

As a Windows Mobile Professional device, the HTC Touch will offer Outlook Mobile, Office Mobile for editing, the ability to read and edit native Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, Pocket Internet Explorer and Windows Live. With it, you can view HTML-formatted e-mail and push e-mail in an Exchange environment.

The HTC Touch is also supposed to include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a microSD slot for extra storage. Its 2.8-inch display supports a 240 x 320 pixel (QVGA) resolution and supports 65,536 colors.

It measures 3.9 x 2.3 x 0.5 inches (99.9 x 58 x 13.9 millimeters) and weighs 3.9 ounces (112 grams).

This Sprint version of the HTC Touch was approved by the FCC for release in the U.S. back in November. It is supposed to ship in November for an as-of-yet undisclosed price.