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It appears, Verizon Wireless is poised to pick up Palm's entry-level Centro smartphone, a sunrise hit for the PDA pioneer. Evidence comes in the form of pictures of a dark blue Centro with a Verizon logo that recently popped up in the Internet rumor mill via engadget.

Should Verizon start carrying the smartphone, it'll become the third major U.S. carrier to do so, after Sprint and AT&T. Sprint started offering Centro first, last fall, while AT&T didn't pick it up until a couple of months ago.

The AT&T Centro is very similar to the version offered by Sprint, except for one important difference: AT&T's Centro, unlike Sprint's, does not support 3G cellular-wireless networking. It is likely that Verizon will offer a model like Sprint's, as both use the same CDMA technology for their networks. AT&T is a GSM carrier.

So you should be able to speedily surf the Web, stream multimedia and download content to Centro on Verizon's EV-DO 3G network, jus as you can with Sprint.

Centro is small and light at 4.22 x 2.11 x .73 inches (10.7 x 5.4 x 1.8 centimeters) and 4.4 ounces (119 grams). Even so, it sports a 2.2-inch, 320 x 320 pixel resolution touch screen and a full, if tiny, QWERTY thumb-keyboard.

There's also a microSD slot for memory expansion—for up to an additional 4GB of storage on top of Centro’s 64MB of RAM—Bluetooth wireless for personal area networking (i.e. connecting to a PC, a headset, car kit, etc.), a 1.3 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom for taking pictures and video, and a 1150mAh-removable battery.

Earlier this month, Palm announced the selling of is one millionth Centro.

For 75 percent of those who buy Centro, it is their first smartphone. This is the very type of user Palm said it was targeting when it first announced Centro in September.

While Palm has fallen to third place in the U.S. smartphone market, according to Canalysis, it still claims a 9 percent share to Apple's 28 percent and RIM's 41 percent shares. IDC reports 11 percent of all mobile phones sold in the U.S. last year were smartphones. This number is supposed to grow to 35 percent in three years.

Centro is now available in nine additional countries besides the U.S. These include Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the UK, Germany, Spain, Ireland, France, Italy and - most recently - Mexico.

Fore more on Centro, see here.