View this article at: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01/04/palm.nova.phone.leak/

Sunday, Jan 04, 2009 11:00pm

New Palm phone, Nova OS: "a...

Palm's upcoming phone and the Nova operating system it will use will both be major changes from the products the company sells today, a leak to CrunchGear claims. Targeting the iPhone directly, the device will reportedly drop Palm's longstanding design in favor of a full touchscreen; a hardware QWERTY keyboard will be available but will slide down rather than stay fixed. HTC is believed to be the manufacturer for the phone rather than a strict assembly-only firm.

Nova itself is characterized as "amazing" and will have a host of apps available when the first phones using the software ship. Few details of the Linux-based software have accompanied the slip but should include a media playback suite as well as familiar equivalents to calendaring, contacts and e-mail. Previous reports have alluded to backwards compatibility with earlier Palm OS apps and a stronger emphasis on the touchscreen.

While actual release information is still an unknown, the new phone has already been deemed virtually necessary for Palm, which shipped just 600,000 phones in its most recent fiscal quarter and has posted steadily mounting losses as it develops and transitions to Nova while also revamping the Centro and Treo.

Rough mockup by CG of Palm's future phone