Rumor: Palm to unveil Nova-powered smartphone

Palm is rumored to be launching a smartphone on Thursday that runs Nova, its next-generation operating system, according to a report Sunday on CrunchGear.

The report, which cites "a trusted source," says the device will have a full QWERTY keyboard that will slide under the touch screen.

Palm's next-generation operating system has been delayed several times but is regarded as crucial to the company's chances of regaining a foothold in the mobile-computing market.

Nova, based on Linux, is expected to bring the Palm brand operating system into the modern era of computing. The beginning of Palm's decline as a mobile-computing innovator can be traced to the 2003 decision to separate into two companies, one that developed the operating system (PalmSource) and one that developed the hardware (Palm).

Palm wound up having to nurture the 2004-era Palm OS version into the present day after PalmSource and later Access never produced anything deemed useful; it still runs the Palm Centro.

The company wisely hooked up with Microsoft to release Windows Mobile-based Treos, but has longed to once again design a complete product, hardware and software.

CNET News' Tom Krazit contributed to this report.

[Rants&Raves]

I'm confused; is the new OS made by ACCESS or is this an in-house effort by Palm ?

[man290663]

Win Mo almost killed the Treo range as it like all Win Mo devices was so unreliable it was not taken up by enterprise and lost out to RIM blackberry the 4yr old Palm OS is and was much more stable and user friendly, its just palm did not have enough faith in their own OS to keep plugging it and once they withdrew from Japan that was saying "we're giving up'

the Palm OS has many more fans than Win Mo or even the Mac OS.

Whoever took control of palm during the diversification era should be shot but then again apple came back from a similar brink.

[gopnick]

I've always liked Palm, but it may be too late for them. Competing with Apple, Nokia, Microsoft and Google is a tall order indeed.

[bigmonkeyman2]

I'm rooting for Palm. I can't seem to get comfortable with any other OS since being a Palm owner for years.

[AndrewRich]

Does it matter?

(No, it doesn't matter. Palm was great in its day but their time has passed.)