PalmSource is expected to give its operating system offerings less prosaic brand names when it kicks off its Developer Conference in San Jose later today.

Palm OS 5 will be offered as 'Palm OS Garnet' - no, not Alf's younger brother - while its successor will now be called 'Palm OS Cobalt', according to separate media reports.

Garnet will be maintained and used to target smartphone developers, Associated Press reports, echoing our story of last week and last September.

Garnet will offer a much smaller memory footprint than the ground-up rewrite, Cobalt - formerly known by its codename, 'Sahara' - which will be aimed at more powerful devices, such as wireless PDAs. ®

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