Next Palm to drop physical keyboard, says mole
Touchscreen only to take on iPhone, Android
Here's one for you three Palm fans: the latest entirely unsubstantiated but issued by a "very reliable" source rumour has the HP subsidiary releasing a touchscreen-only smartphone, possibly as early as this very month.
The rumour-monger, cited by PreCentral, says that the device, codenamed 'Mansion' - will sport a 480 x 800 display and... er... that's as much as (s)he says.
Corroboration of a sort comes from the original Pre, which was codenamed 'Castle', and the presence of virtual keyboard code in Palm's WebOS 2.0 operating system. All current, WebOS 1-based devices have physical keyboards. But that evidence, such as it is, is highly circumstantial. ®
COMMENTS
Yep...
That's pretty much why I bought one, I should imagine that the other couple did too. Shame as well, I always liked the slider QWERTY combo - even Blackberry has only just copied it.
I just hope that WebOS 2 will be supported on old Pre's like mine (Although I think if it wasn't Palm/HP would be committing smartphone seppuku). The new OS is much more interesting than some boring JesusPhone copy piece of hardware.
Disasterous
I'm pretty sure the reason why all four of us bought a Pre was because of the physical keyboard. Bottom line is if you can do without one, buy an iPhone. They are just better.
This does not bode well for the future of Palm.
