farbot.com

Palm has finally admitted that they are working on a new version of the PalmOS based on linux. The revelation was made at today's Palm Investor Day event. This is not the Access Linux Platform (ALP) that is being worked on and is now giving out development kits to handset makers. Other announcements that fit with recent moves by the company were also made and are worth noting.

Palm OS 5 devices will still be released this year, but devices based on the Linux kernel should (my emphasis) be released by the end of 2007.

The new owners of PalmSource have announced that an ALP SDK will be out by the end of 2006, meaning consumer devices running the new Linux-based mobile OS with the nice Palm OS GUI on it probably won't show up until 2007.

With other articles mentioning the interest from various handset manufacturers, it looks like the next couple of generations of phones could really be very useful phones. All they need to do is get the one-handed navigation using buttons only to work well with Palm's already one-handed-oriented UI and they can dispense with the touch screen entirely, driving down costs.