February 21, 2005

GSPDA to Make First Palm OS Cobalt Smartphone

Palmsource's first version of Cobalt, which is the next generation Palm OS, was given to licensees early last year. Even after an upgraded version in the fall, no-one bit till now. Group Sense PDA announced over the weekend the company will be the first to release a Cobalt OS smartphone by the end of this year.

Pretty sad for Palmsource to have resort to an Asian company, as Sony dumped them and PalmOne hasn't even commited to Cobalt yet. Rumors are PalmOne will launch at least some their next generation of devices on Windows Mobile OS, which would be a slap in the face to Palmsource.

Palm OS Cobalt was designed to speed development of new categories of smartphones and other wireless devices by offering support for telephony features, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. It also includes other advanced features such as multitasking and multithreading, memory protection, support for more memory and larger screens, industry-standard security, plus advanced graphics and multimedia features.