T-Swivel Smartphone NOT Palm Quatro
Mystery T-Swivel Smartphone Solved – Fortunately/Unfortunately NOT Palm Quatro Prototype
Considering that few people were particularly thrilled with the purported first image of the Palm Quatro that appeared last week, I guess that we should all be relieved to now learn that this device was actually an MID prototype called Tabasco and manufactured by a company called Compal that was first displayed at Computex 2008 back in June.
At the same time, a variation of the above prototype _could_ nonetheless still be on the cards based on a report back in August by the Chinese newspaper Commercial Times which claimed that “Compal has received ODM orders for several models of smartphones from Palm with the order volumes likely to top five million units, said the paper, noting that Palm's orders will be the growth driver for Compal in 2009”.
Having said all this, the fact however is that virtually nobody outside Palm seems to have any clue as to what exactly the company’s rumoured “spectacular” new Palm Quatro smartphones might really look like and we can only continue to dream about exactly what the forthcoming Palm CES event will actually have in store for us…
In the meantime, a rather interesting Business Week article yesterday appears to have been the first to “officially” confirm that “Palm is due to unveil [at CES] the long-awaited operating system, code-named Nova, as well as the first of a family of products that will run on it” with the goal to “create products that bridge the gap between Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices, oriented to work and e-mail, and Apple's iPhone, oriented to fun”.
Moreover, although you would naturally consider a Palm insider comment to be somewhat biased I have to admit that I was rather excited by the comment made by Mike Bell , a 16–year Apple engineering star who joined Palm last year, saying that “I'm fundamentally convinced we're onto something huge. Some of the stuff we're working on here is mind-blowing – better than anything I've seen before."
Either way, the countdown has now very much begun and we all only have 23 short more days to wait before the truth is finally revealed…
Mystery T-swivel device is really Compal Tabasco MID [via pocketables]
Rumor: Palm Places a 5 Million Unit ODM Order [via Palm Infocenter]
Palm Pins Its Hopes on Nova [via Business Week]
Treonauts always want mind-blowing stuff… 
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Comments
Thank god this is only a fake prototype, the palm handhelds pda would have looked awful! lets wait and see what it really looks like...I think it will be very elegant and slim!
Andrew,
Keep up the great coverage. It's like reading supermarket tabloids for nerds! I'm glad to see all these companies pushing each other to futher mobile innovation.
Looking forward to 2009 smart phone devices. I think it's going to be a great year for treonauts...
I'm glad that's not a Palm too - looked pretty ugly to me...keep up the great job!
In wonder if Nova will allow us to use our datas from previous Palm OS. As a Macintosh user who switched to a Nokia E 90 (disgusted by Palm submission to Windows) I had troubles and losses while rebuilding my Contacts...
I could have chosen an Iphone but I was not convinced by the Touch Keyboard... Can you imagine my 5 years frustrations "Waiting Godot" from a frigid Palm company... I give Palm a very last and ultimate chance... if Nova is not Mac OS compatible, sorry guys I will quit this club...
Now that this ugly duckling is not the new Palm handset, can I get my order in now for the new Palm OS handset no matter what it is? (I'm embarrassed to be so excited that I'd even suggest that I would pre-order and accept whatever Palm tosses my way. We must be pretty desperate?)
Serge--Given that Palm has made some commitments to backwards compatibility WRT Nova, I'm sure they'll have some sort of data migration options. One would hope they'd include Macs--in part due to Apple's recent PC marketshare gains.
Btw, on the prototype, I'd thought "maybe, maybe not" when I first saw it... now, though, I wonder about the keyboard design. After all, that was the key detail that pointed to Palm--so I'm surprised another (unrelated) company would use the same layout.
Regarding backwards compatibility, I've read/heard that Palm may be using a virtual machine to emulate their Palm o/s on the new Nova o/s. Not sure if this is true or not, but I love this idea. It's a great concept in PC's that provide a reliable means for running other o/s on your computer without much effort. If Palm is doing this, it would be a first as far as I know and would provide a lot of other options besides running just older palm o/s apps.
Has anyone else heard this?
When I saw the first images, I seriously doubted that this would be the rumored Quattro... i mean, the thing's HUUUUUGGGEE!!! I doubt that Palm (more so with their Apple enginuity influences) would settle for a bulky smartphone...
Francis--I never trust prototype pictures when it comes to device size. The Centro, for instance, looked significantly bigger to me in its prototype shots than it turned out to be. Detailed physical measurements and side-by-side comparative shots are the best bets online--and none of that is as good as seeing and holding a device in person.
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