Spring time is approaching, so it must be time for the rumors of upcoming palmOne handhelds to come in earnest, as palmOne, previously Palm, has traditionally announced new devices in the Spring and Fall. Why last year, the handheld company, released the Tungsten C and the Zire 71, two devices that helped complete a successful product turnaround for the company, which had seen its PDA line-up eclipsed by the likes of Sony and HP for excitement and the latest features.

The most recent rumor, as reported by Palm Addict, places a sequel to the Zire 71, which was palmOne's first PDA with an integrated digital camera, as appearing this spring. This device, the Zire 72, may look like the Tungsten E, palmOne's popular mid-level business PDA released last fall, and include 64MB of RAM with 56 MB available to the user, and like the Zire 71, a digital camera.

The Zire 71 only has 16 MB of memory and the camera on the Zire 72 is purported to be a far superior at 1.3 megapixels. The handheld would run Palm OS 5.2.1, now called Garnet. It may bring Bluetooth to the Zire line also.

Other rumored new handhelds from palmOne include a successor to the Treo 600. This would be the first Treo to come to light after PalmOne's merger with Handspring, the original designer and maker of the Treo 600.

It looks like the upcoming Treo 610 would include mostly the same features as the Treo 600 except for the addition of a high-resolution display and Bluetooth as well as more memory. The current Treo model only has a 160x160 pixel screen whereas most current PalmOne handhelds feature 320x320 displays or higher, in the case of the Tungsten T3.

The addition of Bluetooth would allow Treo owners to use Bluetooth-enabled wireless headsets and connect to other local Bluetooth devices, such as printers, wirelessly. The Treo 600 has 32MB of RAM. The amount of additional memory in the Treo 610 isn't known.

There are also rumors of a new low-end Zire, the Zire 31, and a mid-range Tungsten, the Tungsten E2, from Chinese language website TomPDA.com. The Zire 31 would replace the current monochrome Zire 21 with a color 160x160 resolution display and a 200MHz processor, and the Tungsten E2 would have Bluetooth and a 320x480 display. Interestingly, Palm Addict is also reporting that palmOne may be considering the demise of the Tungsten T series unique slider design that makes those handhelds more compact when closed.