Nine months ago PalmSource delivered its next-generation operating system—Cobalt—to handheld manufacturers. Although mobile vendors have yet to give birth to Cobalt-based products, if the Internet rumor mill is correct, these devices should appear soon.

While industry experts long supposed palmOne would unveil its first Cobalt PDA this Fall, instead of calling the device the Tungsten T4, as expected, it looks like the handheld will carry the designation Tungsten T5. Whatever it's called, the Tungsten T5 should be a revolutionary PDA for palmOne.

It also appears that palmOne has a second Cobalt handheld up its sleeve with a sequel to the Tungsten E called, not surprisingly, the Tungsten E2.

Tungsten T5
The handheld should run on a 520MHz PXA270 XScale processor and 128MB of RAM. The company's current top-of-the-line models, the Tungsten C and Tungsten T3, have half that amount of memory and a less powerful 400MHz CPU.

The Tungsten T5 should also integrate dual-wireless networking with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi—a first for palmOne, but fairly common in the Pocket PC world. In addition, while nearly all of Hewlett-Packard's recently announced handhelds, for instance, feature Wi-Fi, only one palmOne PDA bundles that feature, the aforementioned Tungsten C.

Similar to the Tungsten T3, the Tungsten T5 has a 320 x 480 pixel resolution display that can switch between landscape and portrait modes. For a while, screens such as these gave Palm-based handhelds an advantage over their Pocket PC brethren, which have long been stuck at 240 x 320 pixels.

That's about to change, however, as a series of new Pocket PCs from Asus, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba will support native VGA or 640 x 480 pixel resolution displays, giving Microsoft's mobile device platform the edge.

Noticeably absent from the Tungsten T5 is the trademark slider of Tungsten T series. This nifty feature allows these models to become more compact than many other PDAs. As it is, the Tungsten T5 measures about 4.7 inches high, 3.0 inches wide, and 0.66 inches thick.

The Tungsten T5 should sell for around $400.

Tunsten E2
As for the Tungsten E2, less is known about this device than the Tungsten T5. That's not a surprise, as reports say this model won't see the light of day until April 2005.

Unlike the Tungsten T5, this $250 PDA won't feature a 320 x 480 pixel resolution display. Nevertheless, its 320 x 320 pixel screen is still considered high resolution. palmOne should also up the amount of memory from 32MB in the current Tungsten E to 64MB of RAM in the upcoming model.

PalmOne also plans to more than double the processing power of the Tungsten E2—from 126 MHz in the Tungsten E to a 312 MHz processor. This should be the same processor as the one found in the Zire 72. They should also add Bluetooth to the Tungsten E series with The Tungsten E2.

The unit should sell for around $250.

Upgrade News
In related news, it looks like palmOne will offer Cobalt upgrades for the Tungsten T3 and Tungsten C about a month after the Tungsten T5 ships.

That's good news to users of these devices who want to take advantage of the improved performance and features of the new OS. For instance, Cobalt delivers better multimedia as well as compatibility with Microsoft Office and Outlook, and other enterprise software. For more on Palm OS Cobalt, see PalmSource's Enterprising Strategy.