When we reported yesterday on the New York Times's story about an impending 'smartphone operating system' announcement from PalmSource, we opined that this would most likely turn out to be an update of the highly touted but as-yet unproven Palm OS Cobalt.

Sure enough.

Almost as if it hadn't sent a supposedly final version of Palm OS Cobalt to hardware manufacturers nearly 10 months ago, PalmSource today re-introduced Cobalt to the world as a new version of the Palm OS specifically aimed at smartphones, thus bringing some clarity to yesterday's odd rumors.

In fact, at its European Developer Conference today, PalmSource actually demonstrated this new flavor of Cobalt, called version 6.1, replacing one odd question with another: Given that not one mobile device, PDA or smartphone, has shipped with Palm OS Cobalt since its original introduction, how can version 6.1 be any newer than a previous edition that doesn't exit yet for end-users?

Many industry insiders consider smartphones to be the future of handhelds. And PalmSource has never hidden the fact that it wants to be a player in this market. Perhaps today's re-introduction was its way of saying—again—we're still here and we intend to be a strong competetor.

Still, if it wants to succeed, smartphone vendors need to get their Cobalt handsets out in the market as soon as possible. Symbian is far ahead of Palm in most of the world with Microsoft making a serious play for consumer's mobile handset dollars as well (see Palm's Uphill Battle).

And while palmOne's Treo 600 is one of the best-reviewed smartphones and the most popular smartphone in the U.S., it is getting a little long in the tooth at about a year old. The next Treo, the 650, isn't even expected to be a Cobalt device.

Yesterday's rumors about Cobalt 6.1 said 11 manufacturers would release smartphones based on the platform in the coming months. Today's announcement interestingly didn't say where and when Cobalt mobile handsets might ship.

With all this talk of smartphones, it might seem like PalmSource is abandoning the PDA market. PalmSource's Chief Competitive Officer & VP of Strategic Marketing Michael Mace emphasized to PDAStreet that this isn't so.

He told us "the new version of the OS (Cobalt) isn't exclusively for smartphones. It is, though, the first version of the OS to have wireless in general (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular) integrated very deeply right out of the box. So it'll improve time to market for future smartphones and other wireless devices."

Under the Hood of Cobalt
Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 offers a new GSM, MUX and a GPRS API to make it easier and faster for hardware manufacturers to create a Palm-based smartphone. It also supports NAND ROMs through an automatic backup and restore feature that prevents loss of user data in low power situations and during battery removal.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless networking, one-handed and five-way navigation, and SDIO (Secure Digital In Out) are now all standard parts of the Palm OS. As is a newly designed user interface, Chinese Language support and the ability to handle displays up to VGA in resolution. This last feature should help Palm vendors better able to compete with the rash of VGA Pocket PCs making their way to market.

Cobalt also includes support for mesh networks, metro Wi-FI and Wi-Max, plus 2.5 and 3G cellular networks. It supports up to 256 megabytes of RAM, and improves compatibility with Microsoft Office and Outlook, with past versions of Palm OS, and with other enterprise software. also It also finally brings multitasking and multithreading to the Palm platform