PalmSource and Texas Instruments have launched a Smartphone Reference Design based on Palm OS Cobalt (OS 6) and TI's OMAP™ Platform. They will be demonstrating this technology at the 3GSM World Congress February 14-17 in France.

PalmSource and Texas Instruments Launch Smartphone Reference Design based on Palm OS Cobalt and TI's OMAP™ Platform
 
PalmSource, Inc., provider of Palm OS®, a leading operating system powering next generation phones and mobile devices, and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI), today announced the availability of two Palm OS® Cobalt reference designs running on TI's industry-leading OMAP™ platform, including the OMAP730 GSM/GPRS processor and OMAP850 EDGE processor. These reference designs enable wireless handset OEMs and ODMs to quickly create low-cost, high-performance Palm Powered™ smartphones for use on GSM/GPRS and EDGE networks.
 
PalmSource and TI will demonstrate Palm OS Cobalt running on TI OMAP technology during 3GSM World Congress, taking place February 14-17 in Cannes, France. The demo will be shown at the PalmSource booth, K5 in Hall 4, throughout the event (Feb 14 -17); TI will feature the demo at its booth, E19 in Hall 2, on February 16 and 17.
 
Palm OS Cobalt, the latest version of the Palm OS, is designed to speed development of new categories of smartphones and wireless devices by incorporating telephony features, including support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® wireless technology, while maintaining the flexibility, ease-of-use and compatibility that are the hallmarks of the Palm OS platform. Palm OS Cobalt includes advanced features such as multitasking and multithreading; memory protection; support for more memory and larger screens; industry standards-based security; rich graphics and multimedia features; and extensible communications and multimedia frameworks capable of handling simultaneous connections.
 
TI's OMAP730 GSM/GPRS and OMAP850 EDGE processors integrate TI's digital baseband modem and a dedicated application processor into a single-chip solution. The OMAP730 processor delivers high-performance application processing while reducing overall system cost by integrating dozens of peripheral functions.
 
The combined solutions, available on TI's GSM/GPRS and EDGE chipset reference designs, include complete software solutions for protocol stacks and allow for early testing and field trials, accelerating application development and reducing time to market for handset manufacturers.
 
"We are very excited about reinforcing our commitment to drive mobile and wireless innovation with an industry leader like Texas Instruments, whose OMAP architecture has become a de-facto standard for high-performance, power-efficient processing in today's wireless devices," said Mike Kelley, vice president of engineering for PalmSource, Inc. "We believe the combination of Palm OS® Cobalt and TI's industry-leading OMAP platform will enable our licensees to quickly and cost-effectively create feature-rich phones that meet their customers' demands."
 
"Adding support for Palm OS® Cobalt further enhances the OMAP platform and creates opportunities for mobile device manufacturers to quickly transition their Palm OS® device from concept into production. The agreement with PalmSource expands our customer base and improves time-to-market for manufacturers looking to create cutting-edge Palm Powered™ mobile devices," said Richard Kerslake, OMAP worldwide general manager for Cellular Systems at Texas Instruments.

About Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments Incorporated provides innovative DSP and analog technologies to meet our customers' real world signal processing requirements. In addition to semiconductor, the company's businesses include Sensors & Controls, and Educational & Productivity Solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing, design or sales operations in more than 25 countries. 
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at www.ti.com.

Editor Notes

This certainly doesn't mean a consumer product launch is close, but it is the first information so far about any Palm Cobalt product. palmOne has not committed to releasing a Cobalt device in 2005 and no other manufacturer has announced any plans either. There are rumors that Samsung may be working on a new Cobalt smartphone, but its too early to have any real information about that.

You can read more about this new operating system on our Palm OS Cobalt (OS 6) page.