Register Hardware

Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/09/03/palm_teases_for_otto/

Palm teases punters with 'Otto' launch date

By Tony Smith
Published Monday 3rd September 2007 09:17 GMT

Palm is to launch its next new European smartphone - codenamed 'Otto' - in just over a week's time, on 12 September, the company has revealed.

Palm Otto teaser page
Palm's Otto: Gandolf for Europe's 3G market?

A teaser page posted on Palm's European website offers five of the unnamed handsets to the winner of a draw pulled from all the folk it hopes will sign up to receive news of the phone on 12 September.

The handset will be offered in four countries at first: the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy.

Palm 'Gandalf' next-gen Treo? - image courtest Morning Paper
Palm's Gandolf: the Centro design?

Believed to be codenamed 'Otto', the European handset could well be based on the 'Gandolf' design that's been leaked out onto the web a couple of times over the last few months and which is expected to be dubbed Centro (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/08/17/palm_points_to_centro/) when it comes to market.

Interestingly, the silhouette on the Palm Europe website matches the outline of Gandolf/Centro and not existing Treo designs.

Centro is expected to be an EvDO-enabled handset, but presumably it'll be UMTS 3G over here, almost certainly with HSDPA high-speed download support. Pictures of the machine show it running both Windows Mobile and the Palm OS, so expect versions based on each of these operating systems.