AT&T is also rumored to have the Palm Eos lined up for release as early as this year. While this is immensely beneficial for Palm, I can’t help but feel a little bad for Sprint. The carrier is taking a huge risk with the Pre, and is being rewarded by Palm giving the direct competitor their best hope for salvation. AT&T gets the iPhone, why can’t Sprint keep the Pre? Maybe we’ll see a CDMA iPhone after AT&T’s contract with Apple expires?

Anyway you look at it, we knew this would come. Palm has long been a manufacturer of devices on multiple carriers. The Eos and Pre are just the first of many webOS based devices, and hopefully, Sprint will have the first chance at those phones as well.

[Via CNet]

If you can’t remember, the Eos is the purported next webOS device and will be a QWERTY candy bar with 4GB of storage and a 2MP camera. Like I said, not as awesome as the Pre. The real draw is the webOS, and this device will give the internet, messaging, and App Catalog features to users who may not need everything the Pre offers.

If the leak is to be believed, this would put the Eos on track for a sooner release than expected, and gives credit to Palm’s dedication to the new operating system.

Slimmer and more basic in its specifications than the Pre, the Eos looks to be the natural successor to the Palm Centro, complete with an estimated $99 subsidized price-tag.  Palm always promised more than one handset using webOS, but we must admit we never expected to see it as soon as 2009.  Check out the key differences between the Eos and the Pre here.

Meanwhile, the Palm Pre edged closer to release with another sighting in the wild, while the company also kicked off a tester scheme offering participants the chance of a free handset and service for six months.  Elsewhere, analysts shared their opinion on the Pre - good and bad - with iSuppli counting up the numbers and declaring the smartphone a mere $138 to build.  Sadly not everyone is so positive, with a Collins Stewart analyst claiming there’s a high chance the Pre will be DOA.  Bad judgment, sour grapes or attention seeking?  We’re calling all three.

The news apparently comes from sources within Sprint, themselves unnamed, but the specifications of the CDMA Eos are said to be pretty much identical to those of the AT&T version.  UMTS/HSDPA would be thrown out in favor of EVDO Rev.A, however, in keeping with the Pre.

While we’re still filing all this in the speculation category until we hear conclusively otherwise, our gut reaction is that it would serve Palm well to spread out the Eos as much as possible.  Given the success of the Centro, which has been broadly available across multiple networks and enjoyed high sales as a result, Palm needs a similar entry-level model using the new webOS platform.

[via Pre Central]

Likely to be a key marketing point for the Eos is its dimensions, and it’s certainly a compact device.  The thickness - or lack of - is particularly impressive, especially when you contrast it to the Centro or even the Pre, but it’s also a relatively narrow handset.  The payoff to that size reduction is in screen and keyboard size.  Where the Pre has a 3.2-inch touchscreen, already critiqued by many for being smaller than that found on the iPhone 3G, the Eos is tipped to have a 2.63-inch touchscreen, running at just 320 x 400.  The QWERTY keyboard will also be smaller, to fit into the minimal lower section.

The single render we’ve seen so far would suggest that Palm have squeezed a gesture area in-between the keyboard and the display.  As on the Pre, this won’t be for softkeys but as a launch-point for the context menus and shortcuts in webOS, the capacitive panel stretching below the Eos’ LCD display and allowing for touch recognition in that central portion.  Similarly, the chromed home key is also present as on the Pre, likely to perform the same, predictable single function of taking the user back to square one.

Where the phones differ is in their connectivity and storage.  The Pre - at least in its first US form - is a CDMA phone on Sprint’s network, supporting EVDO Rev.A for its high-speed data, while the Eos is a GSM device (as the Pre will be in Europe) that’s expected to use AT&T’s HSDPA 3G network.  WWAN speeds will vary more as a function of carrier coverage than they will individual phone technology, but where the Pre does edge ahead is in capacity: the Eos has just half of the flash storage, 4GB.  This might, though, be enough for the entry-level market it’s aimed at: many buyers of the Centro will never have slotted in a microSD card, leaving them with at most 128MB of integrated memory.

Another obvious difference is the absence of WiFi in the Eos.  This, again, fits in with the Centro pattern, and is an example of how Palm are looking to distinguish the Pre and the Eos by their “business” style features.  We’re thinking, though, that with the rise in home WiFi connections and café hotspots, more people will miss WiFi on the Eos than did on the Centro.

We’re also wondering how Canon might react to a smartphone using the same name as in recent years has come to be associated with their DSLRs.  Of course, a similar issue affected the iPhone when that was first announced, resulting in a usage agreement between Apple and Cisco.

Finally, we have questions about where the specifications and render of the Palm Eos came from.  Given one source has already suggested that Palm is acting cautiously with the smartphone, hoping to see how successful the Pre and webOS are before publicly announcing their second model, is it too much of a stretch to wonder whether the company themselves released the details to Engadget?  We’re unlikely to get a confession from the company - who are currently sitting pretty with Sprint, a carrier that has a lot to lose if would-be Pre buyers decide to wait for the Eos on AT&T - but it would certainly lay the foundations for any users unwilling to sign up to the CDMA network.

The Palm Eos will have half the storage of the Pre, at 4GB, and a 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera with flash and video capture functionality.  There’ll also be Bluetooth 2.1+EDR with A2DP support and a micro-USB 2.0 port, though no sign of WiFi.  The battery will be a 1,150mAh pack, user-removable, and good for an estimated 4hrs of 3G talktime.

With support for the 850 and 1900 bands, the Palm Eos will be headed to AT&T rather than Sprint, where it will support MediaNet and Cellular Video.  Price is said to be $349 before any carrier rebate.  There are still questions remaining - and yes, this is just a render, not a live photo - but the Palm Eos certainly looks like it has potential.

Update: The target price is $99, according to TechCrunch, suggesting that the Eos is aimed at the lower end of the market.  Palm are, according to one source, waiting to see how the Pre does before announcing the Eos, or planning to launch a few months after the Pre, according to another.

• Messaging: SMS, MMS (picture and video only), integrated IM client
• Contact sync with AT&T Address Book
• MediaNet
• Cellular Video
• Email: POP3, IMAP4, and EAS support
• A-GPS: SUPL and Control Plane support
• Audio: WAV, MP3, AAC, AAC+ ringtones
• Video Playback: MPEG4, H.264, H.263
• Dimensions: 111 x 55 x 10.6 mm
• Weight: 100g