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Palm has announced that their next-generation OS will be finished by the end of year and new handsets will be announced in the first half of 2009. The Linux based OS, which has been in development since 2003, is known as Palm OS II or Nova, and has been highly anticipated by Palm loyalists, many of who have been frustrated by the glacial pace of the new OS’s development.

After many delays and missed deadlines, Palm decided in 2007 to develop the new OS itself.  In the meantime, it has seen its once dominant share of the smartphone market dwindle sharply with RIM’s Blackberry taking over. While Palm’s Centro smartphone has seemingly renewed the popularity of the original Palm OS, selling over 2 million units in less than a year, many of the company’s customers have switched to Windows Mobile devices, declaring the OS to be ugly and outdated.

As a Cento owner and someone who has owned and loved Palms since the Palm IIIx, while I can agree the OS needs a makeover, it is still the most stable and easy to use mobile OS and has a large library of applications available for it. I’m looking forward to the new OS and to a very important question left largely unanswered by Palm—will the new OS be compatible with apps written for Garnet, the current OS? It looks like we’ll know the answer soon!

Read[ZDNet]