Report: Palm "Nova" phone has "large" touchscreen, QWERTY

Rumors are swirling over Palm's expected announcement of a next-gen smartphone on Thursday. The latest: That the "Nova" phone will boast a "slide-down" QWERTY keypad and a jumbo touchscreen.

That's the word from tech blog CrunchGear, whose "trusted" source goes on to call Palm's long-awaited Nova OS "amazing," packing such features as "media playback functions," a calendar, e-mail (I'd certainly hope so), and "contact functionality."

CrunchGear has a Photoshop mockup of the new, "iPhone-like" handset up on its site, but I've yet to see any pictures—fuzzy or otherwise—of the real McCoy.

Palm's under enormous pressure to hit a home run at CES this week. The existing version of the Palm OS (featured on the $99 Palm Centro) looks like a relic from the late 1990s, while Apple, BlackBerry, and even Microsoft have managed to leapfrog the once-pioneering smartphone maker. (Indeed, Palm's most powerful phones are Windows Mobile-powered.) And Palm's quarterly financials of late have been well-nigh disastrous.

But will a "Nova" phone with an updated interface, a big touchscreen, a slide-out QWERTY keypad, and e-mail capabilities do the trick? Well, off the top of my head, I can tick off a dozen other smartphones with the same basic form factors and features.

Indeed, I think most of us at Thursday's press conference will be looking for some out-of-the-box thinking—and who knows, with the crack team that Palm's assembled (including key hires from Apple), the embattled phone maker might have a surprise up its sleeves. The never-released Foleo—misfire though it was—proves that Palm is (or was) at least trying to thinking different.

Personally, I'm pulling for 'em, but make no mistake—as far as the industry is concerned, Thursday's CES press conference is Palm's Alamo.

Related:
Exclusive: New Palm phone to have slide-down keyboard, large touchscreen [CrunchGear]