Palm Skywriter - The Drucker in Beta?
We already knew that the 800w is in a closed beta program pending it's upcoming release on July 22nd - we know because the Beta program sign-up page explicitly said it was for the Zeppelin, the internal code name for the Treo 800w. Well now TamsPPC [via TreoCentral]notes that Palm also has a new program that will allow Windows Mobile developers to get in on the promotional materials for a couple of upcoming devices, the Zeppelin and the Skywriter. The image that accompanies the email explaining the program is pretty clearly just a dummy casing (or just a mockup) to hide the final look of the device - as you can see it's ugly as sin.
The squarish shape to this Skywriter reminds us of another mysterious squarish shape from the Vodaphone's leaked roadmap for 2008: the Palm Drucker. Honestly we're only expecting a couple of Windows Mobile Treos from Palm this year: the 800w and a GSM version of the same, codenamed Drucker. Seems pretty obvious that it's in testing now and that it has this fancy new codename (companies like to switch up the names to throw folks like us off).
The target launch date for the Drucker (/Skywriter, we hope) is, coincidentally enough, July 2008. Could Palm actually be releasing two Windows Mobile Treos on July 22nd -- in both CDMA and GSM flavors? If so, it would be a welcome change for a company that traditionally only releases devices until a temporary exclusive for a single carrier (usually Sprint) before they deign to release them for the other guys.
