Forget The Pre, Palm's Got A Second Device Coming Out This Year. We're Calling It The Mini-Pre

Update: More information on the Palm Pixie

Update #2: This story is breaking incredibly fast – we’ve already got even more details, including the name and hardware specs.

I came across some very interesting news today. I was mostly minding my own business, hammering away at our various sources in the hardware industry and trying to dig up some sort of information on exactly when the Palm Pre (pictured right) might be launching, and how many of them will be available. Rumors are flying about both of those issues over the last couple of days.

And then, wham! A whole new rabbit hole to jump down. One of our better sources indicated to us that Palm is “very far along” on a second Pre-like device and currently has plans to put it on the market in the late part of 2009, possibly as early as the Fall.

This is too soon for a second generation device (Apple releases new generation iPhones yearly). and Palm won’t be expecting people to upgrade their Palm Pre to this new device just a few months after buying a Pre. It’s addressing a different part of the market.

The details are still slim – it’s a smaller device (and hopefully that means slimmer), but it will run Palm’s new WebOS operating system that everyone is raving about. We’re trying to determine if the device has a physical keyboard – no word on that yet.

There have been lots of rumors about Apple releasing an iPhone Nano (or alternatively iPhone Mini) in the past, none of which have turned out to be true (and many of which were very funny). It may be that Palm, seeing all that user excitement over a small form iPhone, decided to jump ahead and create a mini Pre of their own. So until we hear otherwise, we’re calling this new phone the Mini-Pre.

And just like when we broke the news of the Palm Pre on CrunchGear, you heard it here first.

Ok, I can get back to digging up those Palm Pre build numbers and launch date now.