An Advanced Look at the Palm Foleo AKA the "Hawk"

Palm Inc. has apparently accidentally leaked some of the details on the product Jeff Hawkins will release announce later today, the company's first Mobile Companion.

This device -- which until now has been referred to as the Hawk -- is one of the most highly anticipated products from this company in many years, and there has been much speculation about it.

A slip up on one of Palm's feeds has given the world an advance look at some of the features of this device, which will apparently be called the Foleo. A leaked description of this model gives an overview, but now all the specifications.

The First Mobile Companion

Palm is calling this device a Mobile Companion, as it will work in conjunction with a smartphone. The Foleo apparently won't have cellular-wireless access itself, but can be synchronized with a smartphone, presumably a Treo.

The Foleo will give users access to much of the same information as is on their Treo, but will let users work with it on a larger screen and keyboard. The exact dimensions of this device are not yet known, but Palm says it will have a "full size" keyboard.

As expected, this device will run a version of the Linux operating system, and will be open to third party software. It will apparently come bundled with the Opera web browser and a version of DataViz's Documents To Go, allowing users to work with Microsoft Office documents.

Jeff Hawkins, co-founder of Palm and the one who led this product's design team, said, "Foleo is the most exciting product I have ever worked on. Smartphones will be the most prevalent personal computers on the planet, ultimately able to do everything that desktop computers can do. However, there are times when people need a large screen and full-size keyboard. As smartphones get smaller, this need increases. The Foleo completes the picture creating a mobile-computing system that sets a new standard in simplicity."

Palm says the Foleo will be available this summer. It will cost $600, but Palm will offer a $100 rebate at its introduction.

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Via treocentral