Sprint will have an interesting holiday device in their lineup… a Palm OS-based Motorola smartphone? The Q2 appears to be using the same hardware as the Motorola Q9m, currently sold on Verizon Wireless, but is pictured on a teaser site running running Palm’s Garnet operating system.
Palm recently retrofitted Garnet to run on devices without a touch screen, as seen on the Treo 500 series. This is one of many planned enhancements made by Palm since re-licensing the operating system back from Access Co (which acquired it from the PalmSource offshoot of Palm).
It is not clear yet if the Q2 is running exactly the same hardware as the Q9m, or what modifications were made for the device. However, with Sprint’s recent improvement to add Sprint TV, Sprint Music Store, and Sprint Navigation to smart devices, it is likely the Q2 could do what canceled devices like the Samsung i550 attempted to do years ago, making the Palm OS more accessible to consumers.
However, it is equally possible that the photo was a mistake on the part of Sprint’s web development team. Click Read More to see the hidden portion of the teaser site, which reports the device is running Windows Mobile 6. Motorola may have simply re-badged the Q9m to be the Q2 on Sprint, in order to duck any exclusivity agreements with Verizon Wireless (which currently holds an exclusive on sales of the Q9m in the United States).
Update: Countless sources have confirmed that the device, as we reported below, is indeed running Windows Mobile 6. The device is running identical hardware to the Q9m on Verizon Wireless.
Here is what is found when reverse-engineering the teaser site’s URL…
