PalmSource and Texas Instruments (TI) said that they have developed two smartphone reference designs based on the advanced Cobalt version of the Palm OS.

Cobalt, which was released last year, offers advanced capabilities such as multitasking, multithreading, advanced multimedia and native support for wireless technology. PalmSource's goal was to match and surpass features of Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform but, so far, no major smartphone vendors have decided to use Cobalt.

For instance, the best-selling smartphone based on the Palm OS, palmOne's Treo, is based on the Garnet version of the platform, which doesn't have the advanced capabilities of Cobalt.

The two companies said in a statement that they will demonstrate the reference designs at the 3GSM World Congress next week in Cannes, France. Reference designs enable smartphone manufacturers to speed the process of developing smartphones based on a particular technology.
This is the first time TI and its OMAP platform have provided support for Cobalt.

Source: Yahoo! News