The Register has a quick write up (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/27/palm_cobalt_sixpointone/) of the new Palm OS Cobalt, which was presented at Palm's European developer conference in Munich this week.

According to the article, integration has taken longer than expected, and the first new phones won't appear until the first quarter of next year. I am not sure if by "phones" they also mean handhelds, but if yes, then don't expect to see the new Tungsten T5 under your Christmas tree this year!

New hot Cobalt features mention in the article:
- TrueType font support
- translucent windows and drop shadows
- new web browser with "squeeze rendering", multi-tab

Although WEP is finally integrated, I don't understand why more advanced Wi-Fi security standards such as WPA/802.11i are not supported in Cobalt 6.1 (even Windows Mobile supports it!).

What I like about Cobalt is that it now uses NAND Flash memory for automatic backups: when the battery reaches a certain low trigger point, your data is automatically written into the NAND Flash memory.

I think by 'phones', he means phones. ;)

Note the discussion in the last paragraph about Symbian OS and the M$ Smartphone OS.

Wow, this sounds really cool. I have to admit that I'm intrigued. I wonder if Palm can make a serious comeback here. TrueType font support is HUGE for me. I've always hated the Palm standard font. But how can they leave out native support for WPA?? And I hope that they've improved the ability to connect to Windows networks. Without that they can't hope to compete with the growing business world of PPCs.