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We know that Palm, Inc. plans to release new Palm platform smartphones this year: It's been well over 12 months since the company rolled out a Palm OS model. The newest Treo, the 700w, is Palm's first Windows Mobile device, of course. Last week, we heard that communicator may soon expand beyond the confines of Verizon Wireless to fellow CDMA-operator Sprint.

Another recent rumor should liven up the heavy hearts of Palm OS Treo fans—threatened by Palm's Microsoft-turn. The report indicates a Palm platform version of Palm's newest Treo is in the works.

Way beyond the drawing boards, actually, as images - if real - show what appear to be a working handset. While the 'w' in Treo 700w stands for Windows Mobile, the Palm version adds a "p" for the ... Palm platform Treo 700p. (Rumors about a Treo 800p proved false.)

Here's what we know so far:

A TreoCentral poster says the Treo 700p, which looks a lot like the Treo 700w—if the pictures are to be believed—may ship from Sprint in April. Shadowmite—known in the mobile community for restoring Dial Up Networking (DUN) on all carrier versions of the smartphone through a patch, creating a proof of concept Wi-Fi driver for the Tungsten T5, among other hacks—has reportedly confirmed the 700p.

The 700p should run on the ever-increasingly long-in-the-tooth Palm OS Garnet (version 5.4.9), which Palm continues to finesse with its own interface and under-the-hood tweaks; as platform developer PalmSource has yet to followed Garnet up successfully. And that includes at one time ballyhooed but still missing-in-action Cobalt.

There will have to be some serious tweaking to bring supposed high-speed EV-DO support to the 700p, a must for Palm fans itching for Treo functionality but dreading the move to Windows Mobile. Additional features include a 312 MHz Intel XScale processor, a 320 x 320 pixel high resolution display, Bluetooth (may or may not be 1.2), about 63 MB of free memory, and a 1.3 megapixel camera.

Palm should deliver FAT32 driver support with this device, a "fast mode" in the blazer Web browser, and a NVFS dbCache size of 18,431 kb; a first for the company. NVFS is what allows data to survive in the event of a complete power drain.

While this could change, the rumored Treo 700p had no installed Wi-Fi drivers. And they couldn't test 802.11 SD cards with the smartphone. Wi-Fi support has long been a sore spot for Treo and Palm users in general. The feature is common to most other device vendors’ devices—and many other smartphones, but is still relatively rare for the PDA pioneer’s handhelds.

We'll report more information about the Treo 700p as it becomes available.