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A supposed leaked Sprint roadmap of the carrier's product line for 2007 reveals a new Palm device called 'Sherlock.' Other than the code-name and a possible June launch date, nothing else is known about the device.

This hasn't stopped people from speculating on exactly what 'Sherlock' is, however. The blog Engadget, the source of the Sprint roadmap, speculates the device could be a CDMA version of either Treo 680 or 750, both launched recently by GSM carrier Cingular Wireless.

Another, more interesting, possibility ( set forth by Brighthand) is that 'Sherlock' could be the secret third category of product - neither PDA or smartphone - Palm co-founder Jeff Hawkins has been talking about for over a year now.

Hawkins, now a consultant for new products, implied the new product could be revolutionary, as with a couple of Palm's past devices. "One of the missions we have at Palm is to design breakout products. It's hard, really hard, to do. Palm's done it twice, you could argue, with the original PalmPilot, and the Treo smartphone. We've got another one in development," Hawkins explained to Business 2.0 a while back.

He noted that he makes test models to carry in his pocket out of foam today and not plywood like he did with the original Pilot.

In the Portland Business Journall back in July 2005, Hawkins said this about his current project:

What are the implications of a world where everyone has a super high-speed Internet connection in their pocket and many gigabytes of storage, super-fast processors, audio, visual and multimedia? What are the consequences of that? How will that change computing when you have all that stuff available to you all the time? I try to think into the future. That's how we come up with new products. So I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it's following the consequences of mobile computing.

Sounds a little iPhone-like, doesn't it?

Whatever it is, and whether its 'Sherlock' or not, Palm needs to come out with a new device that'll turn heads this year and get the company back on the cutting edge, at least in terms of consumer awareness.

While the latest Treos, the 680 (Palm OS) and 750 (Windows Mobile), are sleeker than past Palm smartphones - mostly due to the lack of an antenna - they still use the same basic form factor of all Treos going way back to the 600, which was initially released by Handspring; before that company was acquired by Palm and, as a benefit, brought Hawkins back into the Palm fold.