According to the a number of community sites, a road show slide indicating Sprint will release a GPS & WiFi enabled Palm Treo 800w in July with a front facing qwerty keyboard was leaked. So we called Palm Friday. They would neither confirm nor deny the rumor. But we left the call with the distinct impression the company is returning to a more normal high end release schedule shortly.

We believe the rumored Treo 800w for Sprint may be an important product for Palm at a time the company's revenues have been declining. Palm's core customer base, well over a million "early adopters," have been pining for an upgrade, especially as competing manufacturers have advanced their product lines.

Will this product may return Palm to the lead in the convergence and specifications race and excite its core constituency? To explore this issue, J. Edward Rutkowski (msmobiles.com), Mickey Papillon (Cell Phone Junkie) and Tadd Rosenfeld (mytreo.net and Centro Site) discussed the Treo 800w in context of high end smartphones presently available in an hour long podcast today. They also covered the significance of the word "autonomous" when used in context of Palm's GPS, and Microsoft's rumored time line for Windows Mobile version releases, among other key issues.

Salient topics include:

• If we could buy the whole world a Palm Treo 800w, would we? (Yes.)
• Why is Palm's front-facing keyboard design so appealing?
• Palm's Treo 800w will have autonomous GPS. What does "autonomous" mean?
• GPS performance comparison
• Software developer dumps Handango. Is Handango a good or evil company? (Tadd speaks well of them. Edward insists they're evil.)
• What is a SlingBox thingy?
• Next iPhone-like HTC phone
• TapRoot releases HotSpot software for Windows Mobile that turns your WiFi enabled device into a hotspot
• When exactly is Windows Mobile 7 coming out?
• Tadd calls in from a loud place, eats a chicken sandwich and returns to looking after his grandparents midway through the podcast, causing Edward to get angry and act out in silly ways. Mickey patiently puts up with their tomfoolery.

Here is a full sized version of the purportedly leaked Palm/Sprint image:

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