Next Palm smartphone rumored to lose keyboard

Pre Central reports on an interesting tip that has come in from an anonymous tipster concerning Palm’s next smartphone, codenamed “Mansion”. Whether this Mansion has many rooms, apparently none of them will be locked—because unlike the Pre, this device will not have any keys—making it the first Palm device without a hardware keypad since the company phased out the last of its original line of PDAs.

Certainly, leaving out a keyboard might be a good way to lower the price on the already inexpensive Pre line. And Palm is no stranger to making devices without hardware keyboards, even if they haven’t done so for a long time.

The final name for the 800×480-resolution device has yet to be announced. Perhaps in keeping with the theme of prefixes, they could name it the “Post”.