Never underestimate the investigative search prowess of PreCentral members. Shadow-360 tips us to let us know that he’s done some digging based off some information dropped by TopTongueBarry and the results bring us a sliver of hope that the full-touchscreen, slate-style, high-end halo webOS device we’ve been hoping for could indeed be a reality in the coming months.
It begins with TopTongueBarry, a self-professed AT&T IT employee who posted saying that not only has testing finished for the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus, but that testing will soon begin for a mystery device codenamed ‘Elan.’ That matches up well with previous forum sluethery, wherein ToniCipriani noted that May 10th looks like as good a date as any for AT&T to release the Pre and Pixi.
But back to that Elan. It’s new to us and it was new to Shadow-360, who took to the Google and posted his results: Several accessory manufacturers had once listed devices as compatible with the Elan but since took that information down. TopTongueBarry also provided some hints: AT&T testing for the Elan should begin within about two weeks, scuttlebut within AT&T says that the device should have a ‘soft keyboard,’ be released in Europe initially, but may be made available unlocked in the US. All that points to a iPhone / Nexus One slate format, as does the fact that some of the accessories Shadow-360 tracked down were also compatible with the iPhone.
So where do we stand with all this hunting around? Either it’s smoke and mirrors and Elan is simply another code name for the O8F-CASC / US GSM Palm Pre Plus or it’s what Shadow-360 and TopTongueBarry suspect: something all-new and the most exciting thing going for webOS rumors given that Sprint’s mysterious C40 still hasn’t shown its face
Bonus rumor-mongering: Why call it ‘Elan?’ Well, another ‘Elan’ in the tech space is a Taiwanese company that sued Apple for multitouch patents. If this even comes close to panning out, that’d be schadenfreude-riffic.
Update: Soorma finds this site identifying the Elan with the Palm Pixi, in case things weren’t muddy enough for you yet. Shadow-360 also found this site showing the same.