According to the latest rumors, Palm isn’t relying solely on the Pre to turn their fortunes around.  The company is said to have a smaller handset, still running webOS, “very far along” in development, that is set to reach the market in late 2009, potentially as early as the fall.

The news came from one of TechCrunch’s “better sources”, with little detail beyond the device’s development existence.  There’s no word on whether the Mini-Pre (which is not the official name) will have the slide-out QWERTY keyboard of the existing Pre; that would certainly be a straightforward way for Palm to differentiate the two models, and target a new audience who prefer a thinner handset and on-screen keyboard.

TechCrunch are pointing to the continual rumors regarding an iPhone nano, and suggesting that Palm are jumping the gun on Apple’s possible release plans.  We’d say it’s more akin to the T-Mobile G1 (aka the HTC Dream) and the newer HTC Magic, the two Google Android smartphones, which are basically the same hardware device only differentiated by their use of a hardware or an on-screen keyboard.