Palm, maker of the popular Treo and Centro phones and the venerable Palm OS organizers (also known as connected organizers and the original Palm Pilot), has announced a new phone, called the Pre. You can read about it here: www.palm.com

If you’re into technical details, you can find some here: http://developer.palm.com

While there are some nice Web pages and pre-ads (pun intended) for the Pre, there is surprisingly little information about adding programs to the Pre.

However, based on what we’ve read, this is what we “know” right now:

1. The Pre uses a new operating system
2. Palm will be making additional information available to developers “over the coming weeks and months”
3. Although it’s not been expressly stated, it appears that existing Palm OS programs will not run on the Pre
4. It will be possible to add 3rd party programs to the Pre
5. These new Pre programs are completely new, and not based upon existing Palm OS programs
6. These new Pre programs are more similar to Web pages than to traditional programs written in languages such as C and C++

So, if you’re a MyBible user or are hoping to be a Pre early adopter, what does this all mean? It means:

1. You should not expect MyBible to work on a Pre
2. You should not expect any existing Palm OS applications to work on a Pre
3. There will be confusion about which programs work on older Palm devices and which work on the Pre
4. No one can start working on programs designed for the Pre until Palm releases more information “over the coming weeks and months”

What do we think about the new Pre? On the one hand, it looks like another cool new phone. On the other hand, it looks like just another cool new phone. As a cool new phone, unrelated to the current Palm models except by name, it will require an investment to create a cool new program that will work on it.

As Palm releases more information about the Pre, we’ll have the information we need to evaluate if and when there might be a version of PocketBible for the Pre.