Embattled Palm is set to launch, initially in Europe, a new smartphone on Sept. 12.

Palm made the announcement on the company’s regional site for Europe.

Whatever Palm announces on Sept. 12 is welcome news after the abrupt withdrawal of the Palm Foleo, which was met by catcalls and stinging criticisms from Palm loyalists.

The choice of Europe as launch pad already indicates that the new Palm smartphone will be using GSM technology. Whether it will have WIFI, a feature long demanded by loyal Palm enthusiasts, is yet to be seen.

Palm users are looking forward to the annoucement, which may herald the arrival of a new Palm OS to be based on Linux but backward-compatible to Garnet and previous Palm OS versions.

Palm is said to be lagging behind Symbian and Windows Mobile devices in incorporating latest mobile technologies in its smartphones.

Photo of Treo 700 showing the Palm logo courtesy of Wikipedia and Wikimedia.