Dude, the Palm Pre is soooo last week.  I want the Mini-Pre.

TechCrunch is reporting that "one of [their] better sources" blabbed about a second Pre-like device that Palm is "very far along" with and readying for a launch sometime in the second half of 2009.  The device is reportedly smaller than Pre, which could mean it forgoes the sliding QWERTY board in favor of an all-touchscreen solution, virtual keyboard and all.

As TC points out, what's ironical about this is that iPhone pundits and fanboys have been chasing after the mythical "iPhone nano" rumor for a good two years now, and Palm may have beaten Apple to the punch.  While this week's iPhone rumors have largely centered around some sort of deal with Verizon that could include an "iPhone Lite" device coming to Big Red, they're still just rumors: there's no second, smaller Apple phone that anyone knows about.  Well, none that anyone without security clearance knows about, anyway.

Of course, this Mini-Pre story is just a rumor, too.  But I love the idea, as TC summed it up, "that Palm, seeing all that user excitement over a small form iPhone, decided to jump ahead and create a mini Pre of their own."