Walt Mossberg speaks out on the new iPhone

Walt Mossberg, everyone’s favorite technology columnist, has written a review of the Palm Pre in which he spends a large portion of his time comparing it to the iPhone. Towards the end of the article he spends a little time speculating about what he expects to come from Apple in the iPhone space.

Unfortunately for Palm, Apple has both a new iPhone operating system and new iPhone hardware coming, likely available within a month, that could obviate many of these advantages.

Apple already has announced it’s adding MMS, universal search, and copy and paste. And, although Apple hasn’t announced any new hardware features, I expect to see an iPhone with up to 32 gigabytes of memory, video recording, a higher-resolution camera, a compass, and greater operating speed. Plus, there are persistent rumors that Apple will announce at least one iPhone at a drastically lower price than $199.

This is interesting speculation coming from Walt Mossberg as he tends to be a man “in the know” and often manages to get his hands on pre-release hardware. If he does have his hands on new hardware he would be bound by an NDA that wouldn’t allow him to speak out about anything he has learned from Apple. However, he may be able to speculate on existing rumors outside of the NDA. Either way, he is clearly expecting to hear something soon. With the WWDC keynote only a few days away it will be interesting to see if he is correct.