Nov 11, 2010 08:04 GMT  ·  By

Palm Pre, the first mobile phone that came on the market last year with Palm's webOS mobile operating system on board, is nowhere to be found at US wireless carriers Sprint and Verizon (the Plus version), suggesting that the new Palm Pre 2 handset might make an appearance on their airwaves in the near future.

HP already announced officially the new Pre 2 smartphone, which is already available for purchase in France via SFR, and which should arrive in the UK before the end of this week.

Moreover, the company said that the new device should arrive in the US at Verizon Wireless in the following weeks, but did not offer specific info on when that would happen.

In case you were wondering why we consider the arrival of Pre 2 in the US as being imminent, here's what you need to know.

First of all, days before Palm Pre 2 was announced officially, the older Pre disappeared from shelves at SFR in France, and also at O2 in the UK.

Speculation arose at that time that a new device might be on its way to the market from HP, and the company announced the new webOS 2.0 device only a few days after.

The same might happen in the US market too, especially since Pre 2 was announced officially as being set to land at Verizon soon.

When compared to the older device, the new Pre 2 comes with a faster processor and a 5-megapixel camera, though sporting the same form factor and looks as the predecessor.

However, the Pre 2 is a welcomed upgrade, especially since it runs under the new webOS 2.0 operating system, and it would make sense for HP to try to push it to more markets as soon as possible.

However, it remains to be seen how soon would the new smartphone arrive at the two CDMA carriers in the US (at least at one of them), though we should note that the GSM version of the handset was said to be put on sale in the country unlocked via HP itself.