The Palm Pre is coming to Verizon early next year. We know this. But this morning, BGR gives us something new to be excited about: The Pixi’s apparently coming to Verizon as well, and both models get a (titular?) upgrade.

Verizon’s lineup, according to BGR’s tipster, will consist of the Palm Pre Plus (codenam: Russell) and Palm Pixi (codename: Romo), which apparently look exactly like their non-plus predecessors, and will both run the currentl version of webOS, 1.3.5, at launch—a fact that jibes with the previously-announced “early next year” launch time, since Palm’s been updating the OS at a steady clip.

So anyway, what’s “Plus” about these phones? It could just be change in moniker, engineered by Palm and Verizon to inject a little energy into their existing lineup, but I’d expect something more more substantive: a faster processor, larger battery and in the case of the Pre, reengineered keyboard are all plausible guesses. Whatever it means, please, Palm, please don’t tell me your CES keynote is just going to be a glorified carrier announcement. Palm needs new hardware. We need new hardware. Hardware! Ungghhhhhhhh. [BGR]