Palm Pixi: Palm taking it to the masses?

Peter To — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:38:16 +0000

Palm has officially announced the second device to be outfitted with its webOS mobile platform. Previously leaked as the Eos and now officially known as the Pixi. The Pixi loses the slide out keyboard for a candy bar form factor, yet still keeping a full qwerty keyboard. It slims down to a mere 0.67″ thin (by comparison the iPhone 3GS is 0.48″), but doesn’t lose the capacitive touchscreen or the number of pixels.

What’s does this have:

Palm’s also introducing what they’re calling the “Artist Series”, which includes backplates not unlike those for the myTouch on T-Mobile, adding some flare to those Pixi’s out there. The back plates are also fully compatible with the touchstone wireless charging accessory and right now comes in five different variations.

It looks like Palm’s been hard at work not only with getting a new device out the door, but adding some much needed software additions and tweak,s as well. Palm has added LinkedIn and Yahoo to your synergy contacts, Yahoo to the messeging application, and rouding it out with an official Facebook application.

What it doesn’t have:

It loses the shiny metal click button at the bottom right below the gesture area, WiFi and gets a slower processor (a Qualcomm MSM7627 as opposed to the pre’s TI OMAP 3). It still does not have a microSD card slot, but keeps the 8 GB internal storage. Since this phone is coming to Sprint, expect it to be a CDMA only device, so those expecting this to be that first GSM webOS device, you’ll need to wait a wee bit longer.

Be sure to keep an eye out for this soon on Sprint, for an unknown price point. As this will surely be aimed at the Centro crowd, Sprint will most likely shoot for a price of around $99-$150, which is after a two-year agreement, of course. Read more about the Pixi here on Palm’s site and the full specs here.

Palm Pre Review Round Up

Peter To — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:00:19 +0000

The launch of the Palm Pre is just around the corner, but reviews were out in full force tonight. Before you dish out that cash, be sure to check out all the reviews for the Palm Pre to get the real low-down on whether or not it lives up to all the hype (from all indications it does). Here are the reviews, in no particular order. I will add more reviews as I see them, but so far the reviews have been glowingly positive. Some caveats of the Pre are the software is extremely nice and fluid, contacts management is an all or nothing affair, the device feels like a toy at times, and the keyboard is so-so. However, for a first generation device, it performs surprisingly well. Reviewers have also noted that it being on Sprint’s network could hold this device back from selling even more and the device doesn’t seem as sturdy as it could be. Looks like I may switch to Sprint after all.

Engadget

Gizmodo

WSJ/All Things Digital – Walt Mossberg

Boy Genius Report (Only Part 1)

GigaOM (Quick Review)

PCWorld

PCMag

Laptop Mag