Palm Pixi deals & review

In a word or two

The Palm Pixi, a lighter version of the Pre in looks and technology, demands to be taken seriously as a smartphone.

The Design

The Palm Pixi is a great looking mobile phone. Taller and slimmer than the Pre, the Pixi feels small and light in the palm of your hand. It feels good to the touch too thanks to its rubberised back and rounded edges.

The Pixi has a 2.63 inch touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard. Below the screen is a multi-touch LED strip which lights up as you press it, and replaces the ball on the Pre. When not in use, the strip looks just like a shiny black area to complement the simple black design of the phone. The strip is used for closing an application or zooming in on an image on the screen.

The back of the Palm Pixi can be removed and replaced with an artist-designed cover of your choosing. To begin with, there will be five Touchstone-compatible designs but we’re sure Palm will introduce more over time.

Palm Pixi Specifications

The Palm Pixi is run on the webOS platform which provides you with access to the App Catalogue. Similar to the Apple App Store on the iPhone, the App Catalogue has a range of apps for you to customise your phone with. There are currently over 300 available and Palm adds to the Catalogue regularly.

Communicating using the Pixi is fun and easy with a range of channels for you to choose between. The phonebook syncs your Google, Facebook, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo, and LinkedIn accounts, so you can access your contacts’ details and email directly. You can also press straight through to the different social networking sites and update your status or see your friends’ updates. The phone supports text message, picture message and instant messaging, along with email.

Typing on the Palm Pixi is surprisingly easy, considering the keyboard’s relatively small size. The keys are nicely raised so your fingers can pick them out with confidence and there is some resistance as you press them, so you know when an insert has been successful. Although there are limited auto-correction options, you shouldn’t miss these as typing on the Pixi is quick and fairly accurate.

Considerations

The design is not the only aspect of the Palm Pre which has been scaled down on the Pixi – the technology has been too. The processor is smaller so although you can have multiple applications open on the Pixi, the phone does occasionally slow as a result. There is no Wi-Fi and the camera is only 2-megapixel compared to the Pre’s 3-megapixels.

Verdict

The Palm Pixi is a light, small smartphone which has some good features. It is a competitively priced phone and will appeal to those who want style and function without the high price tag.