Palm Pixi smartphone with webOS released

Palm Pixi, the latest webOS smartphone from Palm Inc has been announced. Palm is yet to reveal the tech specs and price of the Palm Pixi, but the Pixi is expected to have smaller tech specs than the predecessor Palm Pre, and cost less.

Photo: Palm Pixi phone

The Palm Pixi has a physical QWERTY keyboard and a multi-touch screen with a 320×400 pixel resolution and sub-HVGA display.

Unlike the trackball in the Pre, the Pixi has a ‘touch area’ below the screen, which recognizes finger moves just like on a laptop touchpad. The Palm Pixi has a 2.6 inch screen, which is considerably smaller than the Palm Pre’s 3.1 inches.

The keyboard buttons are a bit more raised than than in other Palm phones, since it doesn’t have to slide out. The Palm Pixi also stands out in using the mobile phone operating system webOS, popularized by Palm.

The Palm Pixi is a 3GCDMA EVDO phone, which means fast data downloads. It is not available in GSM yet, and like the Palm Pre, it will sell only in the Sprint Nextel network in the US.

Palm Pixi phone photo front view

The company has not announced when the Palm Pixi will be available, but it is expected to be in shops before the holiday season, in 2009.

What about the price? Palm is yet to divulge details about how much the Palm Pixi will cost; however, estimates price the Palm Pixi between $100 and $150. Palm Pre, the elder brother, had its price cut to $150 recently, and a phone which is lighter on specifications must cost significantly less.

The Palm Pixi comes with GPS, which enables geotagging and navigation, but no WiFi.

This, we feel, is a definite deterrent, especially if the Pixi costs nearly as much as the Palm Pre. With the mushrooming of WiFi hotspots and zones, most new smartphone buyers take it for granted that their new phone has a WiFi chip. Palm Pixi disappoints on that count. One should be thankful for small mercies though -  Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo is part of the package.

Palm Pixi phone side view

The Palm Pixi is outfitted with a 2 megapixel (2MP) camera with an LED flash, which is still smaller than the 3-megapixel autofocus camera on the Palm Pre. Palm has still to inform us whether the camera can shoot videos too.

The company is heavily pushing its webOS, which it thinks is the future. It is tightly integrated with Facebook, Twitter and photo-sharing applications like the Photobucket and Flickr. The Palm Pixi comes with accelerometer, proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor.

Supported audio Formats include MP3, AAC, AAC+, AMR, QCELP, WAV, while supported movie formats include MPEG-4, H.263 and H.264.

Palm said that the Pixi can access emails from web mail providers like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail, as well as office email with Microsoft Outlook, IMAP and POP mail. It is yet to reveal whether the smartphone has enough firepower on viewing PDFs, MS Office files etc.

Palm Pixi phone photo topview

Other features:

Width: 55.0mm (2.17 inches),

Height: 111.0mm (4.37 inches)

Thickness: 10.85mm (0.43 inches)

Weight: 99.5 grams

Memory: 8GB ( approximately 7GB available for use)

Connector: MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed

Headphone jack: 3.5mm stereo

Palm Synergy: Aggregation for Facebook, Google, Microsoft Office Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, Google Talk, AIM Instant Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger

Universal search: Instant search for applications, contacts, dialing information, and web.

Activity cards: Third party7 and ROM applications accessible as movable, multi-view cards.

Palm services: Includes over-the-air backup, restore, remote erase, and software updates

Touchstone charging dock: Compatible