Palm Pixi is a Pre minus some features and sleeker look.

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Thin design, attractive looks, lots of features like GPS, Bluetooth and 3G support.

Thumbs Down:

No GPRS, No WI-FI, Applications run slow sometimes, low battery life, expensive.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: CDMA
Band: Dual band 850/1900
Phone design: Candy     bar
Caller ID: Yes
Additional Features: GPS, Yahoo! Messenger 5, Google Maps, Google Talk, Facebook, Google, Yahoo! Mail, AIM Instant Messenger, Microsoft Office Outlook.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Display – 2.63 inch, 320 x 400, Internal Memory -  8GB (approx. 7GB user available), QWERTY keyboard, Audio Support    MP3, WAC, QCELP, AAC, AMR, AAC+, 3.5mm headphone jack, Email (POP3, IMAP), 3G, MicroUSB Data Cable , 2 MP camera (1600X1200 resolution), Bluetooth ver 2.1 + EDR (A2DP), Li-Ion battery, Dimensions (mm) 55 x 111 x 10.85, Weight 99.5g.

Razzle Dazzle:

The Palm Pixi has downright sexy looks. It is thinnest phone made by Palm till now, 0.43 inch thick. This will easily fit into you tight jeans pants. The phone is a candy bar design and there in no slider keyboard underneath which adds to the sleekness. The phone doesn’t have the plasticy feel that Palm’s Pre and has a better feel than Pre.

Inside Dope:

Palm Pixi is made as a younger brother of Palm Pre, so if you are new to Palm or aren’t that crazy about mobile phones then buy this phone. Hard core Palm fans will still stick to Palm Pre.

This phone has 2.63 capacitive touch screen which will give you a 320X400 resolution. If the keyboard was absent or had been slider, we could have got a three inch touch screen like the iPhone. Loyal Palm fans will balk at the reduction of the screen from Pre’s 3.1 inch 320X480 display to a smaller screen. But this screen too does its job well. However, using applications like e-mail can be a bit challenging on this screen.

The screen is capacitive which means you don’t have to use a stylus on the screen. It also has multi touch capabilities and you can use the pinch feature (like iPhone). You can touch the screen with two fingers and stretch them or bring them close and the photos on the screen will zoom in and out accordingly.

The resolution of the screen fulfilled our expectation and we played around with quite a lot of applications to check it. The touch screen was also responsive and we seldom got any touches unregistered. The phone has a built in accelerometer wherein the display turns into landscape mode when you put the phone sideways. The accelerometer dealt with transitions quickly and it was smooth unlike some phones where the transitions take time and the phone lags. We mostly found accelerometers of HTC phones slow.

The phone has a built in proximity sensor which switches off the phone and prevents accidental touches when the phone is put close to your ear, while in a call. There is also a built in light sensor which dims the light if there is ambient light around, like in dark or movie theatre. Ringer switch on the phone silences the ringing phone in one touch. GPS is integrated on the device for you to find places in case you are lost.

There is no WI-FI in the phone which will not go well with WI-FI fans. We tested the browser, it was fast and just like a desktop web browser. A good browser is rare in cell phones and with phones like RIM this has been a constant problem. The new models get better but the browser quality is the same.

Behind the phone is a camera and we were disappointed to a find a two MP camera. Palm Pre had a three MP camera and this is a downgrade of hardware. There is flash in the camera and night mode too. The camera will give you a resolution of 1600X1200. The camera is good by two MP standards but there is nothing remarkable about the photos. The pictures are hazy and blunt. Pre’s three MP camera is better than this. You can upload photos to Facebook or share them through MMS or e-mail.

To store you images and music, there is an eight GB internal memory available out of which seven GB is for your use. There are no expansion slots in the phone but we are not complaining as seven GB is enough for all your videos, music and other files. You can also use the space as a mass storage option for carrying your data files.

Below the screen you get a full size QWERTY keyboard which is quite good compared to other mobile phone keyboards seen in the market. The set of keys are same as Palm Pre but the structure is different and we were more comfortable tying on Pixi than Pre. Pre sports a slider keyboard and this is a candy bar phone. Palm phones have a touch screen interface but they haven’t put in a virtual keyboard till today in to the phones.

We tested the phone for call quality and it was quite good. We heard the voice of the party on the other side quite clearly. But the calls tend to distort when the volume is full. The phone carried the calls well and our calls weren’t dropped abruptly. Occasionally we did hear echos and sometimes the voice couldn’t be heard clearly.

The call quality drops when it comes to speaker phone and there was a slight hollowness on the phone. Bluetooth is supported so you can pair your Bluetooth headset for calling.

The Pixi is shipped with Palm WebOS 1.2.9, but there is an update, with 1.3.1 coming out by November 15th. You can easily get the OS updated from Palm and use the newer software. We expect the newer 1.3.1 to release soon after Pixi releases.

One of the reasons why we are excited with the new software is the Synergy feature; you can sync the contacts from Yahoo and other messengers into your address book. But be care full with how much you add, because more contacts will make the phone slower and it will take more time to access it. The contact page of the individual will then show images, e-mail address and phone numbers. If you have added them on IM then their status (busy, available, offline) will show along.

We tested this feature with Yahoo and all the contacts were synced well in the first attempt. But then it asked us several time to reenter our password even after the synchronization was complete. On one side it showed that the sync was complete but kept asking for password. We don’t know what went wrong.

In the messaging options, you will be glad that forwarding messages is finally supported. The iPhone too doesn’t have the SMS forward feature, so sms fans will rejoice! Email options include flagging the messages, marking them as read or unread or moving them to a new folder. You can choose your emails to be delivered unified or keep them in a separate folder.

The phone is powered by user-replaceable1150mAh lithium-ion battery which has enough juice for five hours and up to 14 days of standby time, heavy use of video and music playback will further reduce the battery time.

Palm Pixi has multi media capabilities too so let’s check them out. The supported formats are AAC, WAV, AMR, MP3, AAC+ for music and for video the supported formats are MPEG-4, H263 and H264. Basic functions like play, forward, pause, back, etc. You can flip through the album art covers and select your music to be played. There is not much fuss while transferring music as you can directly drag and drop files onto your phone. We checked out sound on this phone and we were quite happy with it. There is a 3.5 mm head phone jack for you to plug in your favorite brand of headphones if you are not happy with the bundled set. Music quality was good.

In the box, along with the phone, you get AC adapter, USB cable and reference material. The phone is the first one to use Qualcomm’s MSM7626 chipset and the 600 MHZ processor was quite fast. The phone handles multi tasking very well but the processor will come down to it heels when you use seven to eight applications at the same time. Also there will be delays in transitions while using the accelerometer because of the work load on the processor. But our tests are quite consuming and I guess one seldom uses seven applications at the same time. But once you open up to seven applications you will start noticing the difference even when you start small applications like calendar. The sluggishness isn’t constant but once it starts, it’ll frustrating.

Nitty Gritty:

The Palm Pixi is a younger brother to the Palm Pre. It is sleeker than the latter since it doesn’t have a slider keyboard and it has a smaller screen. The phone is good but it doesn’t have all the features which Palm Pre has.

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