The Features of Palm Pixi Phone

(From Palm.com)
Instantly say whatever you want with an exposed keyboard right at your fingertips. Intuitively move back and forth between open applications using the multitouch screen and natural gestures. Access your friends' information that's been pulled in and linked together for you. And choose from back cover designs and accessories that let you express yourself.1 Personally. The new Palm® Pixi™ phone. You said it best.



The Palm Advantage

Pixi runs on the Palm webOS™ platform, so it does things no other phone can do. Take the Palm Synergy™ feature, which brings together related information and presents it in one simple view. Or the App Catalog, which gives you a choice of titles to download, many of which are integrated with other apps on the phone. And the ability to keep multiple applications open at once, so you can do more than one thing without losing your place.

Combined Messaging

When you think about communicating, you think about the person. Not whether it happens to be a text message or an IM. It's the same with Palm Pixi. Start a conversation on AIM, Google Talk™, or Yahoo! Messenger and continue it by text message when you're out at lunch or out for the night. With Palm Pixi, your conversations with one person are combined in a single chat-style view.

Real Websites

Visit real websites, not just the mobile versions. Palm Pixi gives you the experience you expect, and lets you scroll and zoom using natural, intuitive gestures. Not sure what site you're looking for? Type "taqueria" and universal search looks through contacts and apps, then offers to search Google™, Google Maps™, Wikipedia, or Twitter. One more tap opens up Google Maps, and gets you one step closer to whatever you're craving.

Linked Contacts

Each person's contact information is pulled in from places like Facebook®, Google, Microsoft® Office Outlook®, and LinkedIn®, and combined under one entry. So instead of wondering where you kept someone's information, just think about sending that happy hour invite. And if your friend happens to be online using AIM, Google Talk, or Yahoo! Messenger, you'll see that, too.

Built-in Location

Find things to do and people around you, right from where you're standing. Like a nearby place for dinner after a late client meeting. Or the closest bar where you can meet up with friends. Even look up an address for a contact or from a calendar event, and map the location simply by tapping it. With Palm Pixi it takes two steps, not ten.

Personal and Work Email

Get your personal email from accounts like Gmail™, Windows Live™ Hotmail®, and Yahoo! Mail. And stay in touch with work by checking email from Microsoft® Exchange, POP, or IMAP accounts. The exposed keyboard makes typing responses, even longer ones, fast and easy.

Palm Pixi phones now just $25

Palm Pixi smartphones now just $25:"

Network World - You can now buy the brand-spanking-new Palm Pixi phone for just $25. Amazon.com slashed the original retail of $100 by 75%, less than a week after Palm's second webOS phone went on sale at Sprint, which still holds to the original price.

It's a jarring price cut for the Pixi, which Palm was aiming toward a younger audience than the more advanced and pricier Palm Pre, released last June. The retailer also chopped the price for the higher-end Pre, from $150 via Sprint to $80. All prices are based on a two-year phone contract (the unsubsidized prices are much higher; $399 for Pixi and $549 for Pre).

These aren't the only brands being dramatically repriced. Amazon is still offering some popular smartphones, including the BlackBerry Bold, Curve and original Storm for just one penny. The recently released Motorola Droid is being offered for $150, compared to Verizon's price of $200.

Both Palm phones run Palm's innovative webOS, a Linux kernel married to the open source Webkit Javascript engine. It's a combination that lets developers use HTML, Cascading Style Sheets and HTML instead of a specialized programming language to write native applications for the two phones.

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But the Pre has not been a breakthrough bestseller, and it faces still more intense competition from a flock of new rivals, such as the Motorola Droid on Verizon, along with other phones running the Android operating system, and the continued strong sales of the Apple iPhone.

It's not clear how well the Pixi will do, given its internal compromises of a slower processor and lack of Wi-Fi, which means it relies solely on Sprint's 3G network for connectivity. The Wall Street Journal's Katherine Boehret found a lot to like in the new phone. "But this processor's speed is slow enough to notice immediately and it robs webOS of its lightning-fast speed," she writes, in a review this week. "The Pixi's progress indicator -- a spinning, white circle -- appeared on my screen too often."

The cost and performance tradeoffs can shackle the Pixi's user experience. Boehret notes that Palm recommends running no more than seven programs at once on the Pixi, compared to up to 10 on the Pre. That's a reflection of the webOS multi-tasking capability, which is unavailable to developers on the iPhone. "But my Pixi stuttered with just five programs -- sometimes fewer -- opened," Boehret writes. "I received an e-mail containing one digital photo, and the process of opening just the e-mail -- not even the photo -- took about 10 seconds." It took three tries to finally upload the same photo to her Facebook account.

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