Palm Readies Pixi, Reduces Pre Price

By Amy Gilroy On Sep 21 2009 - 6:00am

The Pixi, a smaller and lighter version of Palm’s Pre PDA phone, will be available in time for the holidays exclusively from Sprint.

The 3.51-ounce, 2.17-inch by 4.37-inch by 0.43-inch Pixi is expected to be less expensive than the 4.76-ounce 2.35- by 3.96- by 0.67-inch Pre, whose price was reduced to $149 from $199 with two-year service agreement after $150 instant rebate and after $100 mail-in rebate. Palm hasn’t announced Pixi’s price.

The Pixi features a fixed QWERTY keyboard compared to the Pre’s slide-down QWERTY keyboard, and its 2.63-inch 320 by 400-pixel TFT display is smaller than the Pre’s 3.1-inch 320 by 480 display. The Pixi also lacks the Pre’s Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g.

Both devices, however, feature CDMA 1x EV-DO Rev. A 3G cellular technology, and both use Palm’s new WebOS, which features a multi-touch motion user interface, ability to run multiple live applications simultaneously, and stacks live screens from multiple applications on top of one another like a deck of cards. Consumers swipe a finger across the top card to “deal” it away, revealing the card underneath. Users can also stack multiple live Web pages or multiple email messages on top of one another.

Both also feature Synergy, a feature that aggregates contact lists, calendar items and email messages from multiple sources, including Web-based sources. The contact list, for example, automatically combines contacts lists from a user’s Outlook, Facebook, Google and other contact lists.

Like the Pre, the Pixi features integrated GPS, 8GB of embedded memory, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with stereo support, and 8GB embedded memory. The resolution of the Pixi camera is 2 megapixels compared to the Pre’s 3-megapixel camera.

The Pixi, however, adds removable rubberized back cover that can be swapped with a series of artist-designed, limited-edition back covers for personalization.

Other Pixi features include ability to link information on Google, Facebook and Exchange ActiveSync into a single view. It also ties in information from Yahoo! and LinkedIn.