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The first look at Palm Pixi
by Ayurdhi Dhar - November 17, 2009 - comments
The $99 Palm Pixi looks sleek and cute, but does that suffice?
Sunnyvale, CA, November 17 -- The Palm Pixi is a second webOS device that has come a few weeks after the launch of the much awaited Pre.
The latest smartphone aims to target the audience waiting for a cute and sleek, yet cheap smartphone.
The Pixi is being considered as a successor to Centro. Costing $99, it is definitely not your dream high-utility smartphone. Nevertheless, it's not all that bad.
Sleek and small, not for all
If your sense of aesthetics includes cute looks, then the Pixi, like its name suggests, is a good deal for you. The Pixi is extremely thin and light, not tiny but narrow. The screen is 400x320, 2.63-inch, 18-bit color, that is tiny again.
The display is OK. The colors are not vibrant and bright, and the touch precision is also not very accurate. The reason for this could be the minuscule size of the screen though.
It will comfortably fit in your pocket, if not get lost! The upper part is flat and shiny, while the lower one is round. Plastic has been used generously in the manufacturing process, somehow, the Pixi still looks very attractive.
The keys need specific finger nail usage due to their small size. But they are clear and hard, and despite being very close to each other, their rise makes them feel comfortable. The posterior and lateral of the phone is in black matte, preserving it from fingerprints.
A fascinating aspect of the LED strip situated between the keyboard and the display is that when not in use, it looks like just empty space.
Performance rating
The Pixi is slow. Annoyingly slow, even dead slow at times. It stops, it freezes, and it hangs repeatedly when using more than one application. Where the sluggishness of Pixi can get on one’s nerves is while loading pages, or other heavy applications.
The hiccups that the Pixi encounters could be due to EV-DO-only connection. The mix of a slow processor and a slow data connection leads to a slow phone after all.
The camera is especially good on this phone though. At 2MP, it is not a photographer's dream, but it takes sufficiently good pictures. The flash can be annoying sometimes, but at $99, there is not much one can ask for. Another good thing about the camera is that it can click pictures in succession pretty fast.
Another area where the Pixi lags behind is the Wi-Fi, which is absent. Apart from that, even though the voice quality is good, it’s not loud enough. This can make notifications go unnoticed.
It comes with email with POP, IMAP, and Exchange options, along with a document viewer, which is stable and fast. One cannot edit anything, but the Pixi is satisfactory for a cursory viewing of documents.
Another feature worth mentioning is the great calendar and contacts organization in Pixi. All the email contacts get pulled into the cloud automatically, and it gives a sleek and clean look.
The Pixi operates on the webOS 1.3.1, with tweaking done to provide support to Yahoo services better, along with the ability to buy songs online via 3G.
Palm is introducing more application in the Apple store, with around 300 already present.
Miscellaneous ponderings
The battery life of Pixi is good, but not great. The charging port is covered to avoid dust, which is great, but it is not easy to open it by hand.
Over all, the Pixi includes a music player, a video player, a photo viewer, a memo pad, task lists, and Google maps.
Snappy and friendly to look at, the Pixi is a decent buy for $99, but can be a frustrating experience if you have already used a Pre or an iPhone.