Palm Pixi Plus review – revamped Pixi, a Mobile Wireless Router

For:

Palm Pixi Plus offers 3G support, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and mobile hotspot application to work as wireless router. It offers better multitasking due to Palm WebOS.

Against:

No image editing options and poor picture quality. No memory card slot.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Palm Pixi Plus is based on CDMA2000 1X technology that supports CDMA2000 1X 1900/800 band. Supported wireless interfaces are Bluetooth 2.1 EDR and IEEE 802.11 b/g. The operating system is Palm WebOS 1.3.5.1. The Pixi Plus has 8GB internal memory and out of which 7GB is user accessible.

2.63 inches display has 400×320 pixels resolution that supports 18-bit (262,000) colors. It features white illumination color and ambient light sensor. Palm Pixi Plus has 2-megapixel camera with LED light and flash.

The calling features are speakerphone, caller ID, voice recorder, conference calling capability, polyphonic ring-tones, internal antenna and vibrate mode. The messaging features include instant messengers (AIM & Yahoo! Messenger); Mobile Email; Text, Picture and Multimedia messages, and support for POP3/IMAP4/SMTP.

Supported audio formats are eAAC+, AAC+, AAC, WAV, MP3 and AMR. In addition, the supported video formats are MPEG4, H.263 video with AMR audio, and H.264. The connector set of Palm Pixi Plus includes 1×micro-USB and 1×3.5mm headset jack – mini-phone. The smartphone has standard lithium ion battery that has a life of 312 minutes talk time and 350 hours of standby time.

Razzle Dazzle:

Palm Pixi Plus has candy bar design. It is 4.4 inches tall, 2.2 inches wide and 0.4 inch wide and weighs 3.3 ounces. It has same dimensions as that of original Pixi from Sprint. You can separately buy back covers in black, pink, orange, green and blue colors. All the covers are compatible with Touchstone charging dock.

Inside Dope:

With Pre Plus, the Palm Pixi Plus was announced at CES 2010 to launch from Verizon Wireless. Like original Pixi from Sprint, the Pixi Plus offers inbuilt Wi-Fi, full QWERTY keyboard and 2.63 inches multi-touch screen. Unlike Palm Pre Plus, it does not have several enhancements and upgrades over its counterpart.  We appreciate that Verizon Wireless and Palm had joined hands to bring mobile wireless router application in Pixi Plus. However, you will get better browser and multi-touch screen as compared to another entry-level – RIM BlackBerry Curve 8530. The Pixi Plus costs $99.99 with two-year contract from Verizon Wireless after mail-in rebate of $100. Obviously, you have to pay additionally for data and voice plans as well as for mobile hot spot feature. Palm Pixi Plus will be the best choice for fresh and entry-level users. After releasing WebOS 1.4,

Operating System and Applications

Like original Pixi, Palm Pixi Plus runs on WebOS 1.3.5.1. At the time of writing the review, the WebOS 1.4 was released and Sprint announced to provide the same. However, we have not received any official notification from Verizon Wireless for releasing WebOS 1.4 with Palm Pixi Plus.

Palm Pixi Plus offers inbuilt GPS and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo profile. Like other WebOS smartphones, the Pixi Plus has inbuilt Google Maps that features text-based instructions, traffic data, business search, real time position, and satellite view map. For turn-by-turn voice directions, you can use Verizon VZ Navigator.

Palm Pixi Plus comes with several productive applications such as “Documents to Go” to view Microsoft Office files, PDF reader, calculator, alarm clock, task list and memo pad. You can download other applications and titles from Palm App Catalog.

Wi-Fi Router

You can download Palm Mobile Hotspot from Palm App catalog, which converts palm Pixi Plus to Wi-Fi router or mobile hot spot. It can tether up to five devices such as cell phone, Netbook, computer, BlackBerry etc. to share mobile broadband via Verizon EV-DO Rev. A network. After sharing, you can browse the Internet from that device via Palm Pixi Plus. For this feature, you have sign up Verizon 3G hot spot plan for $40 per month with 5GB data cap.

PIM features

The basic feature set of Palm Pixi Plus contains silent mode, multimedia and text messaging, airplane mode, conference calling, speed dial and speakerphone. Still, voice dialing is missing from this WebOS smartphone.

Palm Pixi Plus has WebOS Synergy function that allows merging seamlessly sync and merging calendar information and contacts from your LinkedIn, Microsoft Exchange, Facebook, Yahoo and Google accounts. It provides both unified and account separated view for calendar appointments and emails.

Media Player

Palm Pixi Plus has inbuilt media player that supports video of H.264, H.263 and MPEG4 formats and music of AMR, WAV, AAC+, AAC and MP3 formats. You can transfer music through USB cable. The Pixi Plus does not have expansion slot for external storage, but it offers 7GB user accessible memory out of total 8GB. Moreover, you can use sync option of Windows Media Player and DoubleTwist to transfer the songs in Pixi Plus after connecting with PC. We like that you can search and download new on-the-air songs from Amazon MP3 store and stream videos from dedicated YouTube application.

Camera

Palm Pixi Plus has 2-megapixel camera with flash, but it does not have editing options like white-balance. The overall picture quality is average. We capture some images for testing. The pictures looked little dark and grainy. Flash tended to blow out the picture occasionally.

Call Quality

We made few calls through dual-band based Palm Pixi Plus via Verizon service. The overall call quality was good. We received good sound with little voice distortion and background noise at our end. The callers received good sound at their end. The speakerphone call quality was passable. Both of us received good sound with plenty volume even to hear in noisy environment. We did not face any problem while pairing Bluetooth headsets with smartphone.

Performance Test

We loaded few Web sites on the Palm Pixi Plus via its browser for testing. The Microsoft.com and GSMcellulars.com loaded completely in 10 and 7 seconds respectively. Moreover, the Palm Mobile Hotspot application performed excellent. We configured it easily to setup our Netbook and a BlackBerry. Both these device worked fine to browse the Internet. The YouTube videos at Pixi Plus buffered quickly only prior to playback and after that played back smoothly. The smartphone also performed better to launch multiple applications at a time and to switch between them.

Battery Life

Palm Pixi Plus has 1150mAH lithium ion battery that has a life of 5.2 hours of talk time and 14 days of idle standby time. The digital SAR rating is 1.47 watts per kg as per FCC radiation tests.

Verdict:

Palm Pixi Plus offers Wi-Fi Mobile Hot Spot application to work as mobile wireless router. It does not have expansion slot for external storage. More to go, Sprint has announced to provide WebOS 1.4 with Palm, but Verizon Wireless does not give any information. If you are getting the latest WebOS 1.4 from Verizon Wireless, then you can buy latest – Palm Pixi Plus.