Palm Pixi Plus (AT&T) – For first time smartphone users
For:
Compact size, good features for an entry level smartphone – GPS, Bluetooth, 3G and Wi-Fi. Plenty of WebOS benefits, the camera now lets you record video and editing process too is simplified.
Against:
Sluggish performance, display and keyboard is tiny, no Mobile Hotspot utility from AT&T
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Palm Pixi Plus is 2.16 inches wide, 0.43 inch deep, 4.37 inches high and weighs 3.8 oz. The phone is based on WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM technology with support for WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900 band. Other features include vibrating alert, polyphonic ringer, call timer, call conference capability, voice recorder, caller ID, speaker phone. Wireless interface options include Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11b. The phone also offers AGPS, USB, EDGE, and GPRS support. The handset is based on Palm webOS and has internal memory of eight GB.
Messaging services include AOL Instant Messenger Service (AIM) and Yahoo! Messenger. Supported email protocols are IMAP4 and POP3. Data/messaging features include E-mail, Instant messages, Multimedia messages (MMS) and Text messages. Supported video formats are AMR audio, H.263 video, MPEG-4 and H.264. The handset has a two megapixel camera. Organizer features include calculator, reminder, calendar and alarm clock. The phone has a 2.63 inch TFT LCD display with resolution of 400×320 pixels. It supports 262k colors. Supported audio formats are eAAC+, AAC+, WAV, MP3, AMR, and AAC. Connectors include microUSB, 3.5 mm headphones jack. Rated talk time of this phone is 330 minutes and standby time is 350 hours.
Razzle Dazzle:
Palm Pixi Plus is a petite and light phone. It is 4.37 inches tall, 0.43 inch thick, 2.17 inches wide and weighs around 3.26 ounces. We didn’t have any issues carrying the smartphone around and it fits in to jeans pocket quite easily. The compact size comes with a few drawbacks though. The screen is smaller than standard size and you need more than just a glance at the screen. Text and Web pages on the screen will easily strain your eyes. The display, fortunately, supports pinch feature. The keyboard is a bit cramped but once you get used to it, there will be fewer mishits. We would recommend you to check the keyboard before buying this phone. The phone is available in black and blue. For the latter, you will have to purchase it online.
Inside Dope:
Palm Pixi Plus is a toned down sibling to the powerful and bigger Palm Pre Plus. It is from AT&T and will be available in the market from June 6. The manufacturer gave us this phone in our labs for review just days before its release. This phone is also available from Verizon Wireless and the handset is not powerful. The cost of this phone is $49.99 and you have to sign a two year contract with the service provider. For this price, we liked the feature set that I had to offer and we would recommend this phone to people who are purchasing a smartphone for the first time. This is an entry level smartphone and it has all the goodies that you’d expect in such a device like GPS, Bluetooth, 3G and Wi-Fi. Don’t forget the benefits that you are going to get from the great Palm WebOS. The camera is now equipped with video recording capabilities and you can also edit them easily. There are a few downsides though. For instance, the phone is sluggish sometimes. The keyboard and display is quite small.
OS features
Palm Pixi Plus is made for people who are buying a smartphone for the first time but that doesn’t mean it is not feature rich. The cell phone runs on WebOS 1.4 so you get all its latest offerings like video editing and recording. Other goodies such as Deck of Cards multitasking function, Palm’s notification system and synergy is also present.
PIM features
Palm Pixi Plus comes with PIM features like alarm clock, task list, calculator, memo pad, PDF reader, and application for reading the Microsoft Office documents. You can buy as well as download applications from Palm App Catalog. It is not as fast as Android Market or iTunes App Store but you will still easily get what you are looking for. For storing your music, photos and videos, there is eight GB of internal memory out of which seven GB is available to the user.
AT&T’s offerings
Just like the Palm Pre Plus, the big difference between Verizon and AT&T’s version of the Palm Pixi Plus is that the latter comes with UMTS radio along with AT&T service support which include Yellow Pages Mobile, AT&T Navigator, and you can also access any Wi-Fi hotspot around the country. Verizon’s product, compared to this, gives you Palm Mobile Hotspot utility on its OS. This lets you turn the handset in to a mobile router. It is a pity that AT&T’s Palm devices don’t give hot spot utility, but we are not complaining much here, looking at the phone’s target audience.
Camera
Palm Pixi Plus comes with a two megapixel camera which gives mediocre picture quality. The objects in our still looked a bit gray, and the picture didn’t have that good quality. Video quality too is fine, but editing the videos is now easy, which we really appreciate. We saw some popping noise whenever we started any video clip. This is a bit strange but certainly not a deal breaker.
Call quality
Palm Pixi Plus is a quad band phone and when we tested it for call quality, we had mixed opinions. Our friends sounded just fine and there was no voice distortion or background noise. The volume too was loud enough. But on the other side, our friends had a different tale to tell. Some people had issues of echo and low volume while some said that our voice was muffled. Occasionally, calling from a different location improved the situation a bit but there was still some background hissing. Calls through speakerphone were not that good but this is not unexpected in speakerphone calls.
Verdict:
Palm Pixi Plus might not be a powerful or fancy phone it still gives first time smartphone buyers plenty to cheer about.
