Palm Pixi First Impressions and Hands-On Video

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Dieter Bohn | Sun, 15 Nov 2009 9:38 pm EST |

Above, a rough and ready, very short video of the Pixi. Honestly, Palm has never let us take photos or videos of devices at briefings like this before, so I came a little unprepared. Flip MinoHD: Thank you.

After the break, my stream-of-consciousness first impressions after an hour with the Pixi

Hardware & Aesthetics

First off: the Palm Pixi is thin, so thin you want to bite it. It's light, too, clocking in at just under 100 grams with the standard back cover, just over with the touchstone cover. It's so thin and light it floats in your hand. If the back cover weren't a slightly grippy, soft touch plastic, it would float right out of your hand. It's thinner than the iPhone 3Gs. Thinner than any BlackBerry by a noticeable margin (Palm says 20%). It disappears in your pocket, I mean you put it in there and it's solid gone.

So yeah, I like that aspect of the Pixi.

Overall, it's a little narrow and a little tall, but not too bad. I was initially worried that I would find the screen too small - it's 320x400 instead of 320x480, but in practice it really doesn't matter too much for most apps - the webOS is all HTML anyway, so it can handle multiple screensizes just fine. Screen responsiveness is just like you'd like it to be on a capacitive screen: great.

Build quality on the units Palm had on hand was great. The plastic on the front is hard and glossy - essentially the same feel as the front of the Pre. The overall look of the front of the device does feel a bit off, but a large part of that is my smartphone-center wondering where the main buttons between the keyboard and the screen are. Does the Pixi look high-end? Not really, but it doesn't look especially cheap either. With a classy custom back cover, it can turn heads.

Speaking of the gesture area - mark me down as ok with the jettisoning of the center button. You can still tap there if the phone is on for the same action, but the whole thing feels much more fluid without it. Replacing the circular leds with a single, thin band of light also classes the rig up a bit.

The Keyboard: passable, but very small. It's slightly narrower than the Pre's keyboard, but still larger than the teensy keyboard on the Centro. Size aside (and I know that size will be an issue), the keyboard feels much better than the Pre's keyboard. The keys click in much more satisfyingly and much more responsively.

Removing the back cover is an exercise in frustration, so hopefully the battery life is good - it uses the exact same battery as the Pre, so we'll see.

Responsiveness, Performance, & Speed

Palm Pixi Special Coverage

We don't know just how much RAM is in here nor do we know how well the Pixi's Qualcomm processor will handle under stress, but basically as long as you keep it to three to four cards, you're going to do just fine. More than 5 or 6 and you're asking for heaps of trouble. Fact: the Pixi isn't as powerful as the Pre.

It's EVDO Rev A, so speeds are as good as Sprint is in your area, I certainly didn't notice it taking any longer to render web pages than the Pre does. The removal of WiFi feels like a classless move - I don't know what a WiFi chip costs or how much it would cost to make it work well with the new Qualcomm chipset, but somehow it feels like they're just making sure that everybody knows that the Pixi is low-end.

Overall

I tell you: I am sorely tempted by the Pixi. Yes, it's not as powerful as the Pre. Yes, it lacks WiFi. Yes, it has a smaller screen. But the always-there keyboard and the blissfully tiny size are compelling. I probably won't switch because of those three issues, but honestly I don't envy the decision a future buyer will have to make if he or she doesn't care much about one of those three things.

Centro owners will flock to this thing like you won't believe.