Recently, I got my hands on Verizon’s Palm Pixi Plus, and my initial, visceral impression was “My First Smartphone.” I gave it a few weeks of playing around with it to see if my opinion changed, but my gut feeling was, as usual, correct. This is a device which will serve a small niche, but in that niche, it is almost the perfect device.
The Palm Pixi Plus is a tiny, tiny thing. At only 2.17″ x 4.37″ and less than half an inch thick, weighing just over 3 ounces, it is not meant for people with large hands. I have large fingers, and the QWERTY keyboard, while having a nice tactile response, is simply too small for me to use effectively. This keyboard is meant for children or those with tiny hands. I let my kids use it and the keyboard was very comfortable for them, but I can’t type more than a few words without fat-fingering something and screwing it up.
The screen is bright and relatively clear, but I’m used to Android devices, all of which have excellent screens, and the Pixi’s screen is not comparable. Web browsing is a somewhat awkward experience because of the size of the screen. Auto-rotation is honored, however, so if you turn the phone, the browser window rotates as well.
That said, for apps that are optimized for the screen, the display does just fine. The touch screen is responsive and accurate, and I found myself wishing my G1 would have the sort of visual feedback that WebOS does: A little bubble appears under your finger where you touch the screen so you can aim a bit better.
Call quality is sufficient. I talked to a friend and she said I sounded only slightly less clear than normal.
The Palm WebOS takes some getting used to, but once it clicks, it makes sense. Apps appear in windows called “Cards,” and to close an app, you “toss away the card.” It’s not exactly an intuitive paradigm, but once you realize how it works, it becomes effortless.
Another thing that is unnecessarily complicated is SMS messaging. In a phone like this, SMS is going to be a primary function, yet there’s no app for it. You have to open the contacts, make sure the person you want to SMS is a contact, and then click an SMS icon next to their name; you can’t simply type a name or a number and send a message. SMS was so unintuitive that I had to ask another Palm user how to do it. It should not be this complicated on a basic phone such as this. What if I don’t want to have a contact in my phone for a number? What if I want to send an SMS to a radio promo or a short code? I don’t want to have to make a contact before sending a text to 40404, for example.
One seriously cool feature is the mobile hotspot app. You can turn your Pixi Plus into what is essentially a MiFi. This is a fantastic feature, and one that every smartphone should support. There’s no technical reason why my G1, for example, can’t be a mobile hotspot, but if I wanted one, I would have to buy a MiFi.
At only $79.95 (approximately), this is an ideal first smartphone for users who want to transition from old phones, but who are daunted by the price tags on high-end models such as the Droid, Nexus One, or Pre. It can do all the basic smartphone stuff (including the fun stuff like Foursquare, Twitter, games, and Google Maps), and it’s not going to break the bank. If you have a tween, a young teenager, or a beloved elder (mom!) who could benefit from a smartphone, but you don’t want or need to be providing tech support on a high end device, the Pixi Plus is worth a look. It’s not for the uber-techies and cutting edge people, but it serves a need in an oft-overlooked niche.
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