dchoung

I just had a bit of a realization earlier today. All this talk has been circulating around the Palm Pre, Pre is this, Pre is that, and so on and so forth, yet has anyone realized that Palm released two webOS devices? The second being a slate form-factor with physical keyboard ala Treo?

In the midst of all this hubbub, there is the Palm Pixi. Rather unassuming in its form factor, it's what I believe is the true spiritual successor to the Treo line of devices. I mean, it doesn't veer too far off course from the Treo, it's basically a touchscreen phone with a full QWERTY keyboard.

A few exceptions though, this thing is as thin as, if not thinner then an iPhone, the keys are just as tactile and responsive as a Blackberry, and on top of all that you get the same webOS operating system running off its more popular, bigger screened sibling, the Palm Pre.

Granted, you won't be able to run any of the fullscreen 3D games such as Need for Speed or The Sims 3, but there are plenty of people that prefer to do their gaming on much more capable mobile devices such as PSP's and Nintendo DSi's. Besides, as a Pre owner myself, I would really rather have a physical d-pad then the virtual one offered on a lot of these games.

So, you can do 99.9% of what the Pre can do with a Pixi, the main benefit being no moving parts to worry about, it's all just right there for you to merrily click away at the keyboard with. I suppose it depends on the individual person whether or not that .01% matters enough. Either way the Pixi is a great device that seems to be wilting under the shadow of its more popular brethren, but it definitely deserves a look.

By the way, on Verizon the Pixi comes with a wifi radio included, on Sprint it doesn't. Hopefully that will be rectified soon, but until then, that's the current situation.