Verizon’s lineup of Palm phones will include just two upgraded versions of existing Palm models with familiar names, a source says today. The tip suggests that the Wi-Fi enabled Pixi will reach Verizon as the Pixi Plus and that the Palm Pre Plus is real, though what changes the latter would get aren’t evident. Both phones would be physically identical on the outside, but the BGR tip doesn’t say if the processor or storage would improve.

Read the full story on Electronista

Add new tag · Handhelds · Palm OS · Palm Pre Plus · PalmPre · pixi · Verizon Communications · WebOS · Wi-Fi

Finally some good Palm-Verizon news for us:
A second CDMA-flavored Palm Pixi just cleared the FCC and we can say with confidence it’s not coming to Sprint this time around. Better yet, Palm’s model P121EWW matches up with that P121 code we saw leaked a while back for Big Red (Sprint’s model is P120EWW), and this one got tested for 802.11b/g WiFi.

Source: Engadget

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• Sprint touts Palm Pixi’s nonexistent WiFi (engadget.com)

Handhelds · Palm · Palm OS · PalmPixi · pixi · Sprint Nextel · Verizon Communications · Wi-Fi

Still not Verizon, but Pre Central reports that the Pixi is coming to At&t:

Now we have heard from a very reliable source that an AT&T-branded Palm Pixi has been spotted out there on San Francisco mass transit.

Verizon – still waiting…

at&t · California · Metro Areas · Public transport · San Francisco · San Francisco Bay Area · United States · Verizon

PhoneDog’s Adriana Lee had the unique opportunity of messing with the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi in the same video session. She compared both devices in a 10 minute dogfight, that can be checked out in the video below. Slim candybar phone meets the original slider. Who wins?

Source: GSM Dome

Handhelds · Mobile phone form factors · Palm OS · Palm Pre · PalmPixi · Shareware · Unix and Linux · WebOS

While still only on Sprint, the Pixi and the Pre are in the middle of a price war between Amazon and Wal-Mart each trying to undercut the other with low, low prices in a bid to grab more online market share.

PreCentral.net has been tracking the Amazon-Walmart price war as it relates to the Pre and Pixi, which are listed on the official Sprint.com Web site for $149 and $99 respectively (with two-year contracts), although only after a $100 mail-in rebate (that’s the part where you have to fill in the paper form, cut the UPC off the cardboard box, and wait six to eight weeks for your refund; ugh).

Thanks to the battle between the two online shopping giants, however, both the Pre and the Pixi have been seeing steep discounts over the past couple of weeks.

The price tags vary from day to day, but as of Tuesday morning, I spotted the Palm Pixi for just $25 (again, with a two-year Sprint contract) on both Amazon.com and Walmart.com … no mail-in rebate required.

As for the Pre, which sold at launch for $200 with service, Walmart.com currently has it listed for $99 with a two-year contract, while Amazon is down to $80 with a two-year service agreement. (PreCentral previously found the Pre on Walmart.com for $75, but the price must have gone back up.)

Read the full story at Yahoo.

Amazon.com · Contract · Online shopping · palm pixi · Price war · Rebate · Wal-Mart · Walmart.com

Palm Pixi, the video review in five minutes (or so).
By: Noah Kravitz – Editor in Chief, PhoneDog Media

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Highlights of a review of the Pixi from NY Times:

Twenty-five bucks for an app phone? That’s unbelievable. (Or, rather, it emphasizes how irrelevant a phone’s starter price really is. The true cost is embedded in your two years of monthly service fees–in this case, $2,309.)

Anyway, the Pixi is absolutely gorgeous, with a razor-thin (OK, .4-inch-thin) design. The front is flat glossy black; the back is curved hard rubber. It weighs just over 3 ounces. THREE OUNCES!? That’s insane. If this phone were any smaller and lighter, it would cease to exist.

This time, the illuminated keyboard doesn’t slide out—it’s always there beneath the screen; the phone is a slab design. The keyboard is very tiny indeed (just over two inches wide), but because the keys are super-raised and rubberized and move and click when you type on them, it’s not bad. You wind up supplementing each press with your thumbnail, and it works.

The operating system is the same fluid WebOS you can read about in my Pre review here. Once again, it integrates contacts, e-mail and calendars from all online sources—Google, Yahoo, Exchange and so on—and merges them on the phone.

However, on the Pixi, almost everything from the Pre has been diminished. The most painful change is the screen, which is only 320 by 400 pixels; that is, it shows 17 percent less, vertically, and you really miss those extra 80 pixels. You feel a little cramped.

The camera is 2 megapixels, down from 3. The battery life is shorter. The speaker is quieter. You can’t open as many apps at once.

There’s no Wi-Fi, either, so your only connection to the Internet is over Sprint’s cellular airwaves; cellular connections are generally slower than Wi-Fi ones. (Then again, I’ve found Sprint’s Internet coverage to be excellent.)

Worst of all, the cheaper, slower processor in the Pixi makes it slow to open apps, load Web pages and trigger functions. Sometimes it gets ridiculous; you might wait a whole minute for a Web page, for example.

Google · New York Times · Operating system · Sprint · Sprint Nextel · Telecommunications · Wi-Fi · yahoo

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Saul Hansell’s blog post for the NY Times talks about Palm’s chances, here are some highlights:
In a land of cellphone giants, Palm is a mouse. Palm is tiny compared with Apple, Research in Motion, Samsung, Google, Microsoft and Nokia, which are battling to control the future of smartphones.
…
While no one expected Palm’s sales would rival the sales of iPhones or BlackBerrys — and they have not — developers have not rushed to write applications for the phone as they have for the iPhone and Android phones.
…
Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s chief executive who was the top Apple engineer and the first head of its iPod division, said in an interview that Palm does not need to be as big as its rivals to thrive. His former employer, after all, was long able to carve out a lucrative niche in the computer business.

“One of the key things we need to do as a company is to get to scale,” he said. “We need to bring on more carriers and more regions.”

Analysts expect that Palm will sell an upgraded version of the Pre with Verizon early next year and add AT&T later in the year. It sells phones in six countries and is steadily expanding to others in Europe and North America.
…
Mr. Rubinstein said Palm would never need as many applications as the iPhone. “We are focused on quality over quantity,” he said.

Palm is still testing its app store, called the App Catalog, with a small group of developers. It will open to anyone who wants to write an app next month — six months after the Pre was introduced.

Mr. Rubinstein says he expects developers will write for Palm devices, in part because Palm’s operating system, called webOS, is based largely on the same languages used to design Web sites. Android, by contrast, is based on Sun’s Java language, and Apple uses a variation of the C computer programming language.

He discounts Android’s chances because, he says, it does not yet have mass appeal. “Android, and the Droid in particular, are designed for the techie audience,” Mr. Rubinstein said. “We are doing a more general product that helps people live their lives seamlessly.”

While Android is getting a lot of attention because it has attracted so many phone makers, those companies, Mr. Rubinstein, argues “have to depend on the kindness of strangers” — meaning Google — for their software.

“The companies that will deliver the best products are the ones that integrate the whole experience — the hardware, the software and the services — and aren’t getting one piece from here and one piece from there and trying to bolt it all together,” he said.
…
“The Palm Pixi is the only low-end smartphone with a new operating system,” said Mr. Kuittinen. “That is fairly impressive.”

He estimates Palm may be able to sell 10 million handsets next year, about 5 percent of the smartphone market. That assumes the company can get more carriers in the United States and Europe to sell Palm phones.

Apple · Google · iPhone · Microsoft · Nokia · Palm · Research in Motion · WebOS

CrunchGear revealed Radio Shack Black Friday ad and they will have the:
Palm Pixi Cell Phone (w/2-Year Agreement) – $99.99
Palm Pre Cell Phone (w/2-Year Agreement) – $99.99

Cell Phones · Cell Phones and Driving · CrunchGear · Palm Pixi Cell Phone · Palm Pre Cell Phone · Radio Shack Black Friday · RadioShack · Science and Technology