The Palm Pre Plus is the same old Pre with a few upgrades. They got rid of the home button, but it still has that cheese cutting edge on it, they changed the color of the keyboard. The Pixi on the other hand is a non-slider unit that feels a little bit more sturdy, and the Pre has a cheap plastic cover on the MicroUSB door that has almost come off a few times, but the Pixi has a small flap that feels a lot sturdier and stays in place a lot better. With the inclusion of the word Plus on the phones, Palm has upped the storage in the Pre to 16GB and in the Verizon version they doubled the RAM, the Pixi doesn’t change except they included WiFi.
Palm’s Web OS
With the Pre and the Pixi, they of course use Palm’s WebOS. To me, this operating system is like a series of web based widgets that you run, and can flip through them like cards. This is definitely a good mobile operating system, but the hardware itself, even though it has the same chip as the iPhone 3GS seemed to make it sluggish and slow even with only 2 or 3 things open at the same time.
I really thought Palm did a great job and the apps available were nice, but I found it hard to rely on it for everything I did on my iPhone, which was a lot faster, and apps took way too long to load, I would launch an app and sometimes it would be thirty seconds before it actually opened, which made it difficult to get information in the phone quickly. It was rather discouraging when I was getting someones contact info and I had to say hold on a second while it loads, that shouldn’t have been happening, but I think WebOS still has a long way to go, but in the end it’s a nice Mobile OS.
The one thing that stands out on these phones with Verizon is the inclusion of a mobile hotspot application that is similar to the MiFi device whereas it turns your phone into a WiFi hotspot that up to five other devices can connect to. The other thing about the way Palm has done this is the notifications which pop up on the bottom of the screen then minimize themselves to stay out of the way. The one thing about the multitasking and background apps is that the battery life was horrible. I was running 3 apps, then got a phone call and watched my battery life drop from about 70% to 25% in about 20 minutes. I do have to say that I’m not all that happy about that, but I also don’t need the multitasking. I don’t have multitasking on my iPhone and can still get IM’s, email notifications and the like without compromising my battery life as bad as this.
Verizon
Palm has made a good move with this device upgrading it a little bit and putting it on the Verizon network, however, I never got a full signal where I live, and I was constantly getting data disconnects and would have to reboot the phone for the data signal to come back, this wasn’t an issue with WiFi, but since I only had one or two bars in all the normal places I travel, I couldn’t rely on the phone to stay connected or not drop calls. The quality of the calls was very good as it always is, but not having a strong signal in an area of town that usually has a great signal on other phones maybe says something about the phone itself. Pricing on the Verizon network is expensive as well, and the mobile hotspot feature will cost you an extra $40 a month.
Final Thoughts
All in all I would probably recommend this phone for people who are getting their first smartphones as it’s very easy to use and it syncs seamlessly with your Google account for contacts and calendars, but for the die hard smartphone users, they would easily get frustrated with the lag time on app loading times. As with all smartphones, you will always find something you don’t like or get annoyed with a decision that the company made. With Verizon, there are a myriad of choices for the smartphone users, the very excelent Droid, or the upcoming Nexus One, or the tons of Blackberry options out there, but why choose the Pre? Well, the WebOS is a revolutionary operating system, and if you stick with it and give Palm some time to get it perfect and live up to it’s potential, then you should choose the Pre.
I mentioned the Pre mostly in this review because I feel like the Pixi was a baby version, and the screen was much smaller, but the operating system is the same, and it’s truly up to the individual as far as what style you want, so this review applies to both of them.
Nutshell
More RAM means a slightly faster phone, but I didn’t notice it
Keyboard was small and hard to thumb type on
Hotspot app was great and very usefull
Not as many apps as Android or iPhone yet
WebOS has a lot of potential and I’d like to see where Palm takes it
