The music player gets the basics right, with an intuitive interface and decent sound through the supplied headphones, though there's no equaliser to adjust the tone. There's 8GB of memory on board (7GB for storage), which is certainly a decent showing, but unusually for a smart phone (at least ones that aren't made by Apple), there's no option to expand it with a memory card. The battery tends to get a bit of a kicking and I never quite managed to get a full day of, admittedly, heavy use out of it.
Palm's webOS remains a pleasure to operate, but is a little sluggish on this model
Verdict
The Pixi Plus succeeds very well as a less expensive version of the Palm Pre, albeit with a smaller screen and slower processor. Palm’s webOS is a joy to use and media playback for both video and music is pretty decent, though no-one will be buying it for the 2Mp camera. If you can get used to the lag of the underpowered processor, it's a very nice little smart phone indeed. ®
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Palm Pixi Plus budget smartphone
COMMENTS
I never quite managed to get a full day
I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter how nice the phone is, 18 hours is the bare minimum for a phone to be useful. Last time I used a pre, battery flat by 2pm - what use is that?
Switched my wife from a palm pre to a blackberry - she still can't get used to not carrying a charger. I get 3-4 days use from mine.
WebOS is great, just needs a proper phone.
good phone for the money
For the money it is a good little phone with an easy, intuitive OS... a joy to mess about with. For the average smartphone user it does all thats needed but may be a bit twee for some power users. As far as I am concerned for £100 it does everything, and a bit more... battery lasts about a day but seeing as I am never away from a power socket for longer is this really a hardship? And I have yet to notice it being particularly slow, or having any real lag issues..
Nice and rugged
I have to say that as a clumsy oaf, I like the fact that the pixi can take a beating. I can't say how many times it's slipped out of my shirt pocket, been sat on and the countless counter height falls on to concrete flooring. Mine has even been for a quick dip in the cat's water dish some time ago and still works fine. I do wonder why Palm and now HP don't point out these strengths over the new Apple iP4. Mega marketing failure.
Ttir,amcla/od
"WebOS is great, just needs a proper phone."
Amen
Cool phone
Great phone. Works well. Isn't that slow at all. Best thing - call quaility which is superb. Worst thing - battery only just lasts a day. Webos is nice. For £100 if you can stand the poor battery then the phone is a bargain
