pixi David Pogue’s latest column in the New York Times concerns the new Palm Pixi, the Pre’s precocious kid sister. The official price is $100 with a 2-year Sprint contract, but Amazon is selling it for $25—plus $2,309 in monthly fees over the course of the contract.

The phone is tiny, light, and thin, weighing in at 3 ounces. The design is nothing fancy, and it cuts a few corners (for example, no wifi—connection via Sprint’s cell network only—and an overall slower processor). In fact, for just $55 more you can have the somewhat more featureful and faster Pre.

But at least it shows that smartphone prices are definitely falling. Now if only they could rein in the calling plan prices, too. (Even if, as the article notes, Sprint’s are overall significantly less than AT&T or Verizon’s prices.)

Presumably, the Pixi will run the same e-book applications that the Pre will, so this may look like a reasonable option for people wanting a cheap smartphone. On the other hand, taken as a percentage of overall cost over two years, upgrading to the more-capable Pre is just a drop in the bucket.

1 COMMENT

  1. I personally can’t wait for the Palm Pixi to hit UK shores. After reviewing the Palm Pre, one thing that was apparent to me was the slightly cramped keyboard which made texting a little bit awkward.

    The Pixi has fixed this apparently, however the camera resolution has been dropped to 2 megapixels, which to be honest is a shambles.

    WebOS is amazing, the 1.3.5 update will be amazing I am sure, and if Google could go back knowing about WebOS they’d surely design something very similar.

    Thank you for the post.

    Regards,

    Jakk – Your fellow Technoholic 😀

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.