DigitalBeat

Palm has announced its latest smart phone, called the Palm Pixi — the thinnest phone Palm has ever released, and one that offers a range of new ways to integrate your contacts and messaging from third-party services such as Facebook, Google and LinkedIn.

It will be available exclusively on Sprint in time for the holidays. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet.

The phone is badly needed for Palm, because the company’s first smart phone, the Palm Pre, hasn’t won the accolades Palm was hoping for.

The Pre was a solid first offering — it was based on an operating system, WebOS, that is flexible and easy for developers to use — but Palm still needs to find a way to distinguish itself from the horde of other smart phones hitting the market. Apple has come out with new versions of its popular iPhone, and a host of manufacturers from HTC to Motorola and Dell are churning out phones based on Google’s Android phone system. Today Palm also lowered the price of its Pre to $149.99 with a two-year service agreement (and after a $150 instant rebate and $100 mail-in rebate).

Like the Pre, Pixi is based on WebOS. It sports a full QWERTY keyboard and lets you pick from an assortment of colorful back cover designs (see the artists series here). It has multi-touch technology, just like the Pre (for the design difference, see image of the Pixi at left, compared with the Pre, bottom left).

With the Pixi, Palm has again focused on trying to make communication more intuitive. It integrates more social networking features: As with the Palm Pre, it features Palm Synergy, a technology that lets you easily integrate your Facebook contacts with the phone’s contact list (including importing pictures from your Facebook friends). And as with the Pre, the Pixi lets you merge contacts from Google contacts and Microsoft Exchange (including sync). But the Pixi goes further, now also offering a way to easily integrate your Yahoo contacts, calendar and IM, as well as your LinkedIn contacts, including job titles.

The Pixi tries to make messaging easier by showing you all your conversations with the same person in one chat-style thread — so that you can start a conversation on say, AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk or Yahoo Messenger, and continue it by text message later.

While cool as far as they go, it’s not clear how these features will really help distinguish the Pixi. After all, with other phones you can find a way to manually integrate your contacts from other third part-services, even if it takes an extra step.

The Pixi does make integration with social networking easier than ever: It goes beyond the Facebook integration already offered by the Pre, providing an easy way to see the latest news from your Facebook friends (the feed), and a simple way to update your Facebook status. (You can do this on other phones, of course, by downloading the Facebook application, but Palm is apparently pre-loading a special edition of the Facebook application on the Pixi.)

The back cover is rubberized, making it scratch-resistant and more durable.

It lets you sync with music and videos from iTunes, and use an Amazon MP3 store (pre-loaded on the device) to purchase individual songs or full albums over-the-air.

Here are the phone’s specs:

• High-speed connectivity (EVDO Rev. A)
• 2.63-inch multi-touch screen with a vibrant 18-bit color 320 x 400 resolution TFT display
• Gesture area, which enables simple, intuitive gestures for navigation
• Exposed QWERTY keyboard for fast messaging
• Robust messaging support (IM, SMS and MMS capabilities), including Google Talk, AIM and Yahoo! IM
• High-performance, desktop-class web browser
• Integrated GPS
• Multimedia options, including pictures, video playback and music, and featuring a 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera with LED flash, and a standard 3.5mm headset jack
• Email, including Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers), as well as personal email support (Google push, Yahoo push, POP3, IMAP)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
• 8GB of internal user storage (~7GB user available)
• USB mass storage mode
• MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
• The first handset to launch with Qualcomm’s high-performance MSM7627 chipset
• Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear
• Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage
• Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective
• Ringer switch, which easily silences the device with one touch
• Removable, rechargeable 1150 mAh battery
• Dimensions: 55mm (W) x 111mm (L) x 10.85mm (D) [2.17 in. (W) x 4.37 in. (L) x 0.43 in. (D)]
• Weight: 99.5 grams (3.51 ounces)
• Sprint services, including Sprint TV and Sprint Radio, Sprint Navigation, Sprint’s exclusive NFL Mobile Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live

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Tags: Palm Pixi