The Pixi Plus also ships with a number of personal information management and productivity apps, including Documents to Go for viewing Microsoft Office files, a PDF reader, a memo pad, a task list, a clock/alarm clock, and a calculator. If there's something else you need or desire, head on over to the Palm App Catalog on your device, where you can explore for the apps by category, popularity, or specific title. While it still trails the iTunes App Store and Android Market in terms of number of apps, the Palm App Catalog is starting to fill out quite nicely, and we expect it to grow even faster now that the Palm developer program is open to everyone.
There are no big upgrades in the multimedia department. The built-in media player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, WAV, and AMR music files and MPEG-4, H263, and H264 video formats. To get music and video onto the Pixi Plus, simply connect the smartphone to your computer via a USB cable, select the USB Drive option, and then drag and drop your files. The Palm Pixi Plus does not offer an expansion memory card slot but has 8GB of storage space with about 7GB available to the user.
When you connect the Pixi to your computer, you'll also see the Media Sync option. It used to be that this would allow you to connect to iTunes so you could sync any non-DRM tracks (no videos) from iTunes to your WebOS smartphone. However, ever since the launch of the Pre, Palm and Apple have played a cat-and-mouse game where this feature has been disabled and then re-enabled several times, but for now it appears Apple has won, shutting down the synchronization capabilities with iTunes 9.0.2. It remains to be seen if Palm issues another update to fix the issue, but in the meantime, there are third-party applications, such as DoubleTwist, that will allow you to achieve the same result.
In addition to your own multimedia library, you can discover and download new songs over the air from the Amazon MP3 Store, and you can stream video from the dedicated YouTube app. Unlike Sprint, Verizon does not include its V Cast music and video services on the Pixi Plus, though they may be added in the future.
As before, the Pixi Plus is equipped with a 2-megapixel camera. Though there is a flash, you don't get any editing options such as white balance, and picture quality isn't all that great. Images came out grainy and a bit dark, while the flash sometimes just blew out the picture completely. On the bright side, video recording will be added soon to all Palm WebOS devices. Palm is scheduled to release a WebOS 1.4 over-the-air update sometime in February, which will bring not only video recording and editing, but also a Flash plug-in for the browser.
Performance
We tested the dual-band (CDMA 800/1900; EV-DO Rev. A) Palm Pixi Plus in New York using Verizon service, and call quality was good. On our side, there was very little background noise or voice distortion, allowing us to enjoy conversation without any type of disruption and we had no problem using an airline's voice-automated response system. Friends also reported clear audio on their end of the call. Speakerphone quality was acceptable, providing decent sound with enough volume to hear even in louder environments. We had no problems pairing the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset or the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.
Verizon's 3G network provided reliable coverage and impressive speeds as we roamed around Manhattan. In an average of three tests, CNET's full site came up in 26 seconds, while CNN and ESPN's mobile sites loaded in 7 seconds and 10 seconds, respectively. Unfortunately, the Palm Mobile Hotspot app wasn't preloaded on our review unit, so we couldn't try out the feature on our Pixi Plus (see our review of the Palm Pre Plus for more on this). YouTube clips took a couple of seconds to buffer, but we were really impressed by the smooth playback.
The Palm Pixi didn't knock our socks off with its general performance, and the Pixi Plus doesn't either. There are still pauses when launching apps or switching tasks, but the smartphone does feel a bit snappier than the original, as the delays didn't feel quite as crippling as it did on the Pixi. The Palm Pixi Plus is equipped with an 1,150mAh lithium ion, user-replaceable battery with a rated talk time of 5.2 hours and up to 14 days of standby time. In our battery drain tests, we got 5.5 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge. According to FCC radiation tests, the Pixi Plus has a digital SAR rating of 1.47 watts per kilogram.**
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