Gadgetory

hey guys John Revengers from TechnoBuffalo here with a full review for you of the palm pixi for Sprint we're gonna try the phone review and a sort of new angle I'm just gonna focus on the phone instead of me talking so let me know what you guys think I'm gonna break this review up the two parts first review the pixi on its own in its own little sphere and then focus on the grander a cell phone scheme particularly in Sprint's lineup so the pixi is going to run you just about a hundred bucks on a two-year contract before I did do my phone reviews I generally like to talk about call quality first since it is a phone and it's got to make good phone calls no matter how good the browser or anything else that does if the phone quality sucks it's not gonna be a good experience for you so the phone quality and the cult quality on the pixi is actually fantastic that may be due to the location of where I am in Southern California and Sprint service here is very strong but the calls were crystal clear people on my end reported absolutely zero white noise people on the other end of the call reported zero noise as well they often thought I was even on a land phone I use this phone as my own phone is my daily driver for just about two weeks and in two weeks I only experienced one dropped call so the network was quite good enough really impressed with Sprint service so if you are worried about call quality on the pixi don't worry if you're a heavy speakerphone user something to keep in mind the speakerphone on the back well it does have those two speaker grilles it's not the loudest so if you rely a lot on speakerphone this one might not be the phone for you if you just use it passively it's certainly a lot enough to use but if you're relying on it in a car for example if there's a lot of traffic or a big truck driving by you didn't completely lose the call and not be able to hear what they're saying so you saw me do a video of the Prix and showing you how the browser works and demonstrating multi-touch I will say that the multi-touch implementation on the pre is probably one of the best that I've seen it works just really well probably second best to let's say the iPhone motets capabilities as far as managing your pictures or using the browser really just doing anything that involves a screen multi-touch just works really well it's very smooth we've seen multi-touch implemented on devices like the HTC Hero for example and while that works in is quite functional it can be a little choppy at times and that's just not the case here with the pixi it works really smooth and and quite well so if you're looking for a multi-touch enabled device the pixi really is a good way to go and that's true of all of the webOS phones so including the pre as well so the keyboard was one of the things I was most worried about about the pixie and I did a video of demonstrating how the keyboard works and I gotta say I was really impressed with how easy it was to type on you wouldn't expect it look at the size of the device it's really quite small the keyboards look very cramped but they're surprisingly easy to use the keys have a little bit of a tactile clicky feel to them and there's a dome on them so that to be stick up a little bit more than the Prius you don't have the bumpers on the side so you can really get your hands around the device for typing it makes it just a little bit easier overall I was very impressed with the keyboard one of the things that I don't like about typing on the pixi and the pre as well that doesn't have any sort of autocorrect and while the keyboard is very good you certainly bound to make errors and I really would have liked some sort of autocorrect feature when I first reviewed the pre probably back almost six months ago that was one the beach dogs really hoping for with webOS I would have assumed that palm would have rolled that out and over there update but it still hasn't come yet so if you've got very fat thumbs and you tend to make an error - if you want to be very aware of that when you're using the pixie but overall the keyboard is very usable and surprisingly easy to use camera quality was just ok it wasn't the best it's for me passable for a cell phone camera but right now you cannot take any sort of video and it does have a single LED flash one of the other downsides of the pixie in certain this is true the pre as well is the boot up time that's just a webOS thing it can take upwards of a minute and a half so that seemed to go from off to on get to be a little annoying so working with the phone you're gonna be dealing primarily or obviously full time with the operating system and I really like webOS is the operating system that this is it's very intuitive easy to use I think it's even fun as well the card management system I think makes things just very easy you can take an application and throw it away when you're done and really manage multiples right from this card interface it's very elegant and I think it's quite useful as well also there's presence of synergy which pulls all of your contacts and calendars from from a Gmail from Yahoo from Facebook now and from even LinkedIn into a single unified format so either you'll see all your contacts listed into one contact or all your emails of being a single mailbox you can divide them up if you like but it's nice to have an option of having them all there especially having calendar so if you use an exchange calendar at work you use your Gmail at home it really makes it quite nice to have all those sort of combined and synergy does a really nice job of doing that you know just with calendars everything will show up right there I really makes it very easy I one of the things that I really do enjoy about webOS in this case in the pixi is how it handles notifications so you'll see right there I've got a little envelope if I tap it it's really unobtrusive way to get emails and if I don't want to read it I just toss it away if I want to open it up I just click on it the pixie does not come with Wi-Fi I just there's something to keep in mind a lot of Sprint's add-on features like the video NFL Network NASCAR or you can sprint TV obviously very data and video centric and the quality of the video well watchable definitely isn't Wi-Fi strong so if you're going to get a little pixelated as we take a long time to load I'm gonna keep in mind from a browsing standpoint it's gonna be okay because Sprint's Network does tend to be very fast but something I want you to keep in mind looking to get the device rely heavily on Wi-Fi or you want a little bit of extra speed this is something that pixie does not have overall in the pixie on itself I was very impressive but I really like using the phone it's extremely small and very portable and you can't see the size the device you put it next to something you're familiar with so here's the iPhone for example the pixie looks downright miniscule and it really is quite tiny one of the other downsides of the pixie as well is that it's stuck with your 8 gigabytes of storage there isn't any sort of microSD expansion so if you're looking for a lot of music you want to bring over your whole library you're gonna run in some trouble deftly have to do some management so the pixie has a hole it really is a great phone I really enjoyed using it the screen was bright and vibrant the keyboard was a file easy to use call quality was really good and overall was a very good experience so back to rank the pixie on a one to five I give it a very solid for missing that extra point because of the lack of autocorrect keyboards lack of Wi-Fi if I'd have those things it would have been a very closed five there's been a lot of questions about the Pixies processor being a little slow and laggy and my experience the processor held up just fine I was able to keep three four sometimes even five cards open without really experiencing much of a slowdown so I think that's been greatly exaggerated so in the greater scheme of things I'm gonna be hard-pressed to recommend the pixie over the pre which is fifty dollars more coming in just about one forty nine ninety nine while the pixie does have a better keyboard the pre offers you a lot more it's got a bigger screen it's got a it's got Wi-Fi and it's got a little faster product are going to want to manage more than five cards for example the pre is going to be the way that you're going to want to go when you put them both side to side it's really hard to see who palm is targeting with the pixie definitely a $99 price point is quite good but only fifty dollars more to upgrade for a faster processor bigger screen and Wi-Fi I would probably the way I recommend but if you do like the form factor of the candy bar you don't want the slide out mechanism that to be pre had pixie is gonna be a great buy for you hey guys I'm John rector TechnoBuffalo I hope you enjoyed the video and I'll see you in the next one bye bye