Palm Pixi: Nice Design, But Lack of WiFi is Deal Breaker

Photo courtesy of Palm

No, it can’t be. A new smartphone with a touchscreen and physical keyboard right under the screen? Old school BlackBerry & Treo style? That, apparently, is what the Palm Pixi delivers…

Palm Pixi (product page)

I’m not particularly interested in Palm’s webOS platform. But, I like the idea of having a touch screen plus a physical QWERTY keyboard. And, I really like the idea of not forcing me to pull out the keyboard everytime I want to use it. The old school BlackBerry and Palm Treo design were good ones and still works for me. The real question is how usable the QWERTY keyboard is. If it is as good as, say, the HTC Dash, that is very good.

But, and there’s always a “but”, according to Engadget…

The Palm Pixi is official, headed to Sprint this holiday season — we’ve got hands-on and video!

EVDO Rev A is nice (very nice). But, not having WiFi is a deal breaker IMHO. On the other hand, its other specs look very respectable: 8GB storage, 2 megapixel camera with flash, and that nice looking QWERTY keyboard.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.