Palm announce their second WebOS smartphone - the Pixi

Let's face it, Palm and their WebOS-driven Pre never really took off on our side of the Big Pond but that's simply because they went for a CDMA radio instead of GSM (and for those clever commenters - by "took off" we mean gain user appreciation not market success - we know Palm Pre has yet to be released on the European market). But no matter CDMA or GSM, Palm's WebOS is a wonderful achievement and we're quite sad that we've been missing all the fun of engaging with this new platform while waiting for a GSM variant to come to the Old Continent.

While Palm have still not kept that promise for a GSM Pre, they've just announced their second CDMA WebOS smartphone - the Palm Pixi, which was featured in several leaks upsofar. The new bar smartphone will positioned lower than the Pre in the market segmentation and comes with 8GB of onboard storage, a 2 megapixel camera and a 2.63-inch capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 320 x 400 pixels (the Pre has a 3.1-inch 320x480 pixel screen).

Palm Pixi - the second WebOS smartphone

The Palm Pixi comes in quite a compact shell for a full QWERTY device (10.85 mm thickness) and is even more compact than Nokia E71 or E72. At 99.5 g it's also impressively light.

Unfortunately, the Palm Pixi doesn't have Wi-Fi connectivity but it has a GPS receiver. The Pixi also uses some totally different CPU platform than the original Palm Pre. This time we're reportedly talking about Qualcomm MSM7627 platform, which is being embedded for the first time, so we're not really aware of its real-life performance.

The CDMA Palm Pixi should hit the US streets in time for the holidays, but there's no word on any planned European availability (with GSM bands) or contract-free pricing.

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