CES 2010: Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus hands-on
Wow, what a day at CES 2010. I was at the QUE proReader launch at 7 am yesterday and then went a full day with attendance at the Palm press conference, meetings with Nokia, HTC, and others along with some show floor wandering, then Showstoppers, and lastly a nice dinner with some good friends from Nokia. Andrew already posted on the specs and details of the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus, along with the 3D gaming update and Verizon news. As a long time Palm user, I was getting quite concerned about Palm surviving 2010 with just Sprint and am pleased to see them coming to Verizon soon. I was able to head right over to the Palm lounge after the press conference to get some hands-on time with both new devices. I took the short video below of gaming on the Pre Plus and included some new photos of both devices in my CES 2010 image gallery.
The two new devices are physically the same as the Pre and Pixi, except the button is now missing on the Pre Plus. The internals are a bit different with double the memory and WiFi added to the Pixi Plus. I always liked the Pre hardware and find these new ones to be just as good. With the addition of the wireless modem functionality, with support for up to 5 simultaneous device connections, I am seriously thinking about switching from my MiFi to the Pre Plus. I first have to see what additional fee there is for this functionality and what the minimum voice plan is for the Pre Plus. I do like the Pixi Plus form factor, but think I want the larger display and faster performance of the Pre. I would love to be able to use a webOS device on Palm.
The 3D gaming is MUCH better than I thought it would be with fluid graphics and no pixelation. I can see spending lots of time playing games with these devices and am happy to see Palm finally using all the capability of the processor.
While the announcements yesterday answered our questions on upgraded hardware and one new carrier I was also left with a few questions:
- What are the device prices and associated Verizon service fees?
- What are Palm's plans for Sprint in 2010? Shouldn't loyal Sprint Palm supporters be able to upgrade/buy the latest hardware too?
- We saw AT&T the day before show a slide with webOS listed in their 2010 plans. Where is the AT&T webOS device announcement?
Are you pleased with the Palm announcements from yesterday? Do you think Verizon will be what Palm needed to keep going and compete in the mobile space?