This morning brought news that Palm had unveiled a new Web OS phone to stand up with the already well known Palm Pre: the Palm Pixi! Think of the Pixi as a smaller, lighter version of the Pre – in almost every way: it’s actually a more lightweight phone, and has a fixed keyboard compared to the Pre’s slide-out version. The screen is a little smaller, and the device itself looks like what the Pre may have looked like if it were built as a slab phone. Additionally, Palm dropped the base price of the Pre by $50, which means it’s available as low as $149 with a 2 year contract and mail-in rebates from Sprint stores.

Quoting from my friends and colleagues at Gearlog:

Like the Pre, the Pixi features a gesture area, a 2.6-inch multi-touch screen (though at a slightly reduced 320-by-400-pixel resolution), EV-DO Rev A support, and Palm Synergy for managing contacts across Facebook, Google, and Exchange ActiveSync. The Pixi adds to this by including a new Facebook app, along with Yahoo and LinkedIn integration, again all in the same view. That means the Pixi will display Yahoo contacts, calendar, and Yahoo Messenger threads, plus LinkedIn contacts and job titles.

The Pixi measures 4.4 by 2.2 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.5 ounces, which is significantly smaller than the Pre. The Pixi includes GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 8GB of internal storage, and Qualcomm’s new MSM7627 chipset. There’s a proximity sensor that turns off the touch screen and display when the phone is next to your ear, a light sensor for controlling screen brightness (which lots of phones have now), and the now-requisite accelerometer.

They also put in some hands-on time with the Pixi, shown in the video above. Check it out – the only downside to the device that I clearly see is that it’s only available on Sprint at the moment. I think everyone is waiting for Palm to go ahead and release it on multiple carriers: when that happens the game is really on.

[ Gearlog :: Palm Unveils Pixi Smartphone, Cuts Pre Price ]