AT&T To Release Palm Pixi Plus June 6

(click image for larger view)
AT&T's Palm Pixi Plus

Although the Palm Pre Plus became available at AT&T last weekend, its companion phone, the Palm Pixi Plus, won't be available until June 6, the mobile phone carrier said.

Weighing 3.26 ounces, the Pixi Plus is expected to sell for $49.99 on a two-year contract, and includes a smaller 2.6 400 x 320 multitouch screen, 2 megapixel camera with LED flash, geotagging and video capture and 8 GB of memory instead of 16.

The Pixi Plus is viewed as an alternative to the Pre Plus, which has a pricetag of $149.99. Palm's thinnest phone to date, the Pixi Plus is geared at social communicators who want an affordable phone with a touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard.

The Pixi Plus includes the ability to run multiple applications simultaneously and move easily between them. Palm webOS applications can be integrated into the core webOS, including linked contacts, layered calendars, notifications and GPS.

AT&T is touting both phones as "the only webOS devices in the U.S. to support simultaneous voice and data," and claims that they have "access to the nation's largest Wi-Fi network with more than 20,000 U.S. hotspots."

Less than a year ago, Palm Pre made its debut as the first webOS-plugged smartphone. Initially it was only available on the Sprint network, but Palm later partnered with Verizon Wireless and introduced new webOS devices into the mix: the Palm Pixi, Palm Pre Plus, and Palm Pixi Plus. The AT&T announcement means that Palm's smartphones are now available on all three of the major U.S. carriers.

Palm has lost market share as Android smartphones continue to gain ground. In the last quarter Palm sold just 408,000 smartphones, which observers attributed to the fact that Verizon failed to push webOS phones to their user base due to the popularity surrounding the Android. In April Palm put itself on the block and was snapped up for $1.2 Billion by HP.

For Further Reading:
HP To Buy Palm For $1.2 Billion
Analysis Of HP-Palm Acquisition
Review: Palm Pre Smartphone Mostly Pleases