Palm has hit the jackpot with its latest candy bar smartphone. Okay, it’s not completely perfect, but the Palm Pixi certainly looks the part. And it boasts a touch-screen, excellent keyboard and the smoothest operating system you’ll find on any handset except an iPhone.

Comparing it to the iPhone 4, it’s only slightly thicker, and fits comfortably into the hand. Its matte rubber back contrasts with the smooth glass screen and shiny keys on the front. It also wins on size – if you’ve been put off getting an iPhone because it’s too big, the Pixi Plus might well win you over.

Just my type

A third of the device’s front is taken up with a QWERTY keyboard. Palm has a long tradition of very usable keyboards – like BlackBerry – and despite its small size, the Pixi Plus’s keyboard is user-friendly. The small, rubbery button keys may be close together but we still found it easy to type quickly and accurately. The keys are ridged, which helps the user find them easily, despite their diminutive size. In fact, thanks to those ridges, they’re easier to use than the flat, oblong, and much larger keys of the Motorola Milestone.

The screen, at 2.6 inches, may not be big enough for watching a whole film on, but is good enough for messaging and a limited amount of web surfing. It’s perfect for the core facilities of a Palm phone – the calendar and contacts (also the main purpose of the original Palm Pilot).

The calendar combines information from different sources and condenses any unused time so that you can see your appointments more easily. The contacts combine details from LinkedIn, Facebook and other accounts, so that photos get attached to names and so on.

The webOS operating system for the Palm Pre was first launched last summer. The best feature of what is a very accessible interface is the way it allows the user to manage programs. Palm webOS can multi-task, showing multiple open programs as cards on the screen. Just touch one of these ‘cards’ and it will fill the display – a neat trick. When you’ve finished with the program, simply flick it upwards with your finger and it will disappear off the screen.

We were pleased at how easy the search features were to use. On an iPhone, for instance, you need to start up Spotlight to get searching. On the Pixi Plus, all you have to do is begin typing while on the home screen and the phone searches its memory of contacts, web history, calendar and so on to find the relevant copy. If it can’t find what you’re looking for, it asks if you’d like to go online to Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps and Twitter – and it automatically puts your search term into the search box for the service you have chosen. It works well, is speedy and a joy to use.

Pinch me

The capacitive touch-screen is the kind used on the HTC Desire and iPhone – not the cheaper, less user-friendly resistive screens that are found on many smartphones. This means you get to enjoy multi-touch facilities – zoom in with a pinching movement, for instance. It responds well, too.

After all these positive features, the camera is a bit of a letdown. It’s just two megapixels – a ridiculously low resolution – but at least it has an LED flash. On the plus side, you’ll also find a proper 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can use your choice of headphones, and the hardware ringer switch, which is Palm’s trademark. Long before the iPhone came along, Palm phones featured a solid switch to mute phone calls – wonderful for making sure your phone doesn’t ring at the wrong time, in a meeting for instance. Palm also cottoned on to threaded text messages before other handset makers, too.

Inside is the reasonably quick 600MHz Qualcomm processor. While many of the latest smartphones outdo this with 1GHz chips, everything seems to run smoothly on the Pixi Plus, and we never felt that things needed to be quicker.

The Pixi Plus also features Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and speedy 3G traffic over the air; if you can find transmitters to match, you can download at up to 7.2Mbps.

Apps letdown

An even bigger disappointment than the mediocre camera is the number of apps available. There are still less than 2,000, although Palm hopes that will change as developers discover how to move apps from one platform to another more easily. And, fair enough, you’ll find some big names such as Electronic Arts and GameLoft offering apps for Palm – but it’s not really enough. The app store is entitled App Catalog, and while it is well designed and simple to navigate, there is just not enough content.

It’s such a shame that this great phone, with its fantastic operating system and very decent hardware, is let down like this. Fair enough, if you’re not that bothered about apps it’s a great phone to use and one that will appeal to consumers. However, if your life is not complete without unlimited games and flatulence simulators, or if you really want a phone that boasts a decent camera, the Pixi Plus is not for you.

We found the call quality on the Pixi Plus strong – and it doesn’t matter how you hold it! It lacks the huge speaker that some of its predecessors boasted, but it still offers a good sound and works well. You’ll need to charge it every day, as battery life is not that long, as on many power-hungry smartphones.

The Pixi Plus has an added extra, like the Palm Pre and Palm Pre Plus before it. Opt for a special back to the handset and you can charge your phone by placing it on the Touchstone magnetic charging block. While this comes as standard on the Pre Plus, you’ll need to buy it separately for the Pixi Plus, along with the Touchstone. The micro USB connection is hidden beneath a flap on the side of the phone that fits so well it can be hard to prise off, so the Touchstone, while being a cool device, is also practical. In fact, that pretty much describes the Pixi Plus itself.

The verdict

If you love the iPhone because it is easy to use and intuitive, the Pixi Plus will suit, with the added bonus of a smaller chassis and a smaller price tag. For this reason it’s hard to beat. But, if you want to choose from loads of apps and need a high-resolution camera, it’s not the phone for you.