For those Sprint customers anxiously awaiting the Palm Pixi, the company recently announced the new device will be available on November 15 and will cost $99.99 with a two-year contract.

Jennifer LeClaire reported on this announcement in Top Tech News, focusing on how the Palm Pixi is designed for active mobile users. As a smartphone, it allows users to keep multiple activities open and provides the flexibility to move between them using natural gestures.

"Simply put, this phone is fun and easy to use; with its multi-touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard, it's a great device for messaging and social networking at a price everyone can enjoy, and delivers so many of the great features people love about Palm Pre in a fantastic new form factor, making it a huge hit for consumers," said Kevin Packingham, senior vice president of product development at Sprint (News - Alert), in the Top Tech News piece.

Palm webOS

One of the powerful tools that Palm is banking its anticipated success on is the Palm webOS. This platform is designed to bring together a user’s information from the phone, at work or on the Web into one view. The platform links information from Google (News - Alert), Facebook, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, LinkedIn and Yahoo integration into Palm Synergy.

With Palm Synergy, users have access to features such as linked contacts, which offers a single view of contacts from a variety of sources, and layered calendars, which allows users to see calendars on their own or layered together.

Staying Connected

The combined messaging function enables users to see all the conversations with the same person in a chat-style view. The user can see who is active in a buddy list from contacts or e-mail. The new Facebook application allows users to see and comment on all the latest news from friends and easily update their status.

While a charger is standard, the Palm Pixi also comes with the Touchstone charging dock. An inductive charging solution for phones, Touchstone allows Palm Pixi to be set on top of the dock without worrying about the connection, orientation or fit. One of the perks of this feature is the device remains active even while charging.

What Will the Future Hold?

Both Palm and Sprint have definitely seen better days and the two are each taking a risk in pairing with this technology together. Sprint’s risk is the fact that Palm is in its last push for survival and Sprint is moving toward WiMAX (News - Alert) while the remaining industry is pushing toward LTE.

Sprint may be banking on the inexpensive price associated with the Pixi, but is it possible they are underestimating their client base? Consumers tend to want more from their devices and this one may be cute and fun – but will it meet demand? Only time will tell.

Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) recently recognized Sprint with the 2009 Award for Product Line Strategy in the North American Mobile Resource Management Market. The award was specifically given for Sprint’s TeleNav (News - Alert) Vehicle Manager, which the company introduced in February.