Hot on the heels of our webOS battle between the Palm Pre 2 and the HP Pre 3 is our next installment – the Palm Pixi Plus versus HP Veer. The credit-card sized HP Veer will take the honors as the smallest webOS phone to date when it launches later this year, but is it worth the upgrade? Let’s begin.
Adding a slide out keyboard, instead of the candy-bar, fully-exposed keyboard of the Palm Pixi has its compromises. For one, you increase the thickness of the device from 10.85 mm to 15.1 mm, and second, you are left with a slightly wider device, 111 mm versus 84 mm. The other downside is that the removable battery seen on the Palm Pixi Plus is no more, the Veer uses a smaller, non-removable 910 mAh battery (down from 1,150 mAh).
The screens are relatively unchanged, the 2.63 inch 400 x 320 pixel touchscreen of the Pixi Plus is .03 inches smaller on the Veer. Where we start to see some changes is the camera, up from 2-megapixels to 5-megapixels, matching the Veer’s camera to the Pre 3. Both phones offer 8GB of internal memory and bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. The Veer adds wireless n support, HSPA instead of HSDPA and touch-to-share capability.
The bread and butter of the HP Veer can best be seen in processing power and memory. Now using a 800 MHz Qualcomm processor instead of the Pixi Plus’ 600 MHz, the bite-sized Veer should deliver snappy performance. The upgrade from 256MB to 512MB of RAM should also help in multi-tasking and overall device performance. These two categories could prove to be the most important when considering the HP Veer.
It’s a tough decision anytime you consider upgrading smartphones, especially for webOS faithfuls who so rarely get a hardware refresh. Let us know whether you’ll be trading in that Palm Pixi or Palm Pixi Plus for the HP Veer.
Coming Spring 2011 | HP | TBD
