The Palm Pixi Plus cellphone is essentially the Palm Pixi mobile phone plus Wi-Fi and is available for Verizon and soon for AT&T. The carriers do not really count as an advantage or disadvantage but Wi-Fi is clearly an advantage as not only does the Palm Pixi Plus smart phone connect via Wi-Fi but is also capable of acting as a Wi-Fi router to connect to up to 5 separate devices.

That combined with the benefits of a regular Palm Pixi cellphone make for an impressive list of technical specifications including a 2.63″ TFT capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320 x 400 pixels, accelerometer sensor, proximity sensor, 3.5mm audio jack, 8 GB internal storage, 3G, Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g), microUSB, 2 MP camera with a 1600 x 1200 pixels resolution as well as LED flash, Bluetooth, GPS and quad band GSM.

The only feature that could have been better for the Palm Pixi Plus mobile phone is the touchscreen display which is a tad small at 2.63″. The QWERTY keyboard on the Palm Pixi Plus smart phone does its job well enough and combined with the extremely intuitive and user friendly webOS UI, the Palm Pixi Plus makes a device that is easy to use and also provides many great features.

The Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus are both excellent smart phones by our reckoning, they have so far garnered little attention because of the large number of highly competitive Android devices being released. However, the Canalys report forecasts (and rightly so in our opinion) that Palm will be gaining a larger share of the North American market in 2010.

One reason why the growth is so slow for Palm is, in our opinion, that the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus phones are not available unlocked globally. Otherwise, not only is the Palm webOS an excellent mobile operating system but the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus cellphones are both feature loaded and very satisfying to use, not to mention aesthetically pleasing.

Thus AT&T customers will be glad to know that Palm intends to introduce both the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus to AT&T’s lineup. This was announced in a press release made by Palm that also indicated that they will showcase the AT&T versions of the Palm Pre Plus mobile phone and Palm Pixi Plus smart phone at CTIA Wireless to be held from the 23rd to the 25th of March in Las Vegas.

However, perhaps as we think due to the lack of unlocked phones available globally, or due to the stiff competition provided by Android based phones which are eating up most of the publicity and taking attention away from the Palm Pixi plus cellphone and Palm Pre Plus mobile phone, Palm made a $22 million loss in their third fiscal quarter.

Consequently, Palm shares fell almost 25% in trading and now the outlook is grim as most traders are recommending selling Palm shares and some of the more pessimistic even suggest that this might be the end for Palm.

We however do not think so, in our opinion, one way or another Palm will survive. While we would not like to see it happen, it is quite likely that a larger company like Dell or Microsoft might well launch a takeover if the situation truly reaches such a crisis.

On the other hand it is far more likely that Palm will make a recovery based on the strength of their products and the bright outlook predicted by the forecast report made by Canalys.

All jokes aside, this limited time offer from Palm and O2 (click here to see the offer) is a pretty good incentive besides which the Palm Pre cellphone is a highly rated device on its own. The 3.1″ touchscreen and the motion sensor (accelerometer) on the Palm Pre mobile phone should allow for some serious fun playing games.

Speaking of games, the EA games available for free on the Palm Pre smart phone with this offer are The Sims 3, Need For Speed Underground and Monopoly. So casual gaming seems to be the order of the day, as it usually is with smart phones and other mobile devices of the Palm Pre cellphone‘s ilk.

This does not, of course, mean that these three are the only games available from the Palm App catalog (which is where you should go to get your free games) and with 3D gaming also available on the Palm Pre, killing time should be easier than ever.

People are often put off when they hear a device labeled as a smart phone. They label it in their minds as horribly clunky but high-end device suitable for business users as often as not. Well this has been fast changing these past years and particularly last year through the advent of devices featuring Android OS as well as the iPhone 3GS and new and improved versions of Symbian OS as well as Microsoft Windows Mobile and of course webOS by Palm.

The Palm Pre Plus cellphone is essentially a Palm Pre (available on Spring) with a larger memory (16 GB for user storage and 512 MB in-built for improved multi-tasking). The main plus point err advantage to the Palm Pre Plus is of course its beautiful design. This in addition to the 3.1″ display with a 320 x 480 resolution supporting up to 16 million colors is truly a sight for sore eyes. Incidentally the Palm Pre Plus feels very nice when handled too.

Multi-touch support in various applications is a good feature, as is its rather unique capability to function as a Wi-Fi router for up to 5 devices. Needless to say amongst its other technical specifications the Palm Pre Plus also features Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) support in addition to GPS (using Google Maps), fairly reasonable 3 MP camera with LED flash, accelerometer, proximity sensor as well as ambient light sensor and the Palm Pre Plus supports CDMA dual band and 3G using Ev-Do revision A.

Call quality was quite good on the Palm Pre Plus mobile phone although signal strength is sometimes deceptive, it might show only 2 or 3 out of 5 bars even in strong reception areas however this does not seem to affect the quality of the calls in any way.

The true strength of the Palm Pre Plus lies of course in the user interface which is very intuitive and easy to use not to mention very easy on the eye as well. The QWERTY keyboard was not quite the best we have used but very reasonable considering the size and thickness of the Palm Pre Plus.

To conclude, we think that the Palm Pre Plus cellphone is an very good overall device especially for first time users although it still needs some catching up to do with the Motorola Droid or Milestone.