Palm Pre Plus, Palm Pixi Plus (photos)

The Palm Pre Plus was one of two devices announced by Palm at CES 2010. It will be available from Verizon Wireless on January 25, but pricing was not announced at this time.

The Palm Pre Plus offers several design enhancements and upgraded features compared to the current Palm Pre on Sprint. For one thing, Palm got rid of the center button but you can still touch in the middle of the gesture area to bring up the Deck of Cards view.

In addition, the QWERTY keyboard has more travel space and provides better tactile feedback, similar to that of the Palm Pixi's, so the typing experience is better. The smartphone will also ship with an inductive back cover so you it'll be Touchstone ready (though you still have to buy the charging dock separately.

Aside from the design improvements, the Pre Plus offers some great new features as well. The smartphone now has 16GB internal memory and 3D gaming. It, as well as all other Palm WebOS phones, will get video recording and a Flash Player 10 plug-in when WebOS 1.4 is pushed out over the air in February.

While the overall look of the Palm Pre Plus is pretty much like the original Pre, the smartphone feels sturdier and has a more solid construction.

The Palm Pixi Plus didn't have as many changes as did the Palm Pre Plus, but you get one key feature: integrated Wi-Fi. In addition, both the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus can act as a Wi-Fi router through a downloadable app from the Palm App Catalog. With it, you'll be able to set up a mobile hotspot and connect up to five devices. You will, however, need to sign up a service plan with Verizon. Pricing for the plan was not announced at this time, and this will be exclusive to the Plus devices. You won't be able to do this with the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi from Sprint.

In addition to the Artist Series backplates, Palm also announced new colored back covers for the Pixi Plus. You can choose from one of five colors: black, blue, orange, pink, or green.

The new colored backplates will work with the Touchstone dock.