It's hard to believe that Palm is already pushing its second webOS device, the Pixi, out the door. It seems like just a few weeks ago that we were eagerly awaiting the release of the Pre, a phone that was considered to be the last gasp for the badly ailing company, and now it's poised to add an entirely new handset to the mix. The Pixi -- a sleek, tiny device -- seems clearly aimed at the only market Palm has recently enjoyed unfettered success with: the Centro demographic.

Why prance around it? The Palm Pixi's very existence is a cruel joke. The $100 Pixi made sense once upon a time, when the Pre was $200 and Palm needed a phone for the masses—like the Centro, oncer upon a time—to establish the webOS as a real platform. A leaner, cheaper version of the Pre was a good idea. Now, you can get the real thing—faster, stronger, screenier—for under a hundred bucks. The Pixi's existential crisis is not insignificant.