Palm officially announced its second webOS-based smartphone, the Pixi, a slim smartphone with a visible full keyboard following the Palm Pre. The Pixi will be soon available from Sprint in holiday season. Though it is similar to the Pre in several ways, it offers a lot more advantages over the Pre (single-piece body, artist series backs, super thin). And its Artist Series lets you express yourself in amazingly useful ways.

Palm’s new non-slider with touchscreen comes with exhilarating features like; a 2.63-inch multi-touch LCD display with 320×400 resolution, gesture area under the screen, QWERTY keyboard, a 2 Megapixel camera with LED flash, integrated GPS receiver and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support.

This innovative candybar is the first to equipped Qualcomm’s MSM7627 chipset. Pixi comes with 8GB internal storage, a microUSB connector and a 3.5mm stereo jack. The Pixi supports Palm Synergy integration with Facebook, Google, Microsoft Office Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, Google Talk, AIM Instant Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger.

It supports dual band CDMA and EVDO Rev.A 3G mobile networks but lack WiFi. It packs Proximity sensor, Light sensor as well as Accelerometer. The QWERTY phone’s media player can handle playback of MP3, AAC, AMR, WAV, MPEG4, H.264 and H.263 files. It will cost about $149 with two year contract and rebates on Sprint. You have 8GB of on board storage and it takes 2-megapixel pictures – down from the Pre’s 3-megapixels.

Palm also introduced “Artist Series” styles including back cover designs and accessories that let you express yourself. It allow users to personalize their Pixi with numbered, limited-edition back covers.