The big, big Sony Ericsson P990i review - the UIQ 3 flagship

[Rafe]

Rafe Blandford's been living and breathing Sony Ericsson P990i and UIQ 3 for two weeks now - here's his full review. Summary:shed loads of potential, very powerful, but also some rough edges and room for improvement through firmware updates.

Read on in the full article.

[jah]

Good summary of the situation with the P990. My experience after 6 weeks of use is that once you get used all the different UI options you find your own method to use the P990. I found I did not need Jot and switching it off also improved the speed of the UI. Also note:

- that my organiser firmware is version R3B01
- the P990 is very good at hanging-on to a 3G signal and like the M600 3G download speed are very good

Good job!

[Rafe]

Thanks for your comments jah. Yes I was also impressed by the general ability to hold onto signals, though to be honest it something I've come to expect from the big phone manufacturers.

I think you comment about the Jot input just goes to illustrate the diverse nature of the P990. Some may see this as a jack of all trades, but personally I think this versatility is attractive.

[Terry1100]

How does the P990 compare with the 900/910 for text entry. Does the smaller physical screen area make it harder to split between alpha and numeric entries ?

I'm temped back to Nokia (from a P900) with the latest N series phones but I dont really fancy going back to text entry via a phone keypad.

[Jejoma]

Terry - I've been using the P990 for a couple of weeks and have found text input easier than with my previous P900. I don't know whether it is the "sharper" screen or improved software but I find I am making less mistakes. Certainly I don't notice any effect from the screen height.

[Jay3gsm]

A bit off-topic, but does the N95 have a QWERTY keyboard?

[Rafe]

No the N95 just has a standard keypad on the slide.

[the_gooze!]

I have had the P990i for two weeks now and am on the third unit as the first two kept locking up and the only way to clear this was to dig out the battery!

The phone has a lot of potential and has been said once the new firmware is released hopefully this will improve matters.

The thing that annoys me most is the way you have to return to task manager to end a program. Why hitting on the back button doesn't close an app. seems crazy to me even though I have been using a Symbian phone for over three years - Nokia 3650

To be honest this is the fifth phone I have tried in the past two months and the only one I have felt happy with. The others were N73, K800, N80 & W810.

[lithgow]

I've been developing on the P990i, and, apart from stability issues (Messages is particularly buggy, but Contacts crashes pretty regularly when you're mucking with contacts in another app), this is a very alluring phone.

I wasn't planning on switching over from my P910i for a while, but it's hard to resist the benefits of WiFi, fantastic input (with Zi's great predictive system), 3G (with usable tarrifs on 3 Australia), good music player, great camera, and an excellent flip-closed mode.

Basically, this phone is a great phone, even with its stability issues. Once SE gets the firmware right, it'll be a fantastic phone. (Yes, I do like UIQ better than S60 -- S60's keyboard only input is just too suffocating for me.)

BTW, good advice about switching off Jot, thanks Jah.

[Johan L]

I had a P990i for testing a month ago, and during those two weeks, became very disappointed with the lack of memory! I would have messaging open - and just messaging! - receive an e-mail with a link in it, and decide to follow the link from the mail, seeing as I was on a WLAN. Clicked the link, the browser opened - then closed. Then the message "Not enough memory to run browser"...and this on a business phone?!? Very disappointed - especially as I had thise phone up on a piedestal...but as you say, firmware updates will hopefully fix this, because apart from this memory-issue, this phone is fantastic!!!

[the_gooze!]

Hi!
Can anyone give some help for this.
I've downloaded the update service file from the SE website and all that happens when I click on the .exe file is that the info says the files are being extracted and no more.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[shung]

Good review!

A couple of tricks are:
1) The p990 can be hard reset (ie without having to pull the battery out if and when it gets stuck :banghead: ) if you continue pressing the on/off button by about 6 seconds.
2) A way to make the phone interfaces go faster :burnout: is to go into Media Player, Video and play the Demo Tour (for example) for just a second. Once you have done that you will see the switching between applications going much faster. Using the video somehow switches off the time consuming morphing of graphics the user interface uses!

[sancho_panza]

I have bee using the P990 now for 2 weeks making extensive use of e-mail either over 3G or WIFI and the average battery duration has been about 10 hours.

Basically, I have to take another cell phone with me because I can not relay on the P990. Is this normal ?
Please could you post your average batery duration times so I can show the SE service that my phone has a problem?
The say it is normal average time if I use WIFI. Thanks.

[tnleeuw]

This device looks really ugly to me, IRL even more so than on the photos (and my wife really hates the looks of it), but this review here did really warm me up to the P990i so I checked it out in one of the local shops here. They gave me a hands-on demo, and being used only to older-style phones with keyboard only input, I really loved the touch-screen! Much more so then I would have ever imagined. I also found the QWERTY keyboard to be quite usable, and a big relief compared to entering text using number keys.

I also loved very much the big screen, really great for the camera for instance. So I have very much fallen in love with this PDA/Phone, and am seriously considering to get one. (My wife though still thinks it's better to wait for the Nokia N95 and have to higher-specced camera, with better video-recording. Myself, I want a device with a good QWERTY keyboard)

I do have a question for the author of the review though, regarding some of the specs: I read everywhere that the phone has 60Mb of internal memory, yet here it says 80Mb... And I've read and heard some conflicting statements about the maximum size of memory sticks it will accept: in the shop they said 2Gb, but on various website (including here) it says 8Gb ... I couldn't find the answer on the Sony-Ericsson website, so I wonder what the true answer will be?


Cheers,

--Tim

[transkei]

My complaint is that you cant use most of the control panel icons with the flip closed. i have been having problems with my touch-screen, and have found it impossible to navigate using qwerty keyboard with side buttons and 3way jog dial. I want to do a touch-screen reset where it asks for a tap in each corner, but cant do this flip closed(or open without touch-screen operation). also, this phone is slow, damn slow.. waiting for the new firmware, hoping....but my touch-screen not working, and i cant go to display properties any other way. My screen is staying lit 24/7, and I cant do anything about it. want to know a way to hard reset. (have tried holding on button for 6 seconds, but want to fully reset the phone to default. is holding c the way? help help help