Sony Ericsson P990 Reloaded

[slitchfield]

9 months in the making, the Sony Ericsson P990 has finally reached a stage where its firmware can start to be taken seriously. Or so Asri al-Baker writes in his illustrated report, looking below at firmware R5A17....

Read on in the full article.

[ares]

It will get better...its already well know that has commited themselves to stay developing P990/M600/W950 until the end of the year (at least).

But what is more exciting is that they are working in changing the Symbian/UIQ version used on those devices...symbian 9.3 will be used for the new OS, that should be released via fw upgrade around the launch of the new smartphone (P700), my guess is August/September

After reading what was published about symbian 9.3 i think its obvious why they will be using it

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/...bian_OS_93.php

Meanwhile, there should be new firmware before that, around week 24, i maybe the R6 organizer some like ajack are already testing, that should yet be another great step, acording to ajack´s own experience with that version

They (SE) blew it at start, it tool a long time, but i think now users can be satisfied

[tkao2025]

Unfortunately by the time the P990i problems are all ironed out there will be new UIQ phones available that will be much better. Nokia has already moved the game on with the soon to be released E90. The E61i is also a fantastic device, it doesn't have A2DP or auto focus camera, but the quality of the shots are very good IMO.

[ares]

Yeah, but will you have money to invest cash on a new phone has an early buyer, or prefer to stick with a updated P990i, at its full potencial, some more months, before its true successor comes??? I think the rational answer is clear

R5A17 is already good, like its said in this article. The next R6 firmware is even better, like ajack has been telling us from his tests, and should be out in June from here. Then some more months, you get to update your phone to a new OS...this is hardly something to ignore, even with new phones coming out (but none a clear P990 replacement)

[tkao2025]

Yeah, but will you have money to invest cash on a new phone has an early buyer, or prefer to stick with a updated P990i

Well hopefully SE have learned their lesson and will release a new phone that has most bugs ironed out. If they have I would be an early buyer.

this is hardly something to ignore, even with new phones coming out (but none a clear P990 replacement)

Maybe for you there's no clear replacement, but I like the Nokias on the market now and for a die hard SE fan there are probably no replacements until SE comes out with a new UIQ phone. However, I've seen a lot of people jump ship to the new N95 and even a lot of people interested in the E90 that's coming out soon.

[ares]

I´m talking about the normal P series fan...for them, the n95, even the E90 aren´t replacements

But you are going a bit offtopic...my point is SE is about to make something that never happened on Symbian world - provide a OS upgrade to older devices

[rjstep3]

I am always in two minds about SE phones. I switch between Windows Mobile and SE, nothing is perfect in this world it seems! WM devices are great PDA's, but I have found on all of them that the sound quality just doesn't hack it.

For me, the P990i is the P series finally come of age, I didn't like the P900 or the P910. The range of functions on this phone is ntruly staggering, and in a form factor that is really capable. I love this phone.

Having said which, I still have niggles - the sync software is (by common consent it seems) truly awful, and many features of the phone lack configurability (e.g. why am I constrained to have my week agenda view going horizontally when I prefer it vertically?).

More use of this phone shows that it really shows the way for a smartphone. If SE is watching: improve the sync software to the level of MS or Palm, and add in all the configurability that EPOC used to have. Oh, and more RAM please. And a better battery life while you are at it.

[tkao2025]

Originally Posted by ares

But you are going a bit offtopic...my point is SE is about to make something that never happened on Symbian world - provide a OS upgrade to older devices

Why are they doing that?

[ares]

You know why has well has me...if all was well, they wouldn't do it...they do it because it will alow finally the ram problem to be efectively adressed, to please early adopters that had problems with bad first fw, and to maximize sales of this devices. So, should be us p990 users be less satisfied with this because of their motif? I dont think so

[lithgow]

Not possible to run "heavy apps like DreamConnect3 together with Opera"?

Really?

I run DC 3 with Opera and/or Messaging (both consume more memory than DC 3 -- pay no attention to the useless info in SMan, it just shows the .app's size) all the time! And that's on the older Singapore firmware which is less memory efficient.

In fact, one of our goals has been to be able to run DC 3 with Opera and/or Messaging, so we measure it with large numbers of contacts (eg. 1500).

Just want to set the facts straight.

-Malcolm.

@lithgow,

Do you have Exchange ActiveSync running as well? Because on the P990 I'm using now, I always keep DC3 running in the background with Messaging and Exchange ActiveSync. But when Opera is started, bam!!! DC3, Messaging & ActiveSync are closed. And I have not starting to browse, only launching it. In my opinion, it's not DC3's fault but it has something to do with the memory leak, especially knowing from the very beginning about Opera's hunger for RAM.

DC3 is a superb application by the way! ;-)

thanks for stepping in and explaining things.

Asri al-Baker

[lithgow]

G'day Asri,

No, I must confess that I don't have ActiveSync running -- I just have the Messaging server's IMAP connection open all the time (but this does seem to get killed off, or hang, every so often, although I haven't figured out why).

We've managed to whittle DC 3's memory usage down a little (about to go beta for a new release), but the big problem is the switch to the new-style ARM binaries. It almost doubled the size of our binary from UIQ 2 to UIQ 3!

I think this, combined with the inability to run software in place in the flash, really caught SE by surprise, and it's taken them this long to really start to get things under control. It's good to see SE's commitment to getting these devices right.

There are lots of things to like about UIQ 3 and the P990i. I really enjoy being able to use apps in flip-closed mode as well as flip-open (and I don't expect the E90 to deliver anywhere near as good an experience).

-Malcolm.

E90 will run all apps in FC _and_ FO mode.

Bottom Line:
At least SE is bothered to support the existing UIQ devices till the end of the year. They could have easily left us for dead. 9 months and I still feel the pinch from being an early adopter though... Whatever.

- Discord

I just tried downloading the new version - but there's still the old version (i.e. no switching of transistions, "old" organizer) online. Can you please help me?