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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
A bit off-topic, but does the N95 have a QWERTY keyboard?
No the N95 just has a standard keypad on the slide.
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.
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.
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!!!
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!:frown:
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!
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.
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
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
I upgraded from the P910i....
I have used this phone for about two months now and have got to say it is absolutely terrible.
There are so many bad things.....I will list just a few of them.
Okay, how about this for a gem: The clock on the phone loses a few minutes every week!! Yes - I couldn't believe it! Right now I'm looking at it and it's lost 3 minutes since I corrected it two days ago!!
Response time is slow: Every feature you seem to select seems to take an age to load. Even on start up the phone takes over 60 seconds to load. Now you might not think this so important as you'll probably very rarely have to switch it off - WRONG! The software is unstable which means you'll be switching it off - no actually that's not correct - You'll be opening the battery compartment, removing the battery and replacing it and closing the compartment in order to reset the phone! Because sometimes the 'off' button does not respond!
SMS: Everything seems to have multiple layers in order to get to the relevant application. Take SMS's;
1) You open the Flip
2) You scroll down to the SMS icon
3) You press the button to select it
4) You press again to select whether you want to 'write' or 'read' an sms
5) So you select 'write' and another menu comes up you scroll down and press the button to select 'create' an sms
6) Yet another menu appears to ask 'sms' or 'mms' or 'email'
7) Finally, now you can begin!
The whole thing is made worse because the response is slow
Synchronizing with Outlook and the upgrade service:
DO NOT UPGRADE BEFORE YOU HAVE MADE A BACKUP! The upgrade service gives you no notice if you re-install the software and wipes everything back to factory settings. Beforehand I was 'fortunate' enough to synchronise with my laptop/outlook etc. but for some unknown reason some of the numbers have gotten the prefix chopped off! Or even worse have dissapeared completely! You can imagine how much fun putting back that stuff is.
There are just so many bad things I could write I would be here for another hour putting everything down. The functionality of the Calendar should be a lot better and the car setting for the Hands Free does not work as it should.
Personally, I think the main problems are two fold;
1) The phone has insufficient memory
2) The software is very poor.
Whilst Microsoft is no angel and I've only used their PDA software - What I've seen of it suggests it is leaps and bounds ahead of Symbian, in functionality and not surprisingly, in synchronisation.
I'm probably going to get rid of mine and will look at phones like:
N93i
HTCTyTN
HTC P3600
i've had my p990i for a few days and have found that most of the problems can be corrected by studying the user manual and by simply getting used to the layout of the hand set.
how to hard reset bp990 using the soft key
thanks for the greatest review i've ever read, now the only thing i dont exactly know and didnt find is, does this sony ericsson p990i hav a picture editor???
Having owned the P800, which was good, and progressed to the P900, which was outstanding (missing out the P910 which was definitely a retrograde styling mistake), I thought that the P990 would be the ideal upgrade. That has not proved to be the case, and I am seriously considering getting my P900 overhauled and back into use.
The changes in the button layout, which is confusing when one has been used to the two previous phones, are unnecesssarily different, particulalry the call/ end call function. The rounded buttons on the P900 were easy to use, and rarely did I press two at the same time. The P900's flatter buttons (I don't have unusually large fingers!) make it much more awkward. The D button in the centre of the four-way switch (forgive my lack of technical terminology) is not prominent enough and is constantly causing problems. And the number of times I have 'answered' a call, only to find that it has been diverted, even though I have been really careful to press the two way button in precisely the right way is bloody annoying. Answering a call should be the most straightforward thing in the world!!!!! 😡
The previous comments about slowness, crashing, lack of memory, freezing, poor battery life, wiping memory when updating software, all accord with the experiences I, and two other colleagues, have suffered. In addition, the camera is complicated, extremely slow between shots, and the screen in daylight is so reflective as to be a mirror - you can't see what you are shooting. Once again, the simplicity of the P900 camera in use was great, and the screen far brighter! Why didn't SE simply keep it the same but with the 2 megapixel improvement?
As much as I loved the P900, I hate the P990. Sony have probably tried to fit in too much technology on this PDA to the detriment of the already fine functionality of the previous models. All in all, not a great experience
Probably the Last SE phone I buy, after having only SE since my T68i. Phone can not even keep time properly (losses 2 minutes aday)and jangs up to often. Really not what I would have expected from SE
I so want to like this phone. I like the size, feel and shape. The potential functions are mouthwatering, just getting them to work is the problem. The CD will not let me install the pcsuite as it tells me that my pc operating system has insufficient capabilities yet every other program including CAD has installed no problem. I have bucketfulls of RAM and hard disc space left but no joy. The battery life is woefull and I carry my Nokia 6680 as a more realiable workhorse.
The 990 freezes regularly and the 6 second option does not work reliably making resetting the phone a real pain. The UI is woefull, illogical and confusing. Duplicitous menus make memorising navigation through the drop down menus difficult.
I have been pulled between Nokia and Sony Ericsson but neither seems to improve at all. The software is overcomplicated rather than intuitive as in the past. This facet should be getting easier with technological advances, not more difficult.
I hope that software mods will fix the problems but I doin't think it will be before my young son gets this phone as an MP3 player.
I never really liked the P900 or the P910i, and quickly passed on to Windows Mobile devices. My upgrade entitled me to a P990i and I am bowled over by the range of applications and functions. The form factor is just great for a smartphone, and at 150g, it slips in all but the flimsiest of pockets without a fuss.
BUT, I had to take the first one back within 24 hours - it just hung repeatedly, and refused to re-start. I have had the second one plugged in all weekend charging and not being used at all, and come Monday morning, it had HUNG. Now this is with the latest firmware at the time of this post.
I sincerely SE is still working on the firmware and are going to bring out yet more updates, or I am going back to Windows Mobile, which actually manages memory. Symbian comes from Psion - which had an incredibly small memory footprint, multitasked without you noticing and was solid as a rock. How SE's engineers turned that around into this baffles me.
shung, thank you about giving me the video player tric to speedup the UI slow change btween windows, now my p990 is super fast whatever i clic it opens instantly, my gues, that the video application actually linked to the graphics accelarator in the processor which is activated to give you a good video, as long as you open any video clp and leave it open the phone ui is superfast. Great . thank you shung
It is a very good phone, but sometimes he is a bit slow. I have him now 1 year, and I am very satisfied.
Just thought i'd tell people about my trouble getting my P990i fixed. it started last saturday night (11/05/07) by freezing and doing nothing but vibrate. I sent it away to be fixed any they cannot sort it and will hev to return it to Sony ericsson. This will take upto 2 weeks and in the meantime i cannot have a phone to replace the pne i have to send away. This iscauseing me no end of problems and am totally unhappy with the service i have recieved. I love the phone, hence why i am going to such an extent to get it fixed but my god is it hard to get fixed, they'll sell it to you so quickly but they won't touch it when it breaks!!
just be careful if you plan buying it, make sure you got it in writing that if/when it breaks you can get another phone to take it's place.
Have this P990i for 8 months and the flip gave up a week ago. The center button of the navigation key is not working anymore that I had to remove the flip in order to use it. Im not used to the phone not having its flip...wonder whats wrong with it? I cant say I have overused its function. Cell clinics wont dare touch it and referred me to the SE center which is an hour ferry and plane ride away. Other than its dead center function key, the phone is a superb gadget..powerful, smart and the best so far...better than the other brands' latests.
Reading all the reviews before I decided on the p990i was misleading. This phone after I used it for the last 4 months is the biggest piece of shit I ever saw.
I can take the 'quirks' that most hae listed here BUT the big problem is when you try to answer a call it diverts! This is really annoying!!! SE claim this is not a problem - this is my second handset with the same problem.
Sync I hae had no real problems - biggest issue was with my antiirus stopping sync but otherwise OK - great phone in principle - rubbish in execution - I will go back to nokia next time
Hi there! I'm still wondering till now, what the hell is wrong with my P990i that I can't use the front camera for still pictures. Is there any settings that I am missing out? Or this camera only design for Video calls? Also I don't know if I overlooked the demo of SE for this phone. That you will be able to make the view of the front camera as your wallpaper? Huh?