P800: Should I buy it? Can I convert my Palm address book?

I can't think of a reason not to buy it. I've had mine for almost two weeks now and I have no complaints. It's running Symbian OS 7.0, all right, and it isn't as weak as you've heard. It has not frozen on me, even though I do reboot the phone quite frequently. From what I have with it so far it seems to be as stable as any other PDA/phone OS in the market.

As for Palm conversion I'm not sure if you can convert directly as I haven't seen any mentioning of it, at least not on P800's side. But I'm sure you can sync your Palm with a desktop PIM such as Outlook, then ask the P800 to work with that information over the SyncStation.

The battery life is very impressive as well! A 30-minute conversation only took 1-2% down! An entire night in power-saving mode, the P800 used ~1%! But of course, these stats are based on network conditions and everything.

Most of all, you'll have a lot of confidence when you buy this phone given that it's backed by two big names in the industry, Sony and Ericsson, as the two will likely to give their best efforts to support and improve this flagship product! On the software and usability side, you'll find a huge Personal Java/C++ developer community behind it, already has many great applications released and being tested, the future looks great for the P800!

Ok, I used to own an R520 so I'll give you some points of comparison...

One, battery life... don't expect R520 battery life on a device that has a 320x208 12-bit full color, front lit LCD screen. Tip: The screen light drains the MOST power...if you can turn it OFF during the day, do so... or enable power save mode. The P800 is supposed to give you about a week of standby time..this is assuming the ff: (Light off, powersave on, no incoming/outgoing transmissions of anykind, BT off) ... under regular PDA/phone use... it gives you 2 days at the MOST.

Regarding the OS... well, OS7 UIQ is THE latest...so right now, it still has a few quirks... never hangs... but it does ask you to restart the phone some times. Only data that is being entered at that very moment the "restart" message appears is lost... other data is left untouched. OS stability isn't that big a problem... Symbian is about as stable as Palm... much better that PPC.

The P800 is worth it. It integrates almost all the data so seamlessly, the technology is almost transparent in everyday use! My only gripe (well, it's not a major gripe since I never would've used the feature anyway) is that the P800 has no faxing capabilities. I don't know why this was not included... maybe SE is arrogant enough to feel that faxes are obsolete and not needed in a device like this. I personally have never used the faxing capabilities of any GSM phone/PDA. I know a lot of people do... but I haven't. I always use email. So, whether you need faxing or not... might be a deciding factor in your purchase of the P800.

I don't know if this is just a software limitation, or if the modem on the P800 itself doesn't recognize fax commands.

Regarding syncing ur current Palm OS3 (Symbian UIQ is so much better than Palm OS3) ... well, first of all... try beaming your entire address book to the P800... it should work if Palm supports Addressbook beaming. If it doesn't work... sync your Palm with Outlook, then sync Outlook with your P800... then discard your Palm! 😊

You can beam category from your Palm to the P8, so you don't need to beam address by address. But you got to re categorise everything, which is quite a bit of work.

You can also synch from Outlook if you synched outlook with your Palm previously.

Thanks a lot you guys have been GREAT so far! I think I am sold so as soon as I can put together the money (the damn thing is soooo expensive) I'll buy it!

Thanks to jplacson for the r520m comparison... I love my phone and it's battery life. The Ericsson website says that it should last 300 hours and says that the p800 should last 400 so if I use it as phone I think I might get more or less the same out of it in terms of battery life. Like you, I don't care about fax.

My only concern remains my addresses, they are too many to retype in...
I have never used Outlook (I hate it!) and I have always synced with Palm's Palm Desktop software, do you know if I can sync with that with the p800? If not I can sync with Outlook if it is sure that works. Has somebody tried it yet?

brick, thanks for the advice, I didn't know you can beam catogry, is this for sure? Have you tried it?

Last thing, I have often read that the ringing signal is low... is this true? and if yes, sicne I have heard that mp3 is loud instead, is it possible to associate an mp3 sound to the ring signal so to make it louder??? does it have vibration?

I lied before when I said it was the last thing, I just thought of the very last thing I wanted to ask: what about UMTS? This is the only other thing holding me back... If in 6 months we'll have affordable UMTS network and devices do you think it is still worth the investment? Also does the p800 offer the possibility of hardware upgrades like for example a Handspring Visor where you can attach other devices to it?

Sorry if I asked to many questions at once, hope somebody will take the time...

Will all of you be my friends when we all have a p800??? 😉

Ok, I never tried category beaming with the Palm... but I did transfer my entire T68i phonebook via Bluetooth (works the same via IR) The only thing is that the categories aren't transferred, which means, all your contacts will be lumped under the phonebook... you'll have to re-group them (if you group them at all anyway) once they're in the P800. Small shortcoming... the Addressbook of the P800 is at par with the best PDAs if you ask me... even better since messaging is more seamless.

Battery life is claimed at 300-400 hours... hehehe... good luck. Unless you shut off the backlight and turn on Power Save, you won't get more than a full 24 hours on the P800. The backlight drains a whole lot... trust me!

No you cannot use an MP3 as a ringsignal. But the ring signals are very loud... the only problems I've found with ring volume is when you use a MIDI that's set to a low volume (MIDI volume is controlled by the composer, so the phone just plays it the way its written) ... IMY files from the T68i are embarrassingly loud... and I mean, you-can-hear-it-in-a-rock-concert loud! So far, IMY and WAV (11kHz, 8-bit mono work best for me) are the loudest ringtones you can have. MIDI... well, unless you can edit the master volume in the MIDI file with Cakewalk or something, the P800 will paly it as is... it won't boost the volume on its own)

And for those who are wondering... yes the T300 has better MIDI support than the P800 cuz the T300 is built to be a MIDI machine. The T300 has 24-note wavetable synthesis, while the P800 has 16-note, FM synthesis. Think of the P800 as the 1st Gen SoundBlaster 16, while the T300 has the SoundBlaster AWE64.

The P800 has vibra... not earthquake strong, but good enough.

Re: UMTS... well, no possibility for upgrade. I'm not holding my breathe for 3G... UMTS, WCDMA, and CDMA2000 are the current 3G standards (too many to be considered a 'standard' if you ask me) ... I'd hold out if you really are sure of the stability of your provider's 3G network and are fine with their tariffs... me? I'm happy with current GSM & GPRS services. I hardly pay over US$10/month for voice & text services, and GPRS in the Philippines is still free. I don't need to do video calls enough to pay for the service... besides... I don't want my boss to know why I'm REALLY late for work!!! 😉

Thanks for the answer.

When you say that the address book is seamlessly integrated, can I simply look up a number in the address book and tip a DIAL button or something or do I have to look it up and manually press the numerical digits to dial it?

Battery life: I usually don't believe the factory claims either but on the r520m they pretty much lived up to that for the stand by part at least. Since I don't have a p800 yet can you explain what the power save mode consists of? Can I keep the backlight always off to save battery and turn it on only at night or is it impossible to see well without it?

I don't care about UMTS' video capabilities, I could just use a faster internet connection than GPRS, other than that I am happy too and GPRS is not exactly the cheapest where I use it...

Thnx

I have transferred my palm addresses to the p800 using Outlook. You first sync with Outlook and then between Outlook and the P800. When you go from Palm to Outlook you use Intellisync Lite (this came with my Sony Clie) and the only problem is that it clubs all similar phone numbers in a record together.e.g. if you have 2 work phone numbers it puts both in one work number field in outlook. I have asked Intellisync if they have a solution to this.

Another problem is that syncing takes long if you have a large number of records like I do in Contacts. Also it frequently creates duplicates which I can't understand. However, these are teething problems that should get resolved. Once in your p800 you just tap the number to dial.

It is a brilliant machine and well worth some minor hassles.

The easiest way, I suppose, would be to

1. Export vCard & vCal formats of your AddressBook and DateBook (from Palm Desktop).
2. IrDa/Bluetooth/Email these to the P800.

Works like a charm. I've migrated from a Sony Clie T665C to my P800 and have not regretted the decision one bit.

(See the other thread labelled "Moving from Palm to P800"😉

I tried beaming categories from the Sony Clie to the P800 (in Contacts) and it worked great. However, this works for a first time conversion from the Palm device to the P800. What happens after that when additional records are added on your desktop? Did you switch to Outlook? I found the syncing between Outlook and p800 has its fair share of problems including creating unexplained duplicates.

Any ideas?

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to syncing problems between the P800 and MS Outlook.

I use an Apple PowerBook, and right now, Apple's iSync does not support the P800. What I do is basically purge the Apple AdressBook once a week, and export the contacts from the P800 to the Apple. It's not so bad, since the contacts aren't that large.

It's a bit tedious, and not exactly the most updated method, but it gets the job done, and will have to do till Apple fixes iSync.

I know I could use my Virtual PC 6 and the Sync software, but... I'm not a big Windows fan�

I'm curious, though, if anyone has sync-ed via SyncML (web) yet...

Well if you wanna read my horror story here's my full post: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12972
I posted full instructions on how I did achieve to migrate my contacts!