Sony Ericsson P990 Best PDA Smart Phone

Sony Ericsson P990

is the latest P-series Symbian smartphone from Sony Ericsson, following on from the successful P800, P900 and P910 models. Expected to start shipping in Q1 2006 to Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa as the P990i, and to mainland China as the P990c. There is no word of a North American variant.

One immediately noticeable change is the keyboard. On the P990, the small alphabetic keyboard is fixed to the phone and is revealed by flipping down the number pad. Immediately about the QWERTY keyboard is a 2.6″ 240×320 pixel display. When the number pad is in use, it appears to cover around 80 pixels or so from the bottom of the display, which gives the P990 both “open” and “closed” display modes, as with the P900 and P910. Certain applications such as the web browser and camera functions can use the P990’s screen in landscape (wide) view.

Although superficially similar to the P900/P910, the P990 is a vastly more capable handset, with many major improvements. To start off with, this is a 3G UMTS device in addition to tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900) and GPRS. It also has 802.11b Wireless Ethernet (WiFi) support, making it one of only a few WiFi capable phones. The screen resolution is now 240×320 pixel touchscreen in 262,000 colours, and on the back on the Sony Ericsson P990 is a 2 megapixel digital camera. Internal memory is 80Mb, and this is expandable through Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo cards (64Mb is included, 2Gb maximum). As you’d expect, the SE P990 comes with Bluetooth, but there’s also an FM radio as an added bonus.

The software package on the Sony Ericsson P990 has improved too, with the Symbian v9.1 operating system plus the UIQ 3.0 user interface. On top of this, the SE P990 comes with the Opera 8 web browser, email client, plus a suite of PIM applications. The P990 can edit Microsoft Word and Excel documents, and additionally comes with a viewer for PowerPoint and PDF files.

Sony Ericsson say that the P990 can support all major push email protocols, including Blackberry. How much of that is “in the box” and how much is an additional cost software option is not known, but certainly the P990 looks like a very good high end device for corporate use. There is a VPN client included too, and of course the P990 synchronises with applications such as Microsoft Outlook. The ability to edit Word and Excel documents is a big plus for business users.

The Sony Ericsson P990 is a formidable device in terms of hardware and software specifications, and certainly an improvement over the P910. However, we feel that this is a handset that should have shipped in Q1 2005, not Q1 2006, and this long lead time has meant that HTC has carved out significant market share in this sector. On the plus side, there is no other Symbian smartphone that comes close to this, although we do prefer the wide screen of the Nokia 9300 and 9500 devices to the “tall” screen on the P990 and similar handsets. And although the Nokia 9300 and 9500 are capable devices, they’re nowhere near the specification of the Sony Ericsson P990.

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