Sony's update to the P800 is smaller, slicker and a solid challenge to every other smart phone out there. Read our Australian review.It seems that we can't move around the ZDNet Australia offices without tripping over a smart phone. Only recently we've seen the same Smart phone in three different guises -- the Qtek 7070, O2's Xphone and i-mate's Smartphone2, as well as Motorola's more recent MPx200. All of those phones run on Microsoft's Windows Mobile Smartphone OS, but while we're seeing a deluge of phones on that platform, it's hardly the only option. PalmOne would of course be happy for you to pick up a Treo running on what used to be called the Palm OS, and there are several vendors that use the Symbian platform for PDA-style functionality. Sony Ericsson's P900 falls into the Symbian category, and is the followup to the highly successful P800 that the company released last year. We've been aware of the P900 for some time -- our colleagues in the UK reviewed it late last year -- and at long last it's landed on Australian shores.
Weighing in at 156g and at 5.7cm by 2.0cm by 11.4cm, the P900 is subtly smaller than the P800, and it's a welcome shrinking manoeuvre; at the new size the P900 more easily slips into a pocket or bag than the bulkier P800. The P900 now has a five-way jog dial on the side of the phone that acts like the shiftable scroll wheel on newer Microsoft mice, although as with those mice, it'll take some getting used to. The other main physical difference between the two units is that the flippable pad on the P900 is now completely digital; where the P800 simply used buttons that pressed in on the touch screen below, the flip on the P900 includes all the necessary electronics to do so without pressing through, which could have good end results in terms of screen life.
The screen on the p900 is now 64K colour compatible, compared to the 4K colour depth of the P900, and while you'll need suitable media to truly appreciate the difference, on a phone costing AU$1689 it'd seem somewhat cheap to be putting up with yesterday's display technology, not today's. The extra colour depth does come into its own when using the phone's other new trick, namely video recording. Like just about every other phone on the market today, the P900 includes an integrated still camera, but the P900 extends this to MPEG4 video capture. Adding video to an MMS will severely increase file sizes, and of course as with most mobile phone cameras the quality isn't up to much, but it's a nice gadget to have.
On the subject of nice gadgets, we were also able to test out one of Sony Ericsson's sillier phone gadgets with the P900 -- the Bluetooth Car-100. It's a tiny little rally car, about the size of a matchbox vehicle that connects to a range of Sony Ericsson Bluetooth capable phones and can be driven around using the phone's number keys once it's been paired to a phone. There are a few catches, however. On the small annoyance side, it charges by sucking juice out of the P900's charging connector, meaning you can't charge the phone and car at the same time, and it requires you to install a small application to get it running -- on other SE phones it would appear to be instantaneous. On the major annoyance side, a Car-100 will set you back AU$120, which is an awful lot to pay for a single-trick phone pony. At that price, you certainly wouldn't want anyone in the office to step on it, or attempt to pull the wheels off it, for that matter.
The P900's suite of PDA-style applications remains largely unchanged from the P800's -- you can synchronise via the supplied dock to Outlook or Lotus Notes clients, perform the usual contacts and calendar work, and run any software that's compatible with the Symbian 7.0 platform. As a platform it's still well behind the Palm universe in terms of overall number of applications, although for most users there's enough content out there to keep you happy.
As a phone, the P900 works as a tri-band GSM unit with GPRS capability for Web access. Sony Ericsson supplies an inbuilt Web browser with its own dedicated hotkey, as well as a version of the Opera browser on the supplied application CD. The unit uses T9 predictive text for SMS and MMS messages, as well as an onscreen Jot-style text entry system using the supplied tiny stylus.
Overall, the P900 is a suitable evolution of the design model that Sony Ericsson introduced with the P800. It's still a phone that's rather out of the reach of most phone users, due to its AU$1689 price point, although you do get a lot for your money. If you're serious about smart phones and want a solid and dependable unit, then the P900 should definitely be at the top of your consideration list.
Sony Ericsson P900
Company: Sony
Price: AU$1689
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 650 050
Alex,
Perhaps at the end of your review, when discussing price and value, you could have mentioned, that at half that price, there is another Symbian based phone, the Motorola A925.
Not only does it cost much less and match the P900's features, but it can surf the net live, and do live video calls, something that the P900 is incapable of doing.