Sony Ericsson's snazzy new P800 phone/pda hybrid won't be available until the end of the year, but we've snuck a quick look at what you can expect. Check out our Australian exclusive preview.
There are no review samples available in Australia at the moment, but with only a slight amount of arm twisting we managed to get Sony Ericsson to leave us alone with a P800 for an hour or so. Sony Ericsson's putting a lot of faith in the P800, and having had an initial glance at what it offers, we can see why they're so quietly confident.
The P800 is a mobile phone/PDA hybrid like Handspring's Treo line. Such devices are never small, and the P800 measures in at 12cm long by 6 cm wide. The majority of this is taken up by the screen, which is 4 cm by 6.1 cm with a resolution of 208 by 320 pixels. The screen is touch-sensitive, like any PDA, and supports up to 4096 colours. The screen looks good from most angles and gives a reasonable shot at reproducing photos onscreen.
We were impressed with the idea of having a flip-open keypad, which is there because Sony Ericsson's research found most people preferred pressing numbers on a pad when they dial. When closed the keypad reduces the size of the screen to that of a normal mobile phone. Because the buttons simply press onto the touch-sensitive screen, there's nothing electrical happening in the touchpad. The touchpad itself is quite light, and we suspect you'd need to be careful to avoid snapping it off, although that's a common worry with any flip-top mobiles.
On the subject of fragility, the PDA functions can be accessed with a slim plastic stylus that attaches to the side of the phone and also acts as a cover for the memory stick slot. Compared to most PDA styluses it seems flimsy to us; Sony Ericsson assures us that there will be a couple of these thrown in with every P800.
Apart from the PDA features, the other main drawcard for this phone are the MMS capabilities. The screen allows some really impressive MMS messages to be created, including simple animated video clips which looked great on our prototype P800. The phone comes with a built in camera, so people can take happy-snaps and MMS them to others, or e-mail if their friends don't have an MMS capable phone. The inclusion of the camera is a sneaky way of getting people actually using the MMS service. It's expected that MMS service is likely to cost around three times as much as an SMS per message.
Since this is Sony Ericsson's high-end offering, they haven't stinted on connectivity. The phone has tri-GSM, GPRS, E-mail, WAP, IR, Bluetooth and PC cable connectivity. You'll be able to browse the Internet with a familiar interface, albeit a lot smaller. There is also a space for a Sony Memory Stick, which will allow data transfer between other devices using the stick. With inbuilt MP3 capabilities, the P800 can also use memory stick storage as a quick way to transfer music files around. Being Sony, however, we suspect there will be some pretty severe file transfer limitations to protect Sony Music's profit line.
Menu navigation can be conducted in a couple of ways. The first is like a typical mobile phone, using the keypad. The second is PDA style using the stylus. There is also a five-way scroll wheel on the side of the phone, which you can roll up and down, click in, as well as clicking it forward and backward to navigate around the menus. When we first heard this we were a little sceptical. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find it quite easy to use.
Of course, with such a cool screen Sony Ericsson is planning on providing a number of really impressive games for the phone. We were under-whelmed by the games provided, although we appreciate the possibilities. The main problem we had was that as the phone we saw was a prototype, there were no instructions for any of the games. One game, MIB II, is a first-person shooter, but we couldn't work out how to play. We couldn't deny that it looked great for a mobile phone game, but at the same time we couldn't seem to survive for more than a few seconds.
The second game we looked at was a car racing game, and we found the controls for this a little awkward, although we were assured it didn't take long to become accustomed to them. Well, you can become accustomed to anything, so that doesn't particularly bother us.
We were somewhat concerned by the fact that before we could crash the ingame car, the phone itself crashed. This isn't entirely unexpected -- the P800 unit we looked at was a prototype -- but it does point to a potential problem with all Phone/PDA hybrids. Sony Ericsson has shown that it is keen for third party developers to work on the P800, but unless it enforces strict quality control, this sort of thing could become commonplace.
Given the short period of time we had to play with the P800, we weren't able to really test its battery life. Sony Ericsson claim up to 400 hours standby time with 13 hours of talk time, which is solid for a mobile phone. We'd be interested to see how using the phone as a PDA at the same time affects those figures, however.
All in all, this is the best integration of mobile phone and PDA we've ever seen. The price hasn't been finalised, but we were told somewhere between AU$1500 and AU$2000. From the superficial look we've had, we're quite excited about this phone. Stay tuned for a full review later in the year.
P800 Smartphone
Company: Sony Ericsson
Price: estimated AU$1,500-2,000
Availability: Q4, 2002
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