Sony Ericsson P800
The long-awaited Sony Ericsson flagship phone, the P800 mobile/PDA hybrid, has gone on sale in Australia. Designed to be everything you need, the P800 contains features of a mobile phone, a Personal Digital Assistant and a camera all in the one device.
The large 4096-colour screen on the P800 gives it a square look, different to most phones. It measures 117mm by 59mm by 27mm, and weighs 158g. That's quite large for a phone, and it took us some time to get used to using it as a phone, as it must be held differently than most other phones during calls.
The clarity of phone calls is pretty good. The phone has a very simple button layout on a 'flip'. When the flip is closed the P800 operates like a mobile--with a mobile sized screen--and when the flip is open the P800 operates as a PDA, with a larger screen.
A jog dial is used to navigate around the phone, allowing you to scroll through menus and selecting an option by depressing the jog dial. The menu is customisable, and easy to navigate. The multitude of navigation options--jog dial, keypad and stylus--means that the P800 fits just about any user style.
The P800 offers four choices of messaging: E-mail, SMS, MMS and EMS. EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service) is defined as simply attaching pictures or sound to a message, while MMS is regarded as a slideshow, where the pictures and sound move from a beginning to an end.
The MMS capabilities of the P800 have an advantage over other phones with the ability to draw a picture directly on the screen, and send that to a friend. We'll leave you to imagine the extent of what that can be used for, mentioning only the usefulness in the ability to draw a map for someone.
When writing text in a message (any form of message) the phone offers the choice of using handwriting, pressing keys on a 'qwerty' keyboard that can be displayed on the screen or using the keypad--which involves the use of the jog dial to change fields. However, the phone doesn't have any predictive text, and we found all forms of entering text had their problems.
We found using handwriting recognition to be the fastest method for entering general characters. The classic PDA problem of entering multi-stroke and similar characters--such as "i", "k" and "t"--crops up with the handwriting recognition on the P800. Likewise, many of the non-alphabet characters were also difficult to enter. It would take a while to memorise all the techniques for entering punctuation marks, and we ended up using the keyboard to enter these when it was required.
Another main aspect of a mobile is the address book. This allows you to view contacts stored on the phone, or on the SIM card, but not both at once. This can create problems when attempting to write a message, and finding the contact you want is in a different place to that which you can get to.
The address book does allow you to add photos to individual contacts, which then comes up on the screen when that person calls. It also allows you to store contacts in different folders, and sort them by first name, last name, or company name.
The P800 excels in the games department. There's a form of Solitaire that we've never seen before, and a Chess application. For action buffs, the phone offers Men In Black II, a shoot-em-up that involves blasting aliens by tapping on them with the stylus. A car race game called Stunt Run is played using the jog dial.
Of course, the latest feature to invade mobile phones is a camera, and the P800 wouldn't be 'all things' if it didn't include a digital camera. The camera is accessed easily via a button on the side of the phone. Since the camera doesn't have a flash, you need a lot of light--and contrast--to take a picture that doesn't look like a blur on a blur.
The photos do not come out exceptionally well on the P800, although whether that's a property of the images or the screen we're not sure. The images can be taken at sizes greater than that of the screen, and can be viewed on the phone in a small window with scroll bars. Of course, they can also be sent via MMS to friends, one of the main reasons to have a camera phone.
The other aspect of the P800's functionality that makes it an interesting purchase is the integrated PDA functionality. This isn't something that Sony Ericsson have cornered the market on--immediately the O2 XDA phone springs to mind--but it is an area where there is expected to be a great deal of further innovation.
The P800's PDA stylings place it a touch below most currently available PDAs, and at the same time above most mobile phones in terms of most PDA applications. The P800's screen is smaller than most current PDA models, which limits what can be done with it in terms of text presentation. Sony Ericsson ship the P800 with a number of standard PDA applications, from an inbuilt calendar to task lists and voice memo capabilities, which makes sense when you remember that this is a phone at heart.
One thing that did irk us with the P800 is the Stylus, which is thin and folds into one side of the phone. It looks very cool, but compared to a regular PDA stylus, it feels flimsy and is tricky to use accurately. It relies on a very thin nib at the end that we suspect would break sooner rather than later.
The P800 runs on the Symbian OS, which has backing from a number of major hardware players, although at this stage the amount of available PDA software is dwarfed by that of the competing Pocket PC and Palm-based devices. A quick web search finds software for TV remote controls, some games (including PC veteran Doom) and even software designed to help smokers quit. Given the quite new status of the P800 and the Symbian platform as a serious PDA contender, it's quite likely to expand well over time.
Ultimately like most initial-generation products, it's easier to see the future of the mobile-PDA hybrid in glowing terms rather than the current reality, and the reality is this; while it's not as fully featured as a 'real' PDA, there's plenty of functionality in there for a mobile user who needs more portable data than current mobiles provide. If you can get past the flimsy stylus, the P800 is a decent PDA/Phone hybrid.
The P800 has the ability to play videos, and does so with reasonable visual quality and good sound quality. Of course, most people listen to music more than they watch music videos, and MIDI, MP3 and WAV sound files can be played, and even set as the alarm or ringtone, although the volume is slightly too low to be used in noisy environments.
Sony Ericsson hasn't stinted on the connectivity either, with the P800 featuring tri-band GSM, Infrared, Bluetooth, USB cable and Sony Memory Stick. Our only complaint is that the USB cable allows you to synchronise your P800 with your computer, but not transfer individual files from the phone to the computer. This means you need to use a wireless technology or the Memory Stick. While other phones that lack a USB Cable have this problem we feel if Sony Ericsson went to the bother of including a cable it may as well have gone the whole hog and allowed access to the phone from the computer.
The P800 was by far the top of the line phone when it was demonstrated last year, but since then a number of its unique features, such as the PDA and digital camera capabilities, have been superseded. However, the P800 remains a top-notch phone that combines most current mobile capabilities into the one device.
Sony Ericsson P800 Smartphone
Company: Sony Ericsson
Price: AU$1680
Distributor: Sony Ericsson
Phone: 1300 650 050
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