VC’s Techie CockTail

Even though Sony Ericsson P1i is quite a old phone,last week i was able to play it with for some time and came out quite impressed by its looks and features.

PROS

• The fit & finish was excellent, typical ’sony’ one might call it. Measuring 106 x 55 x 17 mm and weighing at 124 grams its quite handy for a full fledged qwerty smartphone.
• The ARM9 208 Mhz processor with 128 MB RAM seems to handle multitasking very well and the symbian UIQ OS V9.1 was quite easy to use
• The 2.6″ 240 x 320 262K TFT screen was nice and sharp
• The camera was also a worthy addition and its 3 megapixel autofocus shooter proved a useful snapper
• Even though its a smartphone it had a worthy multimedia player capable of handling mp3, aac,wma,mp4, 3gp and also a FM Radio with RDS
• Business features like support for Blackberry and Microsoft Exchange Server, a full fledged Opera browser and Office Suite makes it a handy companion for people on the go
• Input methods include a nice handwriting recognition and a excellent word completion dictionary
• Connectivity options like USB, Infrared,Bluetooth with A2DP, GPRS,3G, Wireless LAN make it a excellent smartphone to use
• More features like Business card scanner, music recognition, pdf reader and fun stuff like games (with good graphics) makes it a nice all rounder.
• The phone comes with 160 MB memory and can be expanded with Memory Stick Micro M2
• Phone quality and battery was also very good even with extended usage.

CONS

• The dual function keyboard was little tough to use
• No EDGE connectivity

At a current street price of 16,000 bucks (335$) its a worthy buy for people who wants a good smartphone with good multimedia capabilities.

written by Vignesh \\ tags: p1i, Sony Ericsson, uiq

Continuing my rant on the G900…

• Office : It has Quick office to read, edit, write office documents and a pdf reader to view pdf files. It also has a business card scanner and hand writing recognition. The notes application was a nice one to jot down various things. Blackberry connect software was also pre-installed.

Pluses

• Smart and compact
• Great music quality
• Preloaded office apps
• Nice & easy to use

Minuses

• Buggy - Had troubles with phone hanging during calls , music
• No EDGE
• Connectivity problems

At almost 20,000 bucks(430$) its a nice smart phone but phones like Nokia E66,E71,N82 are worthy competitors. The bugs in the phone made it almost unusable after the 2nd day but a future firmware upgrade or a bug free phone should make it a worthy assistant for your office & multimedia needs.

written by Vignesh \\ tags: G900, Sony Ericsson

Continuing along the last post, here are some more views on the various features of SE G900

• User Interface : Sony Ericsson icon based interface is consistent throught their phone family but this has a slight twist due to its symbian UIQ interface but people migration from older UIQ phones will find the transistion much easier than others. The UI was somewhat laggy with the transistion effect, but when switched off it was much smoother. Since I am a relative newbie, i often tried to close the programs running in the background through task manager, but i have learnt that to make maximum use its better to allow the often used programs to run in the background for speedy operations. The user interface can be accessed through the keypad, d-pad, touch screen and handwriting recognition is also present. The sliding panel interface makes accessing programs easier.
• Multimedia : The media player carries the same psp style media application found in the latest A200 platform based SE phones. Its a nifty app with lots of features to categorize, group all the multimedia files like pictures, music and videos. A inbuilt accelerometer is the only lacking thing, as we have to manually shift the mode to landscape. Memory can be expanded through M2 cards. Sound quality was excellent. It also has got a FM radio with RDS, if its close to my k550i then its another ace up its sleeve
• Connectivity: Its a triband GPRS phones unfortunately with no EDGE but with 3G and UMTS capability coupled with 802.11g WLAN. Local connectivity can be done either via USB / Bluetooth. After my no hassles connectivity with K550i & Myphone explorer, i was frustrated to say the least to connect the G900 with MyPhone Explorer. Browsing with the opera browser was nice, but flash support isnt still there.

This is the end of this post, but i will be back with the conclusions of G900 in my next post…..

written by Vignesh \\ tags: G900, Sony Ericsson

As touch-screen phones are fuelling a rage led by the ‘you know who’ , the Sony Ericsson G900 with its normal exteriors coupled with a normal keypad of a ‘Dumb-Phone’, people will take a moment to realise its Sony Ericsson’s new series of smart phones powered by Symbian’s UIQ V 3.0.

• Exteriors :As far as looks goes its a normal candybar phone measuring 106 x 49 x 13 mm and quite light at 99 grams. It solidly built, slim and 2.4″ screen is very good at a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels (256K colors). The keypad is good to type with.
• Interiors : The processor is similar to that of previous generation P1i a ARM processor running at 208 Mhz but has 128 MB RAM so all the applications which I tried out ran fine. But still some tasks took some time to open, maybe I am not used to a UIQ phone.
• Phone : The network reception, signal quality and voice quality was excellent. I was impressed by its sound quality and the speaker phone volume, I haven’t come across a Sony Ericsson phone whose speakerphone volume is this high. The battery also seemed good but I didn’t try WLAN & 3G both known for its power sucking qualities.

More to follow in the coming days….

written by Vignesh \\ tags: G900, Sony Ericsson