|
PERHAPS
with the exception of Palm’s excellent Treo line, no
other smartphone delivers a thoroughly satisfying
experience than Sony Ericsson’s much-acclaimed P series
that was first established by the P800i in 2002, and
further advanced by succeeding models all the way up to
last year’s P990i.
Now, a
good thing has gotten even better—much better—with Sony
Ericsson’s P1i, which may be considered as the successor
to the P990i but is actually more than that. In fact,
the P1i takes the best features of not one but two of
the company’s excellent smartphones—the former flagship
P990i, of course, and the midtier M660i—to create a
veritable powerhouse of a workhorse in a candy-bar form
factor that is all sleek gorgeousness. It’s a handset
that not only will you not be embarrassed to show off
but also does plenty more besides look good.
 The
Sony
Ericsson P1i has none of the chunkiness of its immediate
predecessor, weighing in at a mere 124 grams at
dimensions of 4.1 x 2.1 x 0.7 inches, clad in a handsome
matte metallic finish with touches of stunning piano
black, with the backside in a black velvety rubber
finish that is stirring to touch. Despite being put on a
massive diet, it nonetheless sports a generous 2.6-inch,
262,144 QVGA display that shows off photos and videos
with dazzling vibrance; plus the same ARM9-based
Nexperia NX4008 208 Mhz processor found in the P990i,
which sports such unique features as hardware encryption
accelerator and video accelerator with an H.263
encoder/decoder.
Perhaps
among the most significant hardware changes to the P1i
is the addition of more built-in memory, bumped up to
160MB from the previous paltry 64MB of the P990i, which
was obviously the source of the performance issues that
plagued that otherwise solid smartphone. With a
more-than-capable processor plus more memory available
to the user, the P1i now hums along quite nicely even
after opening several applications, including such
memory-intensive tasks as downloading massive amounts of
e-mail in the background while surfing the Internet and
then opening a hefty document file. Sweet.
And
then, of course, there is the reworked QWERTY keyboard
which no longer has individual keys assigned to each
letter, as in the P990i and the Palm Treos, Blackberrys
and Motorola Qs. Instead, to keep the dimensions within
sleek-and-slim proportions, each key is now assigned
with two letters, requiring the user to rock to either
left or right to choose between, say, “Q” and “W”. No
doubt, consumers with none-too-svelte digits are going
to be weirded out and will initially struggle with the
new keypad layout, but they should—as we did—get the
hang of it in a matter of days of practice and use, and
rocking away an SMS or an e-mail should be breeze from
then on.
The
other considerable hardware improvement is the built-in
digital camera, which is capable of capturing snaps of
up to 3-megapixel resolution, and videos of up to
320x240 resolution. From the P990i’s 2.5-megapixel
snapper, the P1i’s has been bumped up to a 3.2-megapixel
with auto-focus, yielding images already comparable to
standalone digital cameras. The handset, however,
eschews a built-in flash to aid snapping in low-light
situations.
As far
as connectivity options are concerned, the Sony Ericsson
packs pretty much everything that is currently the
standard in wireless communications, from 3G, Bluetooth
2.0, A2DP and WLAN. Of course, gadget geeks will no
doubt complain about the absence of UMTS, HSDPA and the
newer 802.11g WiFi implementation, but the existing
options should be more than serviceable to even
demanding workhorses.
Much has
already been written about the solid usability and rich
feature set of the UIQ 3.0 variant of the Symbian OS
9.1, and all that remains true with the P1i, including
the formidable contacts and calendar applications. Also
built-in is support for push e-mail, including Exchange
ActiveSync and BlackBerry Connect, and the smartphone
shows even more smarts by allowing remote wiping of
e-mail and PIM data. Productivity is further enhanced by
the application suite QuickOffice, which can read and
write Microsoft Word and Excel files, although, frankly,
we would have prefered that Sony Ericsson included the
better mobile office suite, DataViz’s Documents To Go,
which Palm users have been raving about for years with
very good reason.
Now, is
the Sony Ericsson P1i the perfect smartphone? No,
because there is no such thing as the perfect smartphone,
and never mind if Apple fanboys insist that they’ve
found tech nirvana with the iPhone (most of them are
delusional anyway). In fact, for all its strengths, the
UIQ platform, which is primarily developed by Sony
Ericsson, could stand a number of improvements,
including tweaking the user interface some more to make
it truly operable with just one hand. As it is, we still
need to whip out the stylus on more occasions than we
would like to get around various functions and commands.
That
said, with its excellent marriage of hardware and
software, the Sony Ericsson P1i is nonetheless one of
the best smartphones around, solidly capable of handling
both daunting business tasks and fun downtime pursuits.
Totally sweet.
****
DOWN &
DIRTY
§
networks
GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900
§
connectivity options 3G, BLUETOOTH, A2DP, INFRARED, USB,
WLAN
§
calling
features VIDEO CALLS, SPEAKERPHONE
§
physical
design CANDY BAR FORM FACTOR
§
dimensions 4.1 X 2.1 X 0.7 INCHES
§
weight
124 GRAMS
§
screen
240X320 PIXEL, 2.6-INCH, 262,144 COLOR TOUCHSCREEN
§
input
method TOUCH SCREEN, QWERTY KEYPAD, HANDWRITING
RECOGNITION
§
built-in
digital camera 3.2 MEGAPIXELS
§
available colors SILVER BLACK
§
operating system SYMBIAN OS 9.1, UIQ 3.0
§
max.
talktime 10 HOURS
§
max.
standby time 440 HOURS
§
internal
memory 160 MB
§
expansion slot MEMORY STICK MICRO
§
included
accessories STEREO HEADSET, DESK STAND, 512MB MEMORY
STICK MICRO, PC SOFTWARE, USB CABLE, EXTRA STYLUS,
PROTECTIVE POUCH, STANDARD PHONE CHARGER |
