Slashdot Mirror
Sony Ericsson P800 Reviewed (Again)
Big Mike writes "c|net just published their review of the Sony Ericsson P800. They deem it the 'Maserati of smart phones'. Built- in camera, speakerphone, 16MB Memory Stick Duo, Bluetooth and IR connectivity, wireless e-mail, MP3 audio and MPEG-4 video capable, and more. Sounds good to me..." Of course, it looks pretty slick too. Infosync looked at this phone last month, and more praise is heaped on this time around too.
A friend of mine has got one. It has a DOOM-like game (1st person shooter) where one shoots and aims by tapping the pen. Real fun!
Once C-net makes a front-page post on slashdot, the end of the world must be near. Come on! There are more qualified reviewers than the hams (and cash takers) at Cnet that you could link to. Besides, this phone isn't anything to hem and haw about: It's ugly (YES IT IS), and, by golly, the camera is crap. C'mon! /. fans should want more and demand the best out of their gadgets and their news. this is just plain lame.
How does Sony-Ericson P800 compares to Nokia 9210i (Communicator)? Granted, the Nokia phone is somewhat older, but I was thinking about the PDA features they both have.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Not only do you get to own a seriously sexy and functional "phone", you also get to be the envy of both jock and nerd. Oh, and it also runs one of the coolest browsers out there, Opera!!
...and to be quite honest, it looks UGLEEE!
Apparently, a 14 year old girl recently asked the Ericsson board why their phones didn't look as cool as Nokia's. I've asked myself that question a lot of times.
Being Swedish, I'd love to have an Ericsson. They've got plenty of features that I want in a phone. Unfortunately, the only ones that have all the features I'm looking for are the ones that are ugly as heck. And they wonder why they're not selling as well as Nokia.
In the end, I actually went with the German alternative. My Siemens S55 does all I want it to do. Bluetooth and IR connectivity, which allows me to connect my laptop to the net via GPRS. It's got neat features such as a color screen and MIDI ringtones. It's designed to make PHONECALLS on (why, imagine that!) and, it actually looks pretty darn good too.
And the best part is, it has no stinking camera! =D
i just got one and there are some quite good features. the best are Opera which can make pretty much any web page readable, next there is putty for ssh, and also there is a dev kit and no problem running your apps. battery life is not so good if you have the backlight on a lot.
but posting to slashdot while sitting on the toilet or googling from the bus (over GPRS) are good features...
Not the flash button, the web plugin?
Cause if not, then you can't play this.
tcd004
A kitchen sink? But really how long before they come out with a device that just does everything? I mean you buy this box and you tell it what to do and it does it. No matter what it is, it can do it.
The following statement is false.
The previous statement is true.
Welcome to my world.
The p800 is pretty expensive here in the UK. I had a look the other week and it was about £280. I am with Orange and despite spending about $45/£30 a month on my phone they won't give me any discount on it at all. The phone companies need to wise up and discount these new handsets, otherwise people like me are going to stick to normal phone calls and texts and the phone companies won't be able to make any money from picture messages or data calls and those hugely expensive 3G licenses will have gone to waste!
I refuse to buy a product from a company that codes their website so that when you hit the "back" button, it just refreshes the site.
of course it's St. Patricks day and I'm lit. Maybe I just confused the refresh and back buttons (they both haef arrrowz dnot tehy?)
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Now if only they would make variant with a MMC/SD slot - I would buy one instantly!
No, I am not trolling. I would just love to have that phone with a non-Sony specific memory card interface.
I know 3d product views are a bit 1998 but this is actually not bad.h tml
http://shop.orange.co.uk/holomatix/se_p800.
Does it run Linux?
Any idea whether all these extra features have any impact on the battery life? If they do, then where's the perfect balance between battery life efficiency, features, battery weight, etc?
In my opinion there are just as cool and wonderful phones offered by Ericsson's rivals Nokia, Siemens and Motorola (at least here in Europe). Yet Slashdot keeps posting this adulation crap about a single phone from Ericsson. Nokia, for example, released something like 12 new phones a week or two ago. Where's the story about those?
At least make a section for the P800 so I can block it from the front page.
And I was pretty impressed. Especially I was impressed by the handwriting program - it was very close at 100% correctly detecting my handwriting. I have previously had the Motorola Accompli 008 and it *sucks*. I have also had various Palms (III, V and Vx versions) and while Grafitti is pretty cool, I found this to be better.
Whether it is ugly or not - that's a matter of taste. I think it looks pretty okay.
No, they really ment Maserati.
http://www.maserati.it/
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
of course they are going to run the ads more than once, duh.
And long time fan of the marque, I find it rather insulting that this ugly brick of an "everything including the kitchen sink" device should be compared with the single function honesty, beauty, simplicity and downright elegance that has always been the hallmark of the Maserati name.
I think it would be far more appropriate to call it the "Arab Shiek's Gold Plated, Decked out, Winnebago" of smart phones.
KFG
It is a lovely phone, given the large screen and wealth of software you can get for it already, but you just can't play games with a stylus. It can run MAME, great, but try as I might I just can't play frogger, pac-man, etc with a pencil. May well go back to my 7650...
Gotta love the hugeness of the thing, the total lack of T9 predictive text input, overpriced MemoryStick Duo's, SonyEricssons's track record with the attrocious T68...
/.
Yeah, gotta get me one quick...
Seriously though, I really wanted to love this phone, but after 15 minutes of playing with it, I just couldn't bring myself to like it. I really wanted one too.
Me things SE is sponsering
Just in case we didn't realize that last time..
What other mischief could the editors of /. be up to today? (-;
For me, there is only one feature on a phone that really counts: the keys.
The best keypad I've used was on the Nokia 8310/8210 handsets: tough, precise, no wobble, consistent springiness, rectangular keytops.
The Sony Ericsson T65i and the P800 both have a really unpleasant set of wobbly keys, with inconsistently stiff springs. Similarly the latest Nokia handsets all have horrid keys.
Scroogle
I was one of the P800's early adopters. Back in January, I ordered the P800 SDK from Metrowerks at a premium price of $1200 (hey it came with a free t-shirt).
:(...
First let me say that I freaking love this phone. I have it set to display pictures of the callers when they call me (forget distinctive ringtones!)... The bluetooth headset I got with it is amazingly kewl. I get to look like I'm szicho talking to myself 30 feet away from the phone... and the camera in there is at least good enough that I don't bother to take my old cannon digicam with me anywhere anymore.
Last but not least, I get to use Opera on this thing with GRPS Internet. T-Mobile's Internet service is kinda flakey, but when its working, well, its nice to be able to use a real web browser on my phone and go to real websites.
Downsides? Plenty of 'em
First off, the thing crashes often. That might be because I'm using pre-release software, but the phone crashes at least 3-4 times per week.
Second, the handwriting recognition is, uh, different. If you are used to grafiti or whatever iPAQ uses, get ready to learn something completely different.
Third, the built in storage space is kinda low if you load the thing up with MP3 ringtones and use the cam often. Fortunately you can use sony memory sticks to expand the memory, but you have to tell every application in the phone to specifically use it.
Fourth... My P800 inexplicably died last week. As they aren't being officially sold yet in the USA, they also aren't being officially repaired in the USA. After 3 days of calling Sony-Ericsson and Metrowerks repeatedly, they finally told me that I'd have to mail my phone to DENMARK of all places, at my expense. I sent it 4 days ago... Nothing yet. Sigh.
But yeah, overall, the P800 is great. I'd buy it again in a minute.
I'd rather have a Motorola a760. Even if it is a penguin humper.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
in the UK all the networks massively discount the handsets already for pay-monthly customers on the grounds they'll get it out of you in monthly charges. you can buy a p800 from www.expansys.co.uk not connected to a network already. it's 450 UKP. orange sometimes discount if you threaten to leave: in this case they can't get the p800 in stock fast enough to supply demand. why would they discount it any further?
I don't know about all the rest of you but I'm just a little sick of these " free advertising" posts. I mean come on people who gives a shit about a new model phone.... unless of course it comes with a free number to view some live porn....
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
I remember reading ths cool sci-fi story a long time ago about this dude that had a machine that could do anything. As a test his buddy asked the machine to do nothing. Well, the machine did it and the universe collapsed on itself and dissapeared into nothing..
You wouldn't want absolutely nothing now, would you?
-2 billion offtopic
A Maserati is a car with the same features as most other sports cars, some of the features that some does not have and without some features that most others have. Oh yeah, and it's DAMN ugly!!! .., like a ... SONY Ericsson or something!
Almost like a
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
imagine a webserver on one of these :
Prosit mobile webserver
Favorite "Thumbs Down" User Comment:
"My keypad has gone bad (the "4" button stopped working). I presume this due to a problem with the flimsy plastic film which covers the glass on the touch-screen"
Hmmm... then remove the flimsy plastic film...
There must be others on the market that do more or less the same, surely.
I always wonder, why - despite any "wanna havvveee one"-posts here on slashdot - all the "kewl" devices die.
Ericsson has made very excellent mobiles for a while, they may have some "pecularities" in their usage, but they _are_ solid to use (I have an rather old R320sc which has a magnesium-back and is only 1.5cm thick and is damn rocksolid, not easy to scratch/smash/break!)
But Ericsson/Sony does not sell very well and I personally think, it would be a shame, if they'll close their coop and give up their business.
Please buy some of them - tell your friends and co-workers about this baby.
Maybe I have to add that I'm a bit biased, because I watched the fall-tests of the P800 conducted at Ericsson here in germany (I used to work as a student at IT).
Breaks down every 200 hours, unreliable electrics and ugly with it?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I think with this phone (The P800) and the continued success of the T68i Ericcson will do quite well. The t68i phones have decent reception. Ericcson phones, in general, have great reception, simple design and really good batteries.
I think the main reason Ericcson was struggling for a while is that they decided to do too many sponsorships and weren't really innovating on the phone side. (Charlotte Panthers Stadium, etc, etc)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
The new Maserati is not getting high marks (by both reviewers and potential buyers). It's technology is not up to speed, especially it's automatic (and clutchless manual) transmission which is way behind BMW's SMG.
Maserati hasn't been king of the road for a long time and still is nowhere close... is that what they meant to say about this phone?
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
What's the going rate for having products advertised--err, reviewed--on Slashdot?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Allthough it sounds realy neat to have one gadget combining the functions of a PDA, a cellphone and who knows what I see some major disadvantages. I for one like to check my calender while on the phone trying to plan something. Integrating the things doesn't make that a lot easier.
;-)
On the other hand I got a chance to play with one a short while and it's allmost the ultimate gadget. If it would just run linux I would have bought it instantly
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
What is all fuzz about this telephone about? It's been out for several months and it seems like everybody here (Sweden) got one (I'm still sticking to my t200 though).
Did SonyEricsson not releas it in the US until now or what?
I've been a long time Nokia smartphone user (9110 and 9210) and I'm beginning to think very hard about abandoning the smartphone concept (Nokia is taking so long to announce the successor of the 9210 that I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same).
I just broke my 9210 for the second time, and I'm not sure if I'm going to fork out the cash to get it fixed again.
I've really found it very useful. I've used the PIM functions, IMAP email and ssh client a lot, but there are disadvantages to the smartphone concept.
These phones are big and expensive. The P800 may be a bit smaller than the 9210 but it's still big for a phone and it has not-so-great battery life. For me the lack of a keyboard is a big problem, I can't see myself doing ssh with a stylus...
If you break it (easy cuz you find yourself lugging it along where you should have taken a smaller, simpler phone instead) it's an expensive bugger to get fixed. They break easily because of the weight.
The big advantage is of course that you can share the PIM functions with the phone dialer and that you can dial out quickly for network access.
The late arrival of serious bluetooth devices takes the point out of the smart phones IMHO. I'm looking at buying a Sony-Ericsson T68i (Tri-band, Bluetooth, GPRS) in combination with the Sony TG50 PDA (Palm style but w/kbd and Bluetooth support).
This package will cost me as much as the 9210 or P800 and offer me the same functionality. I also have the option of leaving the PDA at home when I want to travel light.
And the TG50 looks *much* better than the ugly P800!
Not a bad option I think...
Xenna
Is that the thing is the size of a brick with the solidity of a a cheap playskool plastic knockoff.
Seriously; I've had the thing in my hand, and the feel of it is remarkably fragile...the thing feels like it wouldn't survive a drop of even 30 cm.
And the size! This truly is a (cheap plastic) brick...my IIIc with an integrated phone (same formfactor, speakers on the reverse side of the screeen [if only they came out with that!]) would be smaller and more userfriendly from a formfactor point of view.
True, one can do lotsa cool stuff with it, but if ever palm would come out with a good palmos/gsm (no, Treo doesn't count; I need graffiti...think Tungsten T with a GSM), the p800 will be (unstable, cheap, plasticy) landfill.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Nope - although the company I work for(Three) has just put our 3G phones on the market. You may not be able to play Doom, but you can have a live video call (at a decent 200k/sec bandwidth), download video clips and more! Have a look at www.three.co.uk.
Well, if it is cheaper than my Audiovox Thera was ($700) I will buy one. The Thera has the unique distinction of being the worst cell phone and the worst pda I have ever owned, rolled up into one. I had to have a charger in my office, a charger in my car, and a charger at home just to keep the thing on all day. The pocket PC coupled with Sierra Wireless software was not ready for prime time when I bought in, but CNET gave it high praise at the time - which is why I'm a little leary of CNET reviews anymore.
Is anybody working on a phone optimized for people who just want to talk on their telephone? By that I mean, no camera, no colour screen, no games, etc, etc.
I want a phone that is as small as you can make it while still having good reception. Plus get the battery life as long as you can (mostly by cutting out all the extras). Small, long battery life, good reception, that's all.
Unfortunately, the telephones that skip all the extra crap tend to be the company's cheap models and tend to be very large.
Hopefully while they are fixing your phone they upgrade your rom. Mine has a recent rom and I have only had 3 crashes, all due to 3rd party software installed on the phone.
--- I do not moderate.
Okay this has been grating on me for a long time.
I have used T9. T9 is great when you ARE limited to having a phonepad only method of input.
The P800 has text handwriting capability, WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO SOMETHING STUPID LIKE T9?!@#?!@
I do a *lot* of SMS (girlfriend chat mostly) and with the P800 it is so simple and fast. While it used to take a minute or two to compose a verbose reply and my messages would be full of shortcut words ("u", etc...) since switching to the P800 all of my messages take far less than a minute to compose and NO shortcut words.
--- I do not moderate.
i have with me for a few weeks now and i can say it is quite cool. i always wanted to buy a digital cam and want to get organized and of course the undispensable mobile phone. having all of that at the same time is not really a good idea. i think it is a good thing for se to release a phone. it is the 2nd generation from r380 for them to release a smart phone and i believe that they still do not have real competition along that segment. maybe we'll have a next release, probably i'll upgrade. :)
:) and tried edoom (the resolution is quite good, comparing to my old pc, i say the processor speed is around 486sx. putty so i can ssh devices from my phone. and probably i can get those remote access apps so i can remote my computer from the phone. other good things, see the feature list. and i am happy i am now more organized than before and i have one centralized repository of all info.
:) i hope it doesn't happen to you.
:)
:)
well good thing, i have loaded tons of apps and games in my phone. good thing there is opera.
given the new software, it doesn't seem to crash anymore. i think my old nokia hangs more often that this one.
downside, i had to replace the phone a couple of times because of dead pixels and camera problems. but still worth it (got it for a bargain at around 55% off the street price.)
well remove the keypad entirely because a friend of mine had problems with the keypad in his r380. a lesson to learn.
there is no themes on the phone so you'll practically have the same color and volume settings that you change manually. the sms alert cannot be changed (but i managed to hack into the phone and changed to alert to a beeping sound - the old traditional ericsson sms alerts.)
the battery doesn't last that long (2-3 days for me.) but you can charge it any time without affecting battery performance (as stated in the manual.)
the phone is quite heavier than the usual and a little bulky, but what the heck it is the around the same as the nokia 7650. so it is not that worse either. but i've got no complain because i love the big screen.
there is no predictive text input. i just find this odd because of such a high tech phone, it is not added (are they relying on third party for this?)
that's all i am able to think about. generally, i'll give it 9.5 of 10. quite impressive. it lived up to my expectations more than a year ago when i first found out se was going to release one. (i just hope it has some features of the new t610 - the 64k color screen and the 32 voice sound (it makes me awe that it can match my old sound blaster awe32.) buy it if you want to have features more than a phone. if you are still the old traditional person, then this is not the right one for you.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
You can get 128MB memory sticks for as low as $11.
I don't know why there is all of this talk against Memory sticks. You can get a 128MB Memory Stick for as low as $11, they are more compact, and they are just as fast as any other media.
..Men in Black II, which is included with the phone. It's a pretty cool (for a phone) real-time 3D (although not textured) shoot-em-up.
For me, a cell phone is *most* important when I'm driving between cities or flying around. It's when I'm in the bunies and my car breaks down that I need my phone the most. IE. The developers of this phone, forgot TDMA,analog, or a secondary alternative!
Witold
www.witold.org
witold.org
You can sit there in your myopic playpen and deny that France ignored its own resolution if you want, but facts are facts. When you know what is in Resolutions 678, 687 and 1441, then you will have some idea just how STUPID your rant is.
You and your ilk spouting that the war is illegal, are simply using talking points of which you know nothing of.
Again, I dare you to state and produce the LAW that makes this war illegal. You cant, and you wont because there ISNT ANY INTERNATIONAL LAW governing the rights of a sovereign state.
But then, you wouldnt know that would you?
Michael Moore is a fat-fuck-fool, and if you pay any attention to him, so are you.
The first Gulf War was in a state of cease-fire only, dependent upon the unconditional disarming of Iraq. The US is within it's rights, by the surrender treaty (signed by Saddam) to commence fire on Iraq if they refused to disarm.
Not only did they not disarm, they fire weapons at US aircraft in the no-fly zone instead.
So again, I challenge you, idiot. State the LAW, tell us all how the war is illegal, and I'll retract calling you an idiot. I trust you will remain an idiot, because you cannot back up your idiotic statement.
So, as a Mac user, have you been able to use your phone as a GPRS modem via bluetooth on OS X?
I'm about to buy the T86i (and switch to T-Mobile), but need to be have mobile data via whatever phone I buy. I have been using an old Kyocera/Qualcomm 2035a with a data cable and even at 14.4 speeds, I've been pretty happy with it...
Will I do better with the T86i?
Thanks for your input.
Guvegrra?
There are deffinately problems with this device, it's quite big, the lack of t9, the memory format and the lack of a keyboard (for me now writing text messages takes longer then on my sharp gx10).
However, i can deffinately say that this is one of the most amazing bits of technology i have ever owned, not for really as it comes as standard but for what it can do with a few apps installed.
Opera and it's small screen page rendering technology is absolutely unbeleiveable. I have yet to find a web site that i cannot use via it, it's perfect for surfing the internet during lectures!
also the fact that it is an mp3 player (though it only comese with a 16meg memory stick as standard, 64 meg ones are avaliable now for £70 and 128 ones will be out in a few days) which i find hugely usefull, meaning that i always have music with me where ever i go without the need to carry an extra device.
also video playback is amazing on a phone, i can load of southpark episodes and view them on my way home from the pub while sitting on the bus.
also the instant messenger apps for it are hugely usefull. i use tipic ME version 1.2 at the moment which allows me to use my icq and msn account on my phone. you cannot begin to realise how usefull i find this, i can remain connected all day to the service via gprs for a few pence a day. it means i can instant message people instead of using sms. (watch out networks your are going to lose a load of money on people doing this)
Include with this the irc client avaliable and the putty port avaliable and it becomes very usefull.
then finally there is the BEST thing about this phone by a long way in my opinion, it has probably my favourite game ever avaliable on it - Secret of monkey island - avaliable by a program called escummvm that allows you to play any of the old lucasarts games (including mokey island 2, day of the tenticle.......) you can get it from the forums at http://my-symbian.com (http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1401& highlight=escummvm)
though you have to register first before you can use it.
With this phone the main problem for me is the lack of a keyboard when the flip is open. However without the touch screen interface the phone would be unable to work as well as it does.
I personally think that this is a revolutionary piece of technology.
despite peoples reservations this IS deffinately the best unified communcations device/pda avaliable.
period.
Jon
Yes and since Cingular offered me a free year of internet service (just goes against my minutes) and I have the unlimited everything plan - I use it exclusively - even as I type. Id be happy to discuss it with you.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
SonyEricsson have got their act together recently. The T68i is the sexiest phone there is at the moment - small, sexy, blue leds as standard, far prettier than any Nokia (what's with Nokia's recent wacky styling anyway?) . The P800 isn't bad design for a phone that tries to do so much.
because my Nokia 8310 is actually a better phone... i can use t9 a lot quicker than I can write into the p800 recognition and the p800 looked very delicate - the camera lens is exposed to keys etc in my pocket, and the screen gathered loads of dust in the first day... i think the ideal solution is bluetooth pda to small phone... also it crashed and kept 'forgetting' all the software i put on it...
I've had the P800 for a few weeks now and it is ugly and clunky, but no doubt still the best phone/PDA ever. A few things: 1) why can't I have the time on screen at all times in the statusbar or something? Flipping up/down to see what time it is is annoying. 2) How about an MP3-player that does not stop when the flip closes? If you are as lucky as me to own one then you absolutely must have SIDplay v0.16 (search for n-player.SIS) as it plays MODs and SIDs. Takes far less space compared to MP3, is far geekier and plays nicely with the flip closed.
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
cnet review page
just the image
wish more review sites would do this, as opposed to specifying HxWxD in milli meters or inches.
LinuxLover
my kyocera 6035 just died, so I am in need of a new phone+pda!
./Linuxlover
- do any GSM providers discounting the phone (AT&T / T-mobile)
- any comments on users of P800 in San Francisco Bay Area? (the article doesn't say much except calls were clear)
- where can I buy an _UNLOCKED_ version in bay area?
- is there a hard cover to protect the phone's exposed LCD? (A hard-clam-shell design would be perfect..oh well)
thanks
Just looking at the site about the web server for it and found a comparison of a number of symbian based smart phones
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
Pansies... take your slide ruler and abacus home and get a real computing device that can handle this. Geez, do you people have to be told every little detail of how to work?
Well from my perspective (Australia) GSM is king, sure we have CDMA too (the *new* analogue) but gsm has been around about 4 times longer, so therefore has the largest install base of mobiles and towers, and plus with 1800 micro cells in the city, GSM offers the best overall coverage pretty much anywhere you would want to go, including europe, asia and even the US (where i understand with a triband phone (incl 1900Mhz) you can call from pretty much any city u would like to go in the US)
:)
These days if your worried about reception you could always grab one of those LEO satellite phones that can also connect to GSM, ericsson makes those too i believe.
But yes GSM is king, and btw, it USES TDMA
I bought the p800 two weeks ago and I think I may be the only person that thinks it is an absolutely terrible phone... I moved from a Nokia 9210i Communicator another Symbian enabled phone.
At first i looked at the phones specifications and thought that it was a geeks wet dream, but having owned the phone, I am really regretting spending the amount of money I did.
So what wrong with it?
The stylus is made as if for a childs hand and is far too small for an adult to use, I dont have overly large hands and after a few minutes of using it I start to feel the strain.
When the phone is opne there is no way to see what time it is, without clicking on a tiny little onscreen button that is so close to it's neighbors that you cant accurately touch it without using the stylus, which means that you ahve to retrive the stylus from the side of the devive which is time consuming if you want to quickly see wht time it is.
Jot is absolutely terrible especially when compared to Graphitti (I know the whole palm getting sued for graphitti by xerox but they could still have licensed it), when ever you want to quickly type an l and then a space jot recognises it as a t!
There are no readilly available buttons when the phone is open and the Jog wheel on the side which although having 5 degrees of motion (you can push it five ways) is still awkward to use when you want to make rapid motions on it, which means that it is useless for gameplaying.
The camera has no cover which means that it gets dirty when it is in your pocket, and that leads to the pictures being fuzzy, also the camera randomly decided it was goignot show me the sony erricson logo instead of what it was capturing which I presume was because it was running out of memory but, i cant verify this as the phone showed no indication that this was the case.
When the phone is open and you are using is as a regular phone it is far to easy to press the end call "Button" on the touch screen with your cheek. I have ended some very important calls like this by accident.
The battery life seems to really vary some times when I am heavily using the phone it will last for three to four days however one day I fully charged it and it did not last 24 hours and I wads not using it at all.
The Synch software requires you to have third party software (Outlook or Lotus) I remember when manufacturors gave you software to backup your phone/pda, this happens to be a flaw with the 9210i as well but my old 9110 and my palm both came with software that allowed synching straight out the box no need to pay the Microsoft tax.
The vibrating function (althogh it is a boon to have one after the 9210i) is absolutely abysmal, i have missed a large amount of calls due to not noticing it, I am not numb ont he leg or anything my old 6210 used to notify me fine when it was on silent but with the p800 unless it is on the desk I am workignon the vibartion is unnoticeable (even then all you notice is the sound of the vibration).
I have set several alarms on my p800 and I have yet to hear one of them, I have not experimented setting an alarm and waiting for it but given that I used to use the alarm on my communicator to wake myslef up (and I am a heavy sleeper I was in Riyadh when Saddam decided he was going to bombard it with scud missiles, and I slept throughthe ordeal), I at least expect the phone to have a decent alarm.
The cradle seems to not want to release the charger cable which id mildly annoying as I cant cahrge my phoen in my room so I can hear it ring when I am asleep I have to charge in my computer room where it is connected to my laptop.
In general I think this phone is the worst phone I have ever owned(its my fifth or sixth) and I would not reccomed anyone to partake in the experience of it. There are are a slew of other problems I have had with this phone, like it defaulting to text and deletign it when you touch the screen in the internet config menues, the amount of times i have erased my messagin
Bluetooth is cool, but the security is not that good according to people that knows a lot more about that than I do :) :)
I personally don't see it as a huge problem considering the limited range of Bluetooth and I own a Bluetooth headset - works nice
Be aware though that Nokia and Bluetooth isn't exactly the best combination (although my Nokia 6310 + Jabra BT300 works perfectly), apparently Nokia isn't too keen on following the standard, in a way they are use the embrace and extend technic like MS. This means that Nokia phones works best with Nokia's own Bluetooth headsets, which is still more or less impossible to get :(
I know the issue with Sony Ericsson using Symbian OS but I have a Handspring Treo 180g and if I were going to switch to a new pda/phone I'd love one with the combination of the NZ90 with a phone. Wow that would be some all in one!
Didn't you hear - I come in Six Packs
Er, where on earth are you buying your phones ?
First site I looked at, sells it for £139.99 on a £30/month tarrif. No doubt it's available cheaper if you hunt around.
Considering it pretty much replaces your PDA, I don't think "the p800 is pretty expensive here in the UK" at all !
I don't know of any that have the same features:
* Triband
* Large backlit color screen
* Touchscreen / handwriting recognition
* PDA functionality
* HTML / cHTML / WML / etc. browser with frames and Javascript
* Bluetooth
* GPRS
* Memory expansion slot
* J2ME
* MP3 player
* Etc, etc...
He said "open", not "open source".