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Sony Ericsson's P990 Smartphone Released
Dynamoo writes "After months of rumors, Sony Ericsson has finally announced their P990 Symbian smartphone. Packing both UMTS (3G) and WiFi in addition to a 2 megapixel digital camera and a host of other goodies, the P990 looks like it will be a shot in the arm for the Symbian camp. There's no indication of a US release for this handset, but the rest of the world can expect to see it early next year."
I'm not one for convergence devices but 2 megapixel is pretty dang good quality for photos, easily enough for snapshots to be printed on 6x4. I wouldn't be surprised if this generation of phones eats into the existing digital camera market pretty heavily, where people might sacrifice 4MP (who really needs that much for snapshots) when they can get about the same in their cell.
Nearly all the news phones released lately have digital cameras in them. This poses a problem for me, because I'm unable to bring anything into my place of employment that has a camera on it. Some of these new phones are fantastic, but I won't be purchasing them because I'd be unable to bring them to work with me. I'm sure folks in my situation are in a minority, but it's frustrating sometimes to know that something neat like this it out of your grasp.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Sony Ericsson say that the P990 can support all major push email protocols, including Blackberry.
. . . so this can replace my soon to be defunct Blackberry?
Now will someone tell me why all interesting new gadgetery is so slow to be released in the US.
It is using the same camera as their K750 phone. I have taken some shots with it and they look really amazing, being taken with a mobile camera that is.
A: When Sony released the Memory Stick, MMC cards were widely available (SD cards, basically, without the copyprotection).
B: Try going 100% Compact Flash sometime. Not only can you use devices from multiple manufacturers, but you have no upper limit on size. We have an old digital camera here that came out when 16MB CF cards were considered large. Now we have a 1GB card in it, and it chugs along happily. If I need a little extra space, I can jam one of the many old cards into my PDA. Up or down, you have complete compatibility.
I can't say the same for my Sony devices, where some take the original Memory Stick, some take Memory Stick Pro, some only take Memory Stick Duo... and none of which get large enough for serious use. I'm still shocked that a lot of Memory Stick devices can only take 128, 256, or 512BM MAXIMUM card sizes. The old devices are now far less useful, as data expands... a CF-based MP3 player from 1998 is as useful today as when it was bought, as the capacity can expand up to the size of an iPod Nano, but a Memory Stick based MP3 player would be stuck at 128 MB. Why create a standard that is incompatible with future upgrades?
C: SD cards are still smaller than Memory Stick Duo cards, have more capacity, are cheaper... Oh, and are a standard that multiple manufacturers support, not just one. You can buy a Palm Pilot, or a Kodak Camera, or an HP Pocket PC device that all support the same Memory Card. Want to buy a PDA that's compatible with your memory sticks? Sorry, Sony got out of that market.
And while SD cards aren't as upwardly compatible as CF cards (there is a maximum size each generation supports), they're a heck of a lot smaller than both CF or Memory Sticks.
D: Did I mention that even amongst Sony's line there are incompatibilities? It was nice of them to ship "adaptor sticks" with their new cameras, but I've never needed an adaptor for CF. If they keep changing it, it's not a "standard."
There is a reason why professional photographers will only shoot on CF. If you want high capacity and flexibility, you need CF. If you want small space and low power consumption, you want SD. There is really no reason for memory sticks to exist at all, as they don't do anything better than either of the two dominant standards.
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The article says that this phone features Wi-Fi connectivity. Does that mean it is (or might soon be) possible to connect via something like Skype and make free calls to other Skype users (or cheap calls to actual phones) without consuming airtime?
That's the idea. That's also why the wireless carriers have been dragging their feet on supporting phones with built-in WiFi.