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 The P990i is the latest in a line of P series smartphones from Sony Ericsson following on from its elder siblings, the P910, P900 and P800. The Sony Ericsson P990 retains a very similar shape to its predecessors, but it ramps up the features pretty impressively. Two megapixel camera, impressive range of push email support, 3G, tri-band GSM and WiFi connectivity, all come with this impressive box of tricks.
Ericsson P990 comes with a 2 megapixel camera (the same one used in the Sony Ericsson K750i), though this will perhaps be less important than some of the other features, as smartphones are bought more for their business-oriented features (e.g. push email, Wifi, document editing, etc.) than they are for their multimedia features. The camera comes equipped with dedicated macro mode, autofocus, a LED flash, and image stabilizer for video recording.
The P990 comes with the obligatory MP3 player, and has a dedicated music button on its side to switch the phone over to music mode. It also comes with a stereo FM radio capable of supporting 20 different channels, as well as RDS.
Better still are the P990's music software and the range of music formats it supports. These include AAC, MP3, AMR, RMF, DLS, Real Audio, G-MIDI level 1, WAV (up to 16 KHz sample-rate), and XMF. The music software comes straight from Sony Ericsson's Walkman range of mobile phones, so is fully featured, and enables you to construct playlists, mess around with the equalizer settings (including the Walkman MegaBass preset) and generally play around with your music. There's a video camera on the front of the unit for video calls (this being a 3G phone), and the P990 is capable of recording at VGA resolution (320×240) at 30fps in either RealMedia, MPEG4, or 3GP formats. Appearance and design
Dimension: 114 x 57 x 25 mm; weight: 150g. We can’t say this smartphone is slim and compact, though it’s not a big disadvantage. Overall, the build quality makes it feel more substantial than previous phones in the range. It also looks bigger, but that is an optical illusion as it is in fact very close to exactly the same size as a P910i (a couple of mm shorter and roughly the same thickness). SonyEricsson P910i SonyEricsson P990i The physical/design aspects of the P990i makes several improvements over the P910i, the most important is that the QWERTY keyboard has been moved from the back of the flip to just below the screen on the main handset. This makes it possible to use the keyboard even with the flip removed (so removing the flip is a much more attractive option on this model), and greatly improves balance when holding the phone with two hands and thumb-typing. You can reduce its overall size by taking off the number pad. Like all the previous ‘P’ handsets, this is a flip section you can pull down to reveal an additional area of screen – about a fifth of it is covered when the flip is closed. In this case pulling the flip down also reveals a tiny qwerty keyboard. Removing the flip is a simple job – you get a tiny screwdriver and a set of instructions. The gaping hole in the P990i’s shell that is left when you have performed your amputation is plugged with a little replacement cover. I’d suggest you perform this operation as soon as possible because during testing the flip proved to be very, very annoying. There is a scroll wheel on the left edge of the casing which you can use to move around menus and within applications. This is a characteristic of the P series, and should offer a fast and easy way of getting around. But for some odd reason as you scroll through menus the highlights sort of hover rather than move around smoothly. We found we missed quite a lot of selections because of this . Smartphone can work in two modes as a phone and as communicator. In the first mode sensor surface of the screen is blocked and it looks like a simple phone. Opening the flip you get a modern PDA full of functions! Keypad
The numeric keypad features a 5-way navigation D-pad, two soft keys and the traditional BACK and C keys. Writing a message with it is relatively easy since the keys are large enough and nicely spaced. All the keys are somewhat unevenly lit in light blue. The mechanism of the flip operates nicely and there is no problem to open it even while holding the phone in one hand. Opening it reveals the QWERTY keyboard with tiny plastic keys. Each key has two characters assigned to it - one letter and one special symbol such as a bracket, a hyphen, a slash, a question mark, an exclamation mark, currency symbols. The top row of the keys has the numbers as alternative symbols. All the special symbols and the numeric symbols are typed by holding the ALT key pressed in the same time. The keyboard also has a SPACEBAR, which activates the phone application when pressed longer. There are also two arrow keys and a CAPS LOCK key. The DEL and BACKSPACE functions share one key, as well as the OK and ENTER keys. There is no BACK key, but you can use the back key on the left side of the phone for that purpose. It is easily pressed with your index or middle finger while holding the phone in hand. Additional buttons
The left side of the phone incorporates a Music player shortcut key, the traditional Jog Dial, a hardware BACK key and a hardware keylock sliding key. Sliding it down locks the keypad no matter whether the flip is opened or closed. After your slide the button returns to its position by itself. The right side of the phone houses the Opera web browser shortcut key, the camera shortcut key and the Memory Stick Duo slot cover. The Web browser key function can also be customized similarly to the Music player shortcut key - it can be set to open the Web browser, the Main menu, the Media player, the Sound recorder, the Task manager, or the Video phone application. When the flip is closed, pressing the camera shortcut keys turns on the LED on the back which otherwise serves as camera flash. It's a convenient solution since you can use the LED as a flashlight. Display
TFT, 240х320, 262144 colors, sensor This is the first time the company applied a QVGA display for a smartphone, thus the resolution is 240x320 pixels. The visible area of the screen with the flip forms 240x256 pixels. Comparing with the P910 we can say the screen diagonal reduced slightly and now forms 2.76" (against 2.8" in the previous version). It's not hard to guess the dot size reduced, and now the picture became brighter and readable. The 262K colour rendering in not nominal here, the pictures are bright and vivid. The screen quality and interface drawing lifts the model higher than the majority of smartphones and puts on the level with Nokia N90. The latter rather wins in small things (higher screen resolution tells upon).  In the sun the screen behaves perfectly, the picture is seen well and this parameter is comparable to Siemens phones. Unpleasant point is the screen is deepened much and catchlights, often you have to find a necessary angle for comfortable reading. Finishing with the screen, Id' like to say it will suit the majority of customers. And I completely forgot to mention the thing that distinguishes the P990 from Symbian smartphones - the screen is sensory. Camera
1660 x 1200 (2.0 Mp), flash, camera cover, mirror, video recorder, ZOOM 2.5x The P990i sports a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus. The lens is protected behind a plastic disc that you rotate to activate the camera. While 2 megapixel is high for a phone, it is by no means comparable with the latest digital cameras and even some phones have surpassed this with 3 and 4 megapixels. But it is leaps and bounds better than the VGA-resolution cameras found on low-end camera phones, and can actually take pretty good pictures, just not in low light since there is no flash (there is a powerful LED that they like to call a flash, but all it is really good for is taking (very close) close-ups in low light). If you don't plan on making any prints bigger than 10x15 cm, you are fine with this camera for everyday use. Of course the camera can also record video in standard 3G format. Due to the faster processor it actually does this in reasonable quality/framerate.   In addition to the photo/video camera, this is a 3G phone so "of course" there is also a VGA-quality videocamera on the screen side of the phone, this is exclusively used for video calling, something you might either love or hate, I have never found it useful and probably will never use it. Sizes, Ports and Slots
As opposed to all new Sony Ericsson models which leave the factory with the new M2 Memory Stick slot, this time the manufacturer has allowed the users to use the more popular Memory Stick Duo cards. The bottom part of the smartphone features the regular Fast port used by Sony Ericsson and the microphone aperture. Menu
The P990 uses the UIQ 3 platform, which runs on Symbian 9.1. The P990 uses the PenStyle (flip open) and SoftkeyStyle (flip closed) version of UIQ 3. The activity menu (today screen), a new feature in UIQ 3, allows access to customisable application shortcuts and viewing of summary information about past or upcoming Calendar, Messaging and Telephony events. The other obvious UI additions to UIQ 3 are the status bar menu which gives quick access to common tasks, and 'Task manager', which allows application switching and management, both of which are accessible at all time from the status bar shown along the bottom of the screen in all applications. With a new UI there are inevitable questions about how easy it is to use and UIQ 3 is no exception. It is a difficult area to address, as we mentioned in our M600i review, because it is subjective. My opinion has not changed after using the P990. UIQ 3 is a well thought out and powerful UI, but one that does have a learning curve and which can be let down by implementation decisions. The P990 has impressive enterprise credentials. The most important of these is Messaging, which unifies email, SMS, MMS and voice messages in one location. New messages, regardless of type, are created from a single shortcut point which is quicker and more straight forward than creating messages from within the appropriate inbox (as in UIQ 2). Incoming SMS, MMS and beamed files are combined into a single Messages inbox. Each email account has its own inbox and set of associated folders. POP3 and IMAP4 standards and the major push email standards are supported. The comprehensive scheduling options and the ability to download just headers, emails below a certain size or a limited number of emails give great flexibility in email retrieval. The Contacts application is similarly well laid out and the contact database allows comprehensive information to be stored for each contact. The search functionality is very disappointing because it only allows you to search one field (one of first name, last name or company) at a time. In addition to Contacts and Calendar, there are basic Notes and Tasks applications. The Notes application supports both text and handwritten notes. A few additional applications are provided in the Tools Folder, including Calculator, Converter, Time, Stop Watch and Timer. One of the more innovative applications is 'Business card scanner' which uses the phone's camera to perform OCR on a business card and enter the information directly into contacts. This sounds gimmicky, but works surprisingly well provided you're in good light and provided the card isn't too fancy. Imaging
2 Megapixel Camera
2.5 x Digital Zoom
Photo Light
Autofocus
Video Clips
Video Call
Video Recording
Video Streaming
Digital Camera Menu
Document Readers
Handwriting Recognition
Picture Editor
Picture Phonebook
Picture Wallpaper
SVG Tiny 1.1
Themes Display
Viewfinder Display
Wallpaper Animation
Messaging
SMS (Text Messaging)
MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
EMS (Enhanced Messaging)
MMS Video
Email
Push Email
SMS Long
Predictive Text
Voice Mail
Sound
Media Player
FM Radio RDS
Music Tones (MP3/AAC)
Ringtone Composer (MusicDJ™)
Polyphonic Ringtones
Vibrating Alert
Voice Dialling Entertainment
Embedded Java™ Games
Downloadable Java™ Games Organiser
Calendar
Contacts
PIM Sync
Alarm Clock
Business Card Exchange
Calculator
Conference Calls
Phone Book
Speaker Phone
File Manager
Stopwatch
Tasks
Timer
Notes
Symbian™ OS
Flight Mode
QWERTY Keypad Connectivity
Bluetooth™
Infra Red
USB Support
GPRS
WLAN 802.11b
3G
Network
Tri Band Technology (GSM 900, 1800 & 1900)
UMTS
Internet
Modem
WAP 2.0 XHTML
Memory & Talk Time
80 Mbytes Memory Plus Memory Duo™ & PRO Duo™
9 Hours Talk Time
400 Hours Standby Weight & Size
150 g
114 x 57 x 25 mm Pluses
Great functionality
Rich packaging
Removable flip
New updated design Minuses
No EDGE support
Display not very legible under direct sun light
Size
Low battery life
Software needs updates Conclusion
Sony Ericsson P990i is the phone for those who ever wished they could leave their PC at the office while traveling! Now they can.
The P990i has what you need to do business and communicate with friends and colleagues wherever you are. You have access to the Internet everywhere, push email to get your email straight to your phone, and video conferencing for effective communications. The P990i is a smartphone for the future. You can use the fastest wireless networks and the most advanced network operator services. And enjoy real mobile Internet in your phone at the speed you like. With the features and applications inside the P990i, you have what you need to keep in touch and organize your business activities efficiently. Unfortunately, the P990i does not synchronise through a standard USB to mini-USB connector, but uses Sony Ericsson's proprietary version operating at USB 2.0 rates. Use the P990i as a high-speed modem to connect your PC to the Internet. Bluetooth makes it wireless. In WLAN hot spots at airports and others centers of activity, connect your phone to your company intranet and enjoy the speed you're used to. |
