Apr 05, 2008 06:19 PM
5502 Views
Good:Great call quality Touch screen and Jog dial Good build quality Wifi Cradle Good Stereo Headphone; Not so good:QWERTY Keypad keys very small. Need to get used to typing with nails rather than fingers Not so intuitive user interface
Package, Looks, Form factor and Build Quality: The package that contains the P1i is neat and it contains all the essentials to get started. It contains the phone, battery, 1GB memory stick, CD, charger, USB cable, wired stereo headphones, spare stylus, a pouch and a beautiful cradle. The phone looks great, the build is quite solid and it feels very nice to hold the phone in the hands(does not slip from your hands due to the material used in the back of the phone). It is not small but not big either. For a smart phone, I think this is the best form factor as the screen is huge while the key pad is slightly small. Overall scoresvery high(it is a perfect score rather) on the looks and the build quality.
Cradle:Unpacked the phone, pulled out the cradle and did not know how to clip the “back rest” of the phone in place. Had to google on this and finally found the way – in case you too have trouble on this, open up the back rest and when it is vertical, press the back rest down firmly and it clamps quite well. Now you are ready to plug the phone into the cradle. I like the cradle very much as it has three ports – one for the charger, one for USB and one for headphones. When you wire the cradle, it looks like the laptop docking station!
Power On:Power on the P1i and the screen looks bright and pleasant. The default theme and the colors are very attractive. It takes quite a while(close to a minute) to boot up when I powered on for the first time. Initial settings were easy to make and the phone was ready. “Desktop” screen looks clean and uncluttered and gives you a good view of messages, appointments, missed calls, tasks. The icons in the bottom of the screen for other applications are very handy and you can “maximize” or “minimize” to see more apps or just one row of apps. P1i’s backlight switches off quite rapidly and you will have to keep tapping the screen to keep the backlight on. The keypad locks automatically and I have also created a shortcut for locking the keypad. The shortcut helps as I found that the keypad is unlocked automatically if I place the phone in the cradle and remains unlocked, unless manually locked. And about the stylus location – I do not know why SE placed the stylus on the left. My hand automatically goes to the right of the phone searching for the stylus.
Contacts and Call quality:Imported the contacts from my SIM card and all the phone numbers appeared under Mobile(Work) in Contacts. This is where I find the Contacts and the user interface in general to be less intuitive. I am also very surprised that having built a great phone, phone manufacturers are not able to get the basics of user interface right. They can at least copy the user interface part from Windows Mobile. I expect a simple icon for each application with the label below the icon. Open the Contacts and there are a few more minor irritants. I normally create Groups of Contacts – create contacts and group them as Personal, Work, etc. Once I have all the contacts and have created groups, I would assume that I can open the contact and add them to the appropriate group. Not so here. You will have to open the group first and add the contact. This is fine but they could have added the other feature as well(opening contacts first and adding it to a group).
I was a bit worried about the call quality and speaker volume of SE phones. The concerns disappeared when I made the first call. Speaker volume in instrument is very good and is audible even in very noisy environments. The best part is that you can adjust the volume with the jog dial while you are talking. Ringer volumes are also good. Speaker phone volume sounds a tad less for me though. I have not had any problems in signal strength or with call dropping. Volumes are good in the headphones as well. In almost all the reviews that I read on P1i, it was mentioned that the quality of the head phones was poor. I did not find any problem with the head phones and in fact I find it quite good.
Keypad:In all the photos of P1i that I found from Google, I did not realize that the keys would be so small. Two letters on each key is very good but each key is so small that even people with small fingers will find it difficult to get it right all the time. Also, Sony could have included one key that will bring up all the special characters to choose from. Locating and typing the special chars such as @ or; was not easy for me till I got used to it. Whenever I have trouble in locating any character on the keypad, I use the touch screen virtual keypad.
PC Synch:The software was easy to install and I have no issues in synching data with Outlook. I have not tried the BlackBerry service but the phone comes preloaded with BlackBerry software.
WiFi and Internet:Wifi works just the way it should and no problems in browsing the internet while connected on WiFi. Comes in quite handy while you are in a coffee shop or airport. I still have some problems in accessing Outlook webmail though. This must be a configuration issue rather than the hardware. Yahoo mobile mail works great though.
Office:You can create Word and Excel files and can read PDFs. This is quite good and files opened quite fast.
Camera and Music:Still pictures are of good quality and no issues with MP3 play back as well. As I mentioned already, I like the quality of head phones and it is not as bad as most of the reviews suggest. FM Radio works well when played through the head phone but strangely there is lot of additional noise when played back through the speaker.
Closing Applications:I find this very strange – why can’t we have a X button on top of each window to close the application as we leave the application? There is a back button provided and when we press this to exit the application, the window closes but the application remains active in the background, using up RAM. We will have to go to the task manager and end the application to completely close the application. I might be wrong here but if this is the way it was designed, I find it, as I said already, very very strange.
Battery life:There seems to some problem around the battery or the charger. It is kind of unpredictable. First few days, after a full charge, the phone went on for close to 2 days with normal quick calls, few pics from camera and music playing. But one fine morning, I found that the phone had switched off automatically as the battery was completely discharged. The previous night, I had the battery at 100% and I did not make any calls, did not have any apps open and did not do anything on the phone. After a full recharge, it seems to be fine again. This might be a one-off case but mentioning it here in the review because I found that the same problem has been mentioned by quite a few people in different forums. *
Conclusion: **If the user interface had been a bit more intuitive this phone would have scored a perfect 10 as a smart phone. And it is also priced perfectly(India – Rs. 17, 000 with no GPS and 1 GB memory card). Overall, a strong buy!
