May 11, 2008 10:24 PM
4156 Views
I started with monochrome Nokia entry model around 5 years back. I used to think that the cellphone is only for dialling and receiving calls. So I lived merrily with my old faithful for 3 years. Then the peer pressure induced me to buy the Nokia 3230. Perhaps the chunkiest and ugliest phone around. And then like tiger having tasted blood, I changed 4 phones in last 2 years. Went thru Nokia, Motorola, HP and finally Sony Ericsson.
My reasons for buying P1i were very simple. I wanted a business phone with a FM radio. I know only Sony Ericsson P1i that meets this requirement. So after searching a lot, I settled for this phone. I went to the shop just to'look' at P1i. I was telling myself that I am not going to buy this phone. Well my rapid change of cellphones had invited lots of comments from my wellwishers.
I looked at the phone at the dealer and well, the urge struck. I could only bow down to the inevitable.
It is loaded with all the features that one can look for. The first feature I tested was camera. For a cell-phone camera this camera gives amazing results. Nighttime photos, daylight, indoors, it takes everything in its stride and gives good pictures.
The radio is, well a radio. Good sound quality. The fact that I am getting a radio with a business phone itself is a bonus.
The screen is not visible in the bright daylight, but other than that is quite legible with good resolution even for looking at photos. The touch screen is sensitive even when covered with a protective film and I can press icons even at the corner of the screen without sweat. And my fingers are like small bananas.
The keyboard is semi-QWERTY in the sense that most of the keys are pivoted and generate two characters. To get some speed on this keyboard needs getting used to, but once you are done you are always faster than the 4 keypresses for's' type of keyboards. However when you have to press key for the numbers the pivoted keys do not give a good feel while pressing. You get worried that you might be breaking something.
However for entering text there are two other excellent tools, the character recognition feature and the soft keyboard. Once you master the writing technique, you won't in all probability prefer to use anything else for writing the SMSs and notes etc.
The ability to receive weak signals is better than Motorola and HP phones and slightly inferior to Nokia. There is a spot in my office where Motorola and HP were just not able to get the signals, P1i gets it satisfactorily and Nokia did it best.(The service provider was same.)
The speaker quality is not very good. It gives a tinny sound and the volume is not big enough for using during the conference calls.
For reading the office documents, it has a out of box support, but I experienced difficulties. Unless the documents are extremely lightweight the phone hangs. I tried opening a 500 KB file on this phone( I do not know whether I should have been doing that or not.) but the phone hangs and there is no other way than removing the battery to escape the hanging, at least I could not found any. Switching task in task manager did not help.
The docking station that comes with the unit is very useful in the office.
The software and the GUI are what you expect from phone like this. Everything you expect is there but there is nothing that will make you shake your head in amazement.
The trackwheel on the side is very useful for scrolling up and down. For scrolling left and right there are two tiny buttons on the keyboard. The trackwheel helps you slide right and left. However when the curser is in the textbox then the scrollwheel can not be used to move to left. This is somewhat a noticeable irritant, unless you extensively use stylus for all the work.
I have not discovered any major glitches in the software. The internet connectivity and the email configuration was a cakewalk. The learning curve for using this phone is very moderate. I was very comfortable within a week. The GUI is very intuitive and you can figure out the phone very quickly(unlike my HP ipaq-500).
P1i user manual says that Activesync on symbion is provided out of box. However I did not find Activesync on my machine. To configure the email, I downloaded Activesync from the sony website and tried to install. The message I got was, there is already a push email client on the machine so Activesync can not be installed. I have been able to configure the email client to get emails from my company exchange server but I have not been able to set up my machine for push email. I have to keep on polling the server to get my mails. The email functionality is quite extensive, with configurability to get only headers or full messages or get emails of size lesser than a configurable value. The number of emails to be downloaded can be set. The download schedule also can be configured. Howeve I have not been able to figure out how it works. I have to always do manual send and receive.
There is also a glitch that I discovered, if for receiving email, you chose SMAP protocol then the account gets locked and does not work. The phone is blackberry enabled but have not yet subscribed for the service.
The software voucher that you get with the phone does not take you far as none of the goodies available in exchange are all that good.
The themes available out of box are very limited in numbers and not very attractive. The procedure for navigation in the file system is clumsy. It was lot better in HP being a windows phone. The time to open the music and audio files is considerable.
Voice recorder is adequate. The games available out of box are not very exciting.
The construction is robust. I have already dropped it twice. No issues. The battery life is good for phone of this size and features. Even using with the bluetood earphone, it lasts for the whole day without recharging.
In all? I like this phone and barring X1 I do not know of any phone that I covet at this point in time.(not even iPhone, as it does not have a radio) My recommendation? Go for it. It is more than value for money.
Quite a few of my friends who used to flaunt their blackberries commented that if they had discovered this phone earlier, they would have gone for this. I am glad I did.
