Ever since Id gleefully clutched my first Sony Ericsson, a K500, way back in
2004 Ive been hooked to this brand. Ive been amazed at to what the smart guys
at the hallowed Swedish -Japanese firm have managed to accomplish with their
smart designs, wonderful software and stellar performance. My last phone was a
K750, a path-breaking model which went on to spawn numerous bestsellers in the
walkman and the cybershot branded segments. I was on the lookout for a PDA
phone, partly out of work consideration, and probably more for self realization
needs. My initial choice was the P990, the successor to the acclaimed P900, but
then, along came the P1 and my decision from that point on was pretty much
evident.
SE has this habit of utlising established designs and platforms. If
nothing, I guess it helps them to save on R&D costs. They had
launched the M600, but it was a disaster owing to the fact it was
flawed. What is did have however was a brand new candy bar design and a
unique dual touch QWERTY keypad. So when it came to introduce the next
generation of 3G phones, SE decided to do a little bit of mix and
match. They used the base platform of the M600, improvised on the
feature list of the P990, updated the OS to the latest version(v9.1)
and voila! you had the P1.
I’d heard some nasty stories about the ill fated M600, and I was
apprehensive at first, as the P1 wasn’t as proven as its predecessors. However,
it’s been a month I’ve owned this much coveted gizmo, and so far my user
experience has been rather delightful. I think it’s only fair that I share the
same with my fellow MS fraternity. Here goes nothing:
For a fully loaded, Smartphone, the P1 is surprisingly light at 124g, and
measures a nifty 106 x 55 x 17 mm. It
has a conventional candy bar layout, and what really catches the eye at the
very first glance is the gorgeous, silver-black appearance, the black and red
qwerty keypad scheme and the brilliant 2.6” touchscreen display. Like a
lingerie model, this thing looks nice from the rear too. It has a black
rubberized, battery cover, which flanks the brilliant 3.2 megapixel autofocus
camera lens, but unlike the lingerie model; gee I’m getting one tracked, it’s
completely flat on the rear, and lacks a lens hatch. The sides consist of the jog dial, camera, web and back buttons.
Contrary to what was stated by the 1st reviewer; “This wheel is very
sharp and it pierces the finger” I would like to reassure my concerned users,
that it was a bit stiff at first, but then gradually smoothened out with usage,
and I have not felt the need to press charges against SE for bodily harm.
The phone came with quite a list of goodies, which is hardly surprising
considering its rather steep retail street price of about Rs. 23, 000 in India. It
included, a dock with data, power and music connections, a 1 GB M2 memory card,
an extra stylus(thank God for that, I lost one already) a nice classy velvet
lined case, and surprise, surprise; a redeemable voucher for downloading
Symbian applications worth Rs. 6, 000 from SE’s website.
As stated earlier, this device runs on the Symbian OS ver 9.1(UIQ
3), and it has not crashed a single time. Initially it did take me a
while to figure out the interface, as it was been a radical departure
from my beloved K750. Current users of the P900 or 950 would be more or
less at home, excepting for the fact the keypad is plain torture for
the first time user. It’s akin to a forced feudal marriage, you detest
it initially, gradually get used to it, and soon afterwards, you can’t
do without it. For people totally unaware of the two touch keypad, the
explanation is simple. Instead of having dedicated buttons for all the
characters, as in the case of the P1’s predecessors, it has 2
characters, per button, along with alternate symbols or numbers on the
top. The tricky part which needs to be perfected is pressing the
relevant end of the button, and for someone like me, with big hands and
grubby thumbs, narrowing down the error rate took a lot of practice.
For people used to tapping onscreen virtual keypads and handwriting
recognition, they can actually do without using the mechanical keypad
as the phone supports both perfectly. Coming to the interface, and
the software, its very speedy unlike some of the WinMobile devices I’ve
played with. It’s loaded with a respectable 160MB of onboard memory,
which is more than adequate to multitask with a magnitude of
applications. The task manager is accessed by tapping the icon on the
top right side of the screen, and its something like an
- combination. As expected from a business phone,
the preloaded applications are . well . business friendly. Some of
the features are, limitless phonebook capacity, viewer/editors for
office formats, superb syncing options, blackberry support, business
card scanner, multiple email accounts etc.
In terms of network connections, the P1 comes to its own. It’s a fully
compliant 3G phone but as we’re in a country where policymakers keep on
fighting tooth and nail about spectrum allocation, I guess I’ll have to be
contended with the relatively lame GPRS and the indoors-only wi-fi options for
the time being. The web browser renders pages and images relatively fast, and
appropriately formats the same to fit the screen in portrait and landscape
views. The Multimedia features are quite entertaining, considering the brilliant
big screen. It supports Mpeg4 and 3GP video and other ubiquitous audio formats.
The picture viewer resizes and renders high resolution JPGs perfectly and
speedily. It comes preloaded with 2 games, Quadra Pop, and Vijay Singh’s Pro
golf. The graphics and physics are simply eye-boggling. The 3.2 megapixel
camera is simply superb which results in sharp stills and videos at
30fps.
Allow me to compose my thoughts and quickly run through some of the joys and
pains of using this phone on a daily basis. I feel that some of the
navigational levels has been complicated a bit too much, by offering the user
more choices than what a normal person would demand. The in-call menu is one of
them, and I still haven’t figured out how to take a voice memo, which was so
handy in my K750. The copy and paste functions too have been messed up by
nesting them under navigational sub-levels. The camera is flanked by a
brilliant light, but you cant use it as a torch. The media player clarity is
superb, but I felt the max volume was a bit feeble as compared to the walkman
phones. Apart from the above, there are no perceptible pain areas as such. The
battery life is pretty impressive, and wont let the user down. As about
the flaunt value, I could go on and on, but then, it would be so vain.
To sum up I have no regrets whatsoever, in blowing up a sizable amount of
hard earned moolah for this baby. The die hard Nokia loyalist would probably
insist on the E61, which would be in direct competition, and it’s a good phone
and certainly merits a look. If the whole idea however, is to be
productive on the move, and look good while doing so, then you simply cant go
wrong with the P1.
