Mar 25, 2008 12:46 AM
2724 Views
(Updated Mar 25, 2008 11:33 AM)
From the very beginning I have been an Ericsson user. I have only recently owned a non-Sony Ericsson phone and loved it. But that was a short lived love affair borne out of necessity. Anyways. Putting the digretion aside, lets get to the meat of the matter. Where was I? Oh yes, the P1i. Well, as I was saying, only SE for me. I had bought this P900 a couple of years ago and it was the IN thing amongst business phones at that time. Now it is old and outdated. So I decided to upgrade my PDA-phone and was looking around. I was actually open to trying out different brands. I looked high and low but finally went back to SE. I was tempted by the new 960i but on comparison with the P1i it did not really have too many extra features to justify the almost 5k price difference. The only+ in the 960i was the 8GB onboard memory.
Anyways, my friend and I wanted to upgrade our phones around the same time and we were both on the lookout for good PDA phones. His requirements were a little different from mine. He wanted a phone high on the OOH! factor while I wanted a phone high on the GRUNT! factor. Huh? What? Ok, ok, let me explain. He wanted a phone that could be a conversation starter and I wanted a phone to end all arguments. Get it? Pretty vs performance.
He was reasonably impressed with the P1i but it is not the most fabulous looking of all phones. He was hemming an hawing about it so I trundled over to the nearest VSP and bought my self a shiny new P1i with GPS. Got it for 21k but the price has dropped rapidly since then. Closer to 18k I believe. In the meanwhile, my friend has settled for the uber-trendy and sleek phone by a Us company that has been making waves revently but is not yet officially available in India yet.
Anyways, getting to the phone, it is the closest thing one can have to perfection(within current technological limits). Instead of doing a couple of things great and the rest average(like most other PDA phones), this phone does almost everything good. Good Camera(3.2), good reception, good screen(not the largest but still good enough), good form factor(after you hold this baby in your palm you will marvel at the amount of technology in the small sized package and then you will appreciate the true beauty of the P1i), the keyboard has a slightly longer learning curve but is very usable once comfortable. The phone is actually meant to do most common functions with one hand unlike most modern PDA phones. Another plus point. One thing I would like to point out is that the user interface(UI) is slightly sluggish. Not as snappy as the Microsoft OS. thats about the only -ve point I could fins with this baby.
The one thing that I could not check out is the 3G capabilities. The GPS was a blast to play around with. Comes with a year of free subscription from Wayfinder in UK. After that, there is a perpetual license for a very small amount.$100 or thereabouts. It takes its maps from Mapmyindia.com and they can be quite funny at times. In the turn-by-turn instructions, it once asked me to turn right while I was on a flyover. I had a good laugh.
Thats all for now, let me know if you need any more info on any particular aspect of the phone and I will be more than happy to help you out.
Take Care
Farad
