One device, every possibility !. Review on Sony Ericsson P910i

After waiting for a long time, I finally got one of my dream gizmos, the Sony Ericsson P910i on the second July 2005. I do not want to list the features which are already given on the Sony Ericsson website. I would rather narrate my experience with the phone over the last 45 days or so.

I wound up my work a bit early at the office and left after lunch time. Went down to Alfa @ Irla, had a look at some other models just out of curiosity, but I had already made up my mind to get this powerpacked gizmo for me. I did not pick up any accessories like the blue-tooth headset and a 1 gig memory stick sheerly because of budget constraints.

Since it was a Saturday, I had enough time to spend at the night and the other day, exploring features and customising it heavily. I had to transfer data from my Sony Ericsson k500i to this phone, but unfortunately Sony Ericsson doesn't have a tool like USMT [User Settings Migration Tool] which could have done this for me. I backed up my old phone on MS Outlook 2003. Installed the new phone software and that was it ! This phone comes with a very convenient USB cradle, which charges your phone too. Overall, I was impressed with the phone, barring a couple of irritations that came up immediately

This phone has only 24 tone polyphony as opposed to 40 tones on my previous phone, so the sound quality of MIDI files is not as good as I would like it to be.

Powerpoint slides do not show up very well in the slide-show mode. It is alright to view it in the outlne view only.

Quickpoint, Quicksheet, Quickword - these are the three pre-installed applications, which handle MS office files reasonably well. PDF+ is a PDF reader, which worked well too.

The mobipocket reader has some nice e-books. Good for me to read on my way to office. I am expecting a text-to-speech engine sometime in the future, so that you could close your eyes and listen to a nice article / story during long travels.

I must say that the 262k display is fantastic. The audio quality with the bundled headphones is excellent and the stylus looks professional too. The handwriting recognition tool requires absolutely no practice and I could use it flawlessly in the first instance.

I installed the Agile Messenger. I am expecting this to be a perfect business + entertainment phone for me, till I start fancying someone else [not so soon though !]

I am planning to use the Blackberry service with this phone soon. Yes - I have already found the Blackberry client software from T-Mobile for this particular handset. However, I am currently using Orange and it does not support Blackberry. I haven't made my mind to switch over to Airtel yet.

Just to summarise:

P910i Mobile phone, PDA and digital camera – with video. Writing e-mail on a mobile device has never been easier. P910i has a fully featured keyboard on the back of the flip for easy text input. And what about taking pictures and sending them to your friend’s mobile phone or e-mail – this is easy too. Press the camera button, tap the send button on the P910i touchscreen, choose a contact and your picture or video clip is on its way.

IMAP / POP3 email works great too. However, even with this advanced phone, I am not able to download gmail because it does not support SSL. I therefore forward a copy of all my gmail to a Yahoo account which I download on this phone. Not a major irritant, but I would have expected SSL support.

P910i has the most impressive combination of mobile phone, PDA, camera and entertainment features you will find anywhere.