Sony Ericsson have been producing stylish and yet functional phones for a few years now, much improved on the previous solo Sony efforts and much more attractive than the bombproof but ugly Ericsson handsets of the late eighties. Most of will recognise the T68 as the start of the change, this stylish little phone turned around the image of the company overnight and introduced Bluetooth to the mainstream phone buyer.

Now with the move towards truly integrated devices Sony have entered the fray with PDA / Phone combinations the P800 smart phone was first to market ahead of key rivals Nokia, the early adopters took to it in vast numbers and despite a few shortcomings it has been a success leaving the half hearted attempts of Nokia looking as successful as the pervious communicator product.

Arguably the rush to market meant that the P800 was not fully rounded, comments about the build quality of the flip and the stylus are common as sadly is the rate of failure and need for software patches, but the later is only fair as these devices are now PDA's.

The P900 comes to market at a time when many other brands are bringing new "smart phones" to the shops, so what's new about the P900 or have the rivals leapt over the improved but not entirely revamped P900?

For a start the flip and the overall build quality is much improved with a new metal stylus in an internal slot all giving an overall impression of robustness that was somewhat lacking from the P800 and its slightly smaller in dimensions with 29 grams trimmed from its weight, but it is basically the same phone. Most of the differences are like a good car facelift on the inside, for a smart phone that means revised software.

Under the chromium buttons and sleek black exterior (much improved in the cheeky blue of the P800) the software tweaks are small but significant, the most obvious is a secure network client, allowing encrypted access to company networks sadly its not a standard VPN and requires you to use software from RSA or Secure Computing and like everything in life there is an extra license for this. Other software changes include an updated multimedia suite with a communicorder which can now capture video on the inbuilt camera albeit of limited resolution and the stills function is still in need of some decent optics.

The UI or user interface is still the phones strong suit based on the symbian OS, it is intuitive and includes common applications like a document viewer for MS word and PDF's, its not a rival for an MS enabled phone but then you might as well go for an Ipaq with a GPRS card.

As a phone the Sony Ericsson P900 is excellent with tri band, SMS, MMS and GPRS / Bluetooth inbuilt and the slight weight loss and size reduction makes it ok to carry but its not a shirt pocket phone by any stretch, all in all the P900 is a great phone, probably not worth the upgrade from a P800 but as a change from anything else it gets our vote.

Key Features

• tri-band/ Bluetooth / GPRS
• SMS/MMS/email
• 16 hours’ talk/20 days’ standby
• instant messaging
• synchronises with PC and Mac
• hi-spec viewer for Word, Excel etc
• email (PC sync with Outlook and Lotus)
• stylus with handwriting recognition
• calendar/contact functionality• video/still camera with multi picture modes
• QuickShare™ shoot-and-send functionality
• 32 Mb removable memory stick Duo
• wireless PC/Mac downloads
• midi file and real-music ringtones
• playlists, shuffle and repeat
• multiplayer gaming
• direct downloads from the Web
• V-Rally® racing game

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