For those hoping that Sony had put the new boy on a crash diet opening the box showed that this hasn't happened. However while the outer size of the 114 x 57 x 25mm P990i is barely 1mm smaller the innards have bulked up or perhaps we could say added some muscle to the smartphone platform. Externally the styling is much improved with the package looking less chunky and more curvaceous. The biggest change is to the thumb pad arrangement, this time Sony have opted for a numeric pad much like the other phones in the range on the top of the flip and a full Qwerty keyboard underneath.

The flip feels less brittle to those fitted to the outing 910 and also the older P800, tactile feedback is good and the qwerty keyboard while small is operable with 2 fingers allowing a reasonable typing rate. However data input for this method is only really suitable for short emails and text messages as the contorted typing position started to hurt our fingers after a few minutes.

Running on the latest Symbian 9.1 OS with the UIQ 3 user interface SE have certainly equipped the flagship model well and the revised OS / GUI looks the part when combined with an increased screen resolution of  240 x 320 pixels. The menus work with the ease we have come to expect of a Sony phone, those nice touches of animation and rolling icons  make navigation simpler and mean we did not have to resort to the instruction manual at any point.

Data entry is achieved via plethora of methods ranging from the improved keypad to the inbuilt stylus and touch screen. The handwriting system is pretty poor and our efforts looked like we had let our nephew loose on the phone, this was then a bit of a nightmare for the handwriting recognition software to decode.

The typical purchaser of the Sony Ericsson P990i is likely to be a executive or business owner who has to stay in touch at all times both through phone calls but also increasingly via email and other messaging systems. Clearly SE have the ubiquitous Blackberry in their sights as they have armed the revised P900 series with push email  blackberry connect client software and other leading push email systems. We managed to test with Exchange active sync which allows the 990i to sync the inbox with your own exchange server using the 3G data connection. This feature worked well although proved a little hungry on our data tariff, but we were able to keep the inbox in step with the server when sending a receiving email.

Alongside the Tri Band GSM and 3G services the P990i also boasts WiFi 802.11b which should mean that this smartphone can make use of any available connectivity to pick up email or browse the web using the Opera 8 web browser. We had no issues getting the 990i onto our office network even with its WEP encryption, the signal strength was acceptable and we were able to access POP email accounts and websites, the screen in landscape mode is ok for browsing with a bit of scrolling. A nice touch is the RSS reader which we soon had checking all our favourite websites for updates as well as news headlines and weather feeds.

Storage on the 990i is taken care of with a mixture of an 60mb onboard memory and a memory stick pro duo slot which ships with a 64mb card as standard but will accommodate up to 2gb memory sticks. Applications can be installed and run from either memory and the symbian OS is already home to a rich aftermarket of programmes. The installed software includes an MS word / excel editor and a reader for both powerpoint and PDF files.

Another often overlooked feature of a good business smartphone is the hands free options, of course you have Bluetooth so you can connect to headsets and other external devices but we found the speakerphone rather good. It was plenty loud enough when placed in the middle of a table for a full conference call and not many mobile can perform that task. A point worthy of note is the excellent contacts book, which easily copes with a single object to which multiple phone numbers, emails and web addresses / IM addys can be connected along with images and voice tags. With the new UIQ V3.0 this phone book not only works well but looks great too with the whole user experience being open to much more personalisation.

Those of us that travel a lot will appreciate a smartphone that has to offer some multimedia capabilities, Sony have ensured that the media player on the 990 can cope with MP3 and ACC files which when combined with a 2gb memory stick provides a good alternate to a separate MP3 player. Should that not be enough music for you then there is an FM radio that also has RDS making the tuning and storing of stations easier. Sadly Se have chosen not to equip the phone with a standard 3,5mm jack so you can't easily use your own earphones.

The rear of the phone houses the 2 mega pixel camera which takes great images, these are accessed via the gallery application and can be used in MMS messages or tagged to callers names, or just sent to outboard devices or on emails.

The battery life is much improved with a claimed 15 hours of talk time and about 17 days (400 hours) on standby, however our tests produced more real life results with a mixed use of the WiFi / Bluetooth and data / voice calls we managed around 2 days before needing a top up charge. This isn't as bad as it sounds as the 990i can be changed both by the AC adaptor and also via the supplied USB lead connected to a host PC.

A week of living with the 990i has given us reason to believe that this is not a mere facelift as the 910 was from the P900 instead the P990i and the change to UIQ 3 brings real improvements and new features that smartphone users will really use. We would have liked to see the unit shrink a bit as the 155 gram phone is still a bit big for our tastes and the re styling does little to hid the brick like dimensions.

However a phone this smart cannot be ignored purely for being a bit chunky, packing WiFi, 3G, Memory Stick, RDS radio and PIM applications that all worked seamlessly it is a serious challenger to the Nokia communicator and treo 700. Priced at over £550 SIM free and £100 with contract it is a serious investment for the serious phone user.

More Sony Ericsson Reviews

Published - 06/08/2006

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