I’ve had my Sony Ericsson P1i for about four weeks now, and I’m ready to give my verdict. Bear in mind that I have been an Ericsson fan for a while, and the P900 remains one of my favourite smartphones of all time. I’ve also owned a variety of Palm devices (IIIc, m500, TX) , and other windows based smartphones. So I reckon I’ve a good position to give options from.
First impressions of the phone were highly disappointing. Within a couple of days I was pretty much wishing I could ditch the thing. Firstly there was this ‘combination’ of screen and keypad usage that is just not intuitive. But what is intuition other than that based on some element of previous expectation? For example, to answer, mute or end a call, you do not use the hard keys, you press ’sensor’ buttons on the touchscreen. Then there was the Mac iSync debacle. Oh yes, a half-hearted attempt at allowing Apples to sync with the phone results in no Task syncing or Notes syncing. So evidently this is a WINDOWS phone. Another initial niggle was the way the calendar does not show a nice ‘week view’ that you can get a quick glance at with vertical days. Its more like a grid view of a week, which isn’t ideal to see free slots.
Anyway, as time went on, I began to explore the phone more and here is the result from Luxemborg…
Jog Dial : this has made a welcome return to the P-range, and its almost back to its best. Fabulous. Very useful to quickly navigate the various menus.
Keyboard : this continues to be the WORST part of the phone, its just not quick to use. Sure some people will be able to hit the right side of the rocker switch. But I find that I am hitting neighbouring keys which slows down typing.
SMS : pretty much the same as it was on other UIQ3 phones. The only snag is no t9! Yep, you have to use the QWERTY rocker-switches for everything. urgh.
EMAIL : Ok, so this is getting better. Download from any POP server, download just headers, or download emails smaller than a configurable size. Additionally, the scheduled download of emails is back, so you can grab mails at set ‘intervals’ alas not at specific times. Its easy to read and compose, but I do wish it ’saves’ emails frequently – just get a call and sometimes it all vanishes 
WEB : This is getting better. Based on Opera it has configurable cache, and screen behaviour. The bookmarking is OK, allowing for folders, but you cannot delete the silly pre-set bookmarks. Options to not download images is there, to save on GPRS tariffs.
CALENDAR : The key to a smartphone, and the P1i’s weakest feature. Firstly, as the earlier gripe suggests, no easy week-vertical view, as pre in outlook. Secondly, get yourself some meetings and you better remember to silence your phone. Unlike windows smartphones, it does not automatically adjust your profile based on appointments. So you could have your embarrassing ringtone go off in the middle of a key meeting. So its not THAT smart.
TASKS : Oh my, what a disaster. If you want to use your phone to help you Get Things Done, forget it. Go get a Palm or a Treo, this device does not let you manage tasks flexibly. Firstly you have no chance of doing this on a non Windows platform, and secondly you might as well drive from Outlook and not the P1i when you are on Windows. A real disappointment. Priorities, due by, overdue, are all there but in a very odd and unusable manner.
EASY VIEW : there is a easy view of the key events on the home screen of the phone. But it doesnt really shrink its font small enough to see the right things on the screen at once. So, its about 70% usable, but a nice touch. Not as good as the new Windows VARIO smartphones though.
UIQ3 : the key to the phone is its OS – based on Symbian UIQ3. Not the fastest OS on the planet, menu launches and application launches take some time. Does this affect usability? Well in a tight business day, not a great thing.
Conclusion: its not great, but it is an improvement on the P900i. The iPhone remains the device of choice for now.
