P1i Blog

Yesterday I waxed lyrical about the hardware features of the Sony Ericsson P1i and as you would expect from me a three part review cannot continue to be positive all the way through… or can it?

Let’s take a look at how the P1i performs for the most important tasks, how adequate is the built in software and how does the operating system and processor cope with multi-tasking. I will break down the various features to give you an idea of how well each part works rather than write huge sentences describing each feature in minute detail-

PIM

Historically with devices running Symbian the stock PIM applications (contacts, calendar and tasks) have been poor and it would be fair to say that once again the PIM functions could be better. Contacts works well and searching through a database of 1500 entries was super quick- there are not many options to display the contacts in various ways but it all works quite well. The calendar application is less impressive with the views barely customisable at all. I for one would like to see a whole calendar entry and not a cut off line but alas I could find no option to do this. It works better than the S60 3rd edition calendar which is very poor indeed and for a phone to be called ‘smart’ it requires a decent set of PIM applications. Tasks is a fairly standard affair and strangely I ended up liking the set up and look  of the PIM apps but third party replacements would be installed before almost anything else in my case.

Today screen

The main (today) screen is surprisingly one of the highlights of the system with simple one-liners to display emails and appointments along with a line of shortcuts at the bottom of the screen. Tap the small arrow above this line and much larger set of shortcuts appears- these are easily customised and the whole set up process took under a minute to create all of the shortcuts I need. When you tap above the expended shortcut pane the standard today layout re-appears.

Extra applications

The bundled set of applications is superb. The list of included applications includes notes, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, RSS feeds, Opera Web Browser, QuickOffice (needs updating), calculator, Java, FM Radio blah blah blah. I have barely scratched the surface of most of the built in applications but it has been fun trying- so far I have not found an application that does not work well, even QuickOffice is fairly quick- honest!

Entertainment

There’s no shortage of entertainment on offer with the P1i either. Video playback is, genuinely, the best I have seen on a smartphone. Music playback quality is at least iPod standard and the range of music related features includes MegaBass, PlayNow, TrackID, A2DP (Bluetooth stereo) and a decent media player. The biggest shock was the quality of the built in FM radio which surprised me somewhat- it only found 2 stations on the first pass but the sound quality was way above what I expected. Two games are included of which the 3D gold title stood out well- it does tend to concentrate on graphics heavily but I found myself getting quickly involved in it and have not been able to leave it alone since. There are some decent third party gaming titles on the market such as HomeRun and K-Rally which are essential titles in my book and although the range is limited there is enough out there to satisfy most tastes.

Stability / Speed

This is the big topic when trying out a new smartphone and for someone who uses an HTC S620 for this reason alone it is right at the top of my wish list. After playing around with most of the in-built applications I checked the task manager and almost fell off my chair when I saw that almost two screen pages of applications were open. At no point has the phone crashed or slowed down and even complex web pages have not caused any problems at all. On the whole the P1i is very quick although not quite up to the speedy level of the S620, but then again nothing else is. When I realised how much this phone could handle my mind jumped to thoughts of upgrading but there is still some way to go for my S620 to be knocked off its perch.

What else do I need?

So, I am happy with the speed, stability and hardware functionality so what else does a person like me need? eReading has been taken care of with MobiPocket (would prefer eReader but there you go), the included video player is excellent and I may not require TCPMP for the first time ever. I will hunt around for a decent finance application but most importantly a GPS solution would top off the phone nicely. I will see what I can come up with and how well the whole package works when it is really pushed and report back some more tomorrow.

I have been a confirmed Palm and Windows Mobile user for many years and should not like UIQ this much but after three days I am feeling almost unnerved at how quickly I feel at home with the hardware and software combination that is the P1i.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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