Sony Ericsson P1 Review

Sony Ericsson is one of the brands behind Symbian OS which is used in the manufacturer’s smartphones, and all of them, since the first P800 back in 2002, have touch sensitive displays and use the UIQ interface to control it. This combination of OS-UI has been also used by other manufacturers in the past (Motorola, Benq, Arima) but nowadays the only recently announced non-Sony Ericsson phone with UIQ is the Motorola Z8, which uses non-touch version of the UI that doesn’t have much in common with the one for phones with touch-sensitive displays. Both Symbian and UIQ have been progressing, and the P1 model we are currently reviewing is using Symbian 9.1 and UIQ 3.0, which is the latest combination used in Sony Ericsson phones. The same version is also found in the W960 Walkman and in previous models like P990, M600 and W950. This means the P1 doesn’t bring new OS or UI and should be fully compatible with applications, developed for earlier phones of the brand.

Sony Ericsson P1 comes as a replacement of two earlier models, combining their lines in one. The form-factor reminds us of the M600 with the relatively slim profile and hybrid QWERTY keyboard, but the design is more oriented to the business customers, like the P990. The M600 gets its upgrade with WiFi and camera and the P990 gets slimmer and sexier upgrade. The model name is rather strange solution but also logical one. Earlier P-series smartphones were with model numbers P800-P900-P910-P990 and the logical next model should be P1000 (or higher) but it seems that Sony Ericsson don’t want that long name and removed the zeros, naming the new phone P1. The P1, being first, also puts the new beginning of the united P and M series.



The retail box of the P1 comes with the following content:

• P1 with battery and extra stylus
  
• Pouch for carrying the phone
• AC charger
• USB cable
• Charging and syncing cradle
• Stereo Headphones
• CD with software and manuals
  

The pouch is made from soft material in black and the phone fits tightly in it. It is not designed to be attached to a belt, but to be carried in the pocket.

The Syncing cradle is model CDS-65 and in addition to the phone put on it, it can be connected simultaneously to charger, USB cable and headphones (or other music device) which allows you to use your phone as it syncs or charges, stylishly lying in the cradle. If the cradle is connected to the AC charger, it will constantly glow in signal-green around the connector for the phone. The P1 itself, has similar small LED next to the connector socket, and when it is connected to a charging accessory (Charger or USB cable (with charging option selected) or the Cradle connected to one of the two) starts glowing in yellow.

The P1 is a candybar smartphone with average to small size, allowing it to fit in most pockets. It is smaller than the P990 in every aspect, and the greater difference is the thickness, which is ~35% slimmer.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (MM)	Weight (OZ)	Weight (Gramms)
Sony Ericsson P1	4.17" x 2.16" x 0.66"	106 x 55 x 17	4,4	124
Sony Ericsson M600	4.2" x 2.2" x 0.6"	107 x 57 x 15	4,0	112
Sony Ericsson P990	4.5" x 2.25" x 0,98"	114 x 57 x 25	5,5	155
Blackberry 8800	4.5" x 2.6" x 0.55"	114 x 66 x 14	4,7	134
Blackberry Curve	4.2" x 2.4" x 0.6"	107 x 61 x 15.5	3,9	111
HTC TyTN	4.4" x 2.3" x 0.86"	112.5 x 58 x 22	6,2	176

The P1 fits very well into the hand with the side keys being exactly at the place they should be, for either left or right hand usage. The combination of the materials makes it feel like a high-class device (which it is) and we specially like the rubberized back. Designed in silver and black colors, it looks very attractive and definitely more stylish than the boring all-black or all-white M600. The P1 doesn’t look like a smartphone targeted only to the youth, as it is more serious device with business appeal.


The Sony Ericsson P1 uses a great touch-sensitive display with physical size of 2.55” and the standard QVGA 240x320 pixels resolution. Like other SE phones, this one is capable of showing up to 262 thousands colors. They are correctly reproduced and when the brightness level is set to 100%, the display is very bright, with good contrast and saturated colors. It remains visible outdoors but if the light is too bright and is directly reflecting in it, reading it will be very tough.

Below it is the hybrid QWERTY keyboard. Hybrid, because it is neither real full QWERTY, nor a standard numeric keypad. It reminds us of the BlackBerry SureType (one is used in the Pearl) as it is in 5 columns and 4 rows, but unlike the SureType, here each key is actually a two-way rocker – two keys in a common volume. Let’s take the first key (in the upper left corner) for example: press it in the left part and you will type “Q”, press it in the right and you will get “W”. This leaves you with something like QWERTY with small keys, combined in pairs, which actually is quite usable. Typing text is very fast and we really like it over a numeric keyboard. We are not sure if a traditional QWERTY with the same size could be that comfortable and easy to use. Of course it all depends on the QWERTY design and the person using it, but we prefer this one over P990’s. This keyboard is brightly illuminated and the characters are in white color, while the standard numeric keys (the middle three columns) have their characters (0-9, * and #) in FireBrick red.



Due to the touch screen, this keyboard lacks software and other navigation keys, including D-pad/joystick. For navigation during one-handed usage, help the jog-dial and the back key, located on the left. The jog-dial is a 3-way wheel which has been used in previous smartphones of the brand and in early Sony phones. Above it is located the connector for a strap and in the upper left corner is the slot for the non-retractable stylus which comes out easily when you want to. The glossy black surface on the right houses the @-key (customizable shortcut), the M2 slot with protective cover and the camera shortcut/shutter key. As auto-focus is supported, the key is two-step and is half-pressed to focus and then fully-pressed to shoot. The top has the power key and the eye of the infrared while the bottom houses the small microphone hole and the Sony Ericsson proprietary connector for headset/usb cable/charger which we would have preferred to be replaced by standard ports like miniUSB and 2.5mm stereo.

Interface:

The Sony Ericsson P1i is a standard Symbian 9.1 UIQ 3.0 phone so the review of the software will be similar to that of other phones using this combination of OS and UI versions. This means most positive and negative sides will be common for all those phones and not for the P1 only.

As a whole, the interface navigation is very similar to the one of the P990, but still there are some changes (some due to personalization). By default, the home screen houses a line at the top with service information (shortcut, reception level, WiFi, Bluetooth, internet connection, battery level, task manager and other system notifications), active homescreen with information about new events, time and date and line with 5 shortcuts. Unlike the P990, you can expand the shortcuts to be 3 rows with each housing 5 icons, or total of 15 shortcuts. At the bottom there are three additional shortcuts.

The main menu houses a big banner on the top and grid of 3x3 icons, or vertical list. Sub-menus are visualized as vertical lists which are big enough to be touched with a finger, instead of stylus. We actually rarely took the stylus out of its slot and used either the jog-dial or a finger.

The menu can be personalized with Themes that change the appearance or with custom wallpapers. The themes change the backgrounds and some colors, but not the icons.

Phonebook:

Managing your contacts with the P1 is very easy. They are displayed as a list, showing the name and the main number, but not displaying the caller id icon. Searching for a contact is done by direct typing of words, but unfortunately the phone searches in the first word only, and if you've entered First and Last name the contact would be displayed as Last, First and searching by the first name won't be successful. This is ridiculous for smartphone, and we think that even if a name (first or last) consists of more than one word, searching should be achieved by any of them. Most people using that type of phones have lots of contacts, and the system should offer excellent search mode. In this situation, a Windows Mobile Pocket PC handles searches much better and so does a Symbian S60 phone.




When adding a contact you can't make a mistake – everything's easy and clear, and the fields are divided into a few tabs, as it is with standard Sony Ericsson phones. You can easily add additional numbers and emails fields if you need some, and you won't experience any limitations (one type of field can be added as much times as you want). This is the same as with S60 devices and is better than the fixed fields of WM smartphones.

If you want you can also add personal ringtone or callerID image, and with the latter the phone allows you to capture the image at the moment with small window using the camera.

Organizer:

The Calendar is one of the icons in the main menu. Its interface is not very optimized and shows the whole month on about the half of the screen and the other space is left for showing the actual entries, added to the selected day. Days with entries are marked with small yellow sign in their down-right corner. Using the Week or Day view, the whole screen will be used. Previewing a separate day, you will see the time when an appointment is set, marked with different color, similar to WM6 OS, helping you to easily manage your spare time.


Adding an entry is very easy and the available types are: Appointment, Reminder, All day event or Anniversary. Adding an appointment, you can enter its description, start/end date/time, Location, Alarm, Repeat options (Daily/Weekly/Monthly by date/Monthly by day/ Yearly by date/Yearly by day), Folder. The other tab houses information for Chair and Attendees and you can also add text note in the third tab.

In the Tools menu are the other functions of the organizer. The File manager allows for browsing the files stored on the phone memory or the memory card and to copy or move them. The Calculator is nothing interesting and even lacks scientific option. Here also can find converter (distances, volumes, weights, temperatures, speeds, areas, and currencies), stopwatch (saving nine laps), countdown timer, and world clock with three alarms that can be programmed with separate times, alerts (including an option for FM Radio as an alert).


Notes and Tasks, as well as QuickOffice, PDF Reader and Business Card Scanner can be found in the Office Menu. The notes are just text notes with no options, while in the tasks you can set their priority and add an alarm to them. Using the Quick Office you can open documents formatted for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Opening a large Excel document with a few sheets is not a problem for the P1. The visualization is not the best as the zoom levels are Small/Medium/Large instead of the standard percents-of-real-size but still you can read it in most cases. The option to find word/phrase works well and pretty fast. A presentation in PowerPoint is also not a problem for the application.


A nice addition is that you can create or edit Word and Excel documents on the phone. The interface is not as comfortable as the one on a computer, but it still works if you have to do this and rely on your phone only. You can use Format toolbar for color options (font and background), bold/italic/underlined and even aligning.

For opening of Adobe Acrobat files, the phone comes with PDF+ preinstalled, which allows viewing in landscape and searching of text, but doesn't have the best visualization and reading a more complex file is not the easiest job. Although it can open larger documents, we would suggest you not relying on it, if the document is not formatted for phone usage. The fonts don’t come up as on a computer or on other smartphones we’ve tested, and a sample manual we’ve put is hard to read.

The thing that we found most interesting was the scanner for Business Cards, which actually worked! To use it, you capture a photo of a random business card and then process it for a quarter of the minute (about 15 seconds) to take the information out of it – then it saves it in a new contact, automatically adding its name, number, email, address, summing all the information up as a not, and putting the photo of the business card as caller id image. In is not sure that the program will work in 100% of the cases, but we found it very useful and well done!

The Sound Recorder takes voice notes without limitation in time. As long as you have free memory on either the phone or the card, you can record long voice notes. We like to find here the TrackID function, which uses “GraceNote” service to sample the music you record from the microphone and to give you information on the artist and name. As it was with other SE phones with TrackID, it works just flawlessly.

Messaging:

Messaging menu is as standard as you can expect: you have inbox for messages and email boxes. Composing a simple TXT message (SMS) allows you to add multiple recipients, insert simple images or sounds, use BOLD for the text, three size options and insert emoticons (text codes - [ :)] for example), visualizing as animated faces on phones that support it. Composing a multimedia message (MMS) you can add real images and sounds, and even video clips.


Using the email client is a piece of cake: you set it up for a couple of minutes and can choose how to download your messages: there are options for headers only or to download only messages smaller than a set size (100kb for example).When you've written a message, you can choose if you are willing to send it immediately or save it to the outbox, where it will stay until you use ”get and send” in convenient moment (when you have Wi-Fi nearby for example).

Connectivity:

One of the main drawbacks of the P1 just like the P990 in our opinion is its radio: it is tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900) with single-band UMTS (2100) which makes it slightly-unusable in the States. It would work, but only in the areas with 1900MHz coverage. As a high-end business oriented phone, a quad-band GSM and world tri-band UMTS that turn it into global-roaming capable smartphone will be much more suitable, as it is with the HTC TyTN.

For local connectivity the phone supports every single thing you can imagine: USB, IrDA, Bluetooth, and Wireless LAN. Connecting it with the USB cable (and the cradle) to a computer allows you for fast synchronization and backing up of the device. Similarly to other SonyEricsson software, you can compose Multimedia messages on the computer and install applications (they can be either JAVA or Symbian ones), as well as language packs, from it.

When the phone is connected to a cable, it asks you to choose if you want Phone mode or File transfer mode.

Copying a file from the computer through the USB cable from the box, connected to USB2.0 port and the cradle, we transferred 54 MB to the phone's memory for less than 2 minutes, which is a speed of 502KB per second which is way faster than the transfer we obtained with the P990. As it is recognized as mass storage device, neither drivers nor software will be required for most computer OS.

The Phone Mode is used to synchronize the P1 with a computer. The CD from the box has PC Suite which works also under Windows Vista. Its functionality is similar to the previous version, which came with P990. It allows you for fast synchronization and backing up of the device. Similarly to other SonyEricsson software, you can compose Multimedia messages on the computer and install applications, as well as language packs, from it.

The supported version of Bluetooth is the latest 2.0 with multiple profiles including A2DP for stereo audio distribution – this can once again turn the P1 into a small multimedia center. The Wi-Fi supports 802.11b only and not the faster g standard, but is still a feature that is a must in high-end Smartphone. Using it you can obtain internet connection in short distances, but unfortunately drains the batter much faster than if it is off. We suggest you to turn it on only when you really use it …

Internet:

With the growing speeds of mobile internet, we expect to see better and better browsers on the mobile computers. Using such powerfull devices with large screen we can now see the pages as on a computer, and not only ones adapted for the phone’s screens. The Opera coming with P1 can be used in either portrait or landscape orientation and an option “fit to screen” allows for optimized preview, which will cut the need of horizontal scrolling but will change the appearance of the page. If it is not selected, you will see the websites as on a computer, rendered in their original view.

Using Wi-Fi, we easily opened PhoneArena's home page in a few seconds and were able to read and see the latest news about mobile phones. Doing it we see that the browser is not flawless and may render incorrect some pages, but the bigger part of them is shown as it should.


An additional “RSS feeds” options allows you to get the information you need in just a few seconds, without the need of super fast (Wi-Fi or UMTS) connection and generating lots of traffic.

Camera:

Although it is a smartphone, the P1 comes equipped with a good camera that can compare with some of the best cameraphones on the market. Located on the back are the lens with the information on the resolution, the autofocus and the flash, which consists of dual LED. We sorry this is not the Xenon found in Cybershot phones but at least it has auto-focus, which makes great difference on most photos.

The camera's interface is in landscape mode and starts for 3 seconds. It gives information for the settings chosen, and you can change them with the touch screen or the jog-dial. There are four resolutions available (3,2,1,0.3(VGA)MP) with three compression levels. The options for white balance, color effects and frames are nicely present as they were with other camera-oriented Sony Ericsson phones.

The auto-focus locks for a second and another 5 are needed to save the captured image and start shooting another one. The images from the camera are pretty good and are definitely usable, when taken in bright sunlight. Unfortunately, even then there is noise when you preview them in full size, but the detail is also good for a phone. Like the P990, the P1 takes very good macro shots and gives lots of detail from tiny objects. Indoors, the quality decreases due to the lower light amount. More noise appears even if the flash is turned on (it can be on or off, lacks AUTO option) and the latter will be usable to illuminate the object you are capturing if it is nearby.



Like the P990 and just new SE non-smart-phones (K850, W910), the P1 can capture video clips in QVGA resolution which is 4 times less than N95’s VGA but can still do the job. Like in the U100 and U300 by Samsung, some artifacts appear due to the compression but here the colors are realistic and the videos look better. The quality is high enough for online usage, for example in a blog like YouTube.

Sony Ericsson P1 sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution

The captured images are previewed in the Picture Gallery which has fullscreen mode, for more convenience. The phone is pretty fast and opens the preloaded images almost instantly, while the camera shots (which are larger) took a moment more. Still they rendered pretty fast, and previewing them is not slow and boring operation.

Multimedia:

The Music Player isn’t branded with “Walkman” name but is better than the one used in non-smart-non-Walkman phones. It offers the standard filtering by Artists/Albums/Playlists/Tracks/My recordings but the now playing interface is improved: On the top is the album name, below are the controls which unfortunately are with rather small buttons and you may press a wrong one if not using the stylus. Almost half of the screen is occupied by the album cover and the file name – artist – album and the soft keys. There are 10 equalizers, including Mega Bass, Loudness, Treble boost and others. The player can be left to work in the background and in this case the homescreen will indicate this with a line of the song currently played.


Strangely, the player didn’t show the album cover image of songs we transferred through Windows Media Player from computer with Windows Vista. Later, those songs had an album cover image, but not the one they have in the Windows Media Player but an image stored on the phone’s card memory – image that has nothing in common with the songs.

The sound coming from the phone’s speaker is neither the strongest nor the one with best quality, but could do the job for using a song as a ringtone. Playing music on it, it will suffer from distortion when at maximum level and has typical “phone-speaker sound quality”.

For listening to your favorite music, headphones will be more suitable. The ones from the box are with mediocre quality and average volume, so when you want to replace them you will need an adapter to connect standard ones (with 3.5mm jack) or just use Stereo Bluetooth headphones. As the phone supports A2DP profile, we connected wireless speakers with no problem. They sound with much more power and clearer sound with higher quality.

The Video Player is exactly the same as the one on P990. There is no problem previewing a QVGA video encoded with MPEG4 H.263 but when additional features like changing the volume for example are applied during playback, the video and sound lag. Like with the Music player, we transferred the sound to Bluetooth speakers. The higher quality H.264 compression is not supported.



The P1 also has a FM radio built-in but in order to use it, you must connect the headphones, to be used as antenna. Once started, it will propose you to automatically scan the whole frequency range and save the found stations. You can then transmit the sound to the phone’s speaker or to Bluetooth device, which we did. The supported RDS has options for displaying AF (Alternative Frequency), News announcements and Traffic announcements and once it retrieves information about the station’s name, automatically adds it in the saved list.

Software:

Like the P990, the P1 comes with a couple of games preloaded: QuadraPop (Tetris like game) and Vijay Singh Pro Golf 3D (3D golf game). You can add additional games and applications, either written for UIQ phones or JAVA games for phones with QVGA resolution. We installed an Instant Messenger for UIQ, as the phone doesn’t have one preloaded.

Performance:

We are using the phones just like a normal customer would do it, but in addition to the everyday-usage, we are putting them through standard variety of tests, in order to see objectively how they perform with signal reception, battery life and voice quality.

The P1 is not the phone you should get if you are in an area with fringe coverage. Although it is a large device and its dimension may house a big internal antenna, it performed just as the U700 Ultra Samsung did, scoring average 5 out of 10 mark for the signal reception.

In the continuous talk time test, we were able to squeeze just 6 hours, which is way below the claimed from the manufacturer 10. It is normal not to meet the claimed results 100%, but in our case P1 got 60% out of the claimed time, which is just slightly more than the half.

The P1 isn’t excellent, but is one of the good students when it comes to call quality. It offers very good outgoing sound, with high volume and respective quality. Drawback is that the voices are slightly flat, which makes them not very clear but still pretty realistically sounding.

The incoming sound is with lower volume and quality. It is slightly muffled and not very clear, but still, more than usable.

Conclusion:

We like the P1! Compared to the M600, the new P-series smartphone offers the desired high-quality camera and Wireless LAN (WiFi) which is a must in such style device. When put next to the P990, the P1 reduces the size, removes the dual-type keyboard and with the hybrid QWERTY allows for even faster text typing. P1 is not only successor of the M600, it is the successor of the P990 and it is a good one. Its main drawback is the tri-band GSM and single-band UMTS, but if you are in the supported frequencies, P1 will give you all the bells and whistles of a UIQ phone plus very good multimedia including music and video player, FM Radio and good 3MP auto-focus camera. Alternatives are Windows Mobile Professional phones, which also have stylus-based OS and offer an environment, closer to the one on a personal computer with Windows, which has both positive and negative sides.