Sony-Ericsson P990i - The Wonna-Be Smartphone

I don't know how long I have been waiting for this phone. And when I think about this fact, I am asking myself, how it could be to wait for a phone at all? I don't know - or even better - this can not be answered in this blog entry :-)


The only thing I know is, that the device what I received, is definitely not that what I have been waiting for:

Stability: The device has massive problems with memory management. Still with the newest firmware the most seen message on the screen is "out of memory" when playing around with applications. Sometimes the devices restarts itself and presents the message "The device has been restarted for performance reasons...". Ridiculous! Want Sony-Ericsson (SE) fool the user? This seems to be an attitude adopted from Microsoft.

Ergonomics - in a nutshell: catastrophic.

1. Intuitive using: It is not possible to use the device with the keyboard only. Even for the simplest functions the user is forced to use the stylus (e.g. to initiate an answer to a SMS in flip-open mode). There are reams of cases, where you do something with the keyboard and have to use the stylus to finalize the task. The UIQ3 GUI of the device is not able to present the user an intuitive interface. Sometimes you have to use the Jog-Dial to select or open something, sometimes the Enter/OK key or in the worst case, you have to pull out the stylus... and much more of this mess.
   
2. Speed: Horrible!! It seems that Sony-Ericsson wanted to introduce a fancy device with transition effects and everything which has already made Windows slow. I would have no problems with nice visual effects as soon as this would have been implemented by using at least a minimum of someone's wits! But the visual effects that you find in the P990i / UIQ3 make no sense at all. The most time you are waiting that the device finishes opening a menu, because it is still busy with fading it in! The mail editor sometimes takes up to 15 seconds (!!!!) to open a mail. Currently there is no possibility with the shipped applications to switch the mess off. The only way is to buy (!!!) an separate application to kill this UI features - even more ridiculous!
3. The Jog-Dial: In earlier times Sony-Ericsson introduced with the P800 the Jog-Dial which was a kind of innovation - five dimensions: Up, down, forward, backward and the click. You can think about such a multi-dimensional user interface device what you want, but in the P800, P900 and P910 it worked like intended. Not in the P990i: The first point is, that only three dimensions are left: Up, down and click - Sony-Ericsson decided to make it easier. I can live with it, but I can't stand that again the user interface is the pain in the ass! If you want to scroll up or down in a list of entries and select one of the entries, there is a high probability, that the cursor moves automatically between two neighbour entries up and down. Another annoyance: If you have successfully selected one entry and push the Jog-Dial, there is a high probability, that the cursor moves to the neighbour entry, while you are pushing, because the force you applied to push the wheel also turns the wheel, because it has not enough resistance.
4. The Cursor: In earlier times the cursor was to show, where computer is currently expecting the user's input. If you are lucky, you can also see the cursor in the P990i's editors (e.g. for SMS or email writing, etc.). But in many cases you have to provide some input in a text area, before (!) the cursors shows up - ridiculous and absolutely annoying!

Email: When I think about, that I bought the P990, because the Nokia E61 was/is not able to synchronise (locally) e-mails with my desktop, I am wondering about what I have therefrom? Reason is, that synchronising emails between the P990i and my Lotus Notes client ends up in a deathless mess. First of all it takes ages to sync the mails and furthermore I am are not able to send mails from the device, when using the Lotus Notes account. This is because the format of the mails get messed by the sync, so that you lose all Carriage Return / Line Feed characters (CR/LF) - they are replaced by questions marks!
This could even happen, if you only open an existing mail which has been synced to the P990i and you only open it ones on the device. Afterwards it could be the case, that this mail is mutilated with question marks in your Lotus Notes - and all formatting is lost.

This should be a business device? I can't believe it!

Calendar: The first annoyance is, that the calender is not able to send invitations to email addresses of the synchronised Lotus Notes account. But the real killer application (in the truest sense of the word) is that the device - thanks to the PC Suite - is not able to recognize if a calendar entry or meeting has been rescheduled!

Sound: I am still wondering if a mobile phone, which has been released to the market in the 21st century could still lack basic telephony functionality? Oh yes, it could! A good example is the P990i. The sound quality which the device presents over the usual speaker or the loudspeaker rattles very often, so that you have to reduce the volume. But then it is to quietly. This ends up in a manual adjustment of the volume every time I place a call. For each call I have to adjust the volume again to find the right level between perceivability and distortion.

Finally - the SE website: In earlier times (with my P910) I found out, that the SE hotline is really useless to me, because I had more information than the guys / ladies at the phone, which was quite frustrating to me. So I did not call them again.
Instead I tried to find my luck on the SE websites, which was even more frustrating. While e.g. Nokia is able to address target group specific topics (e.g. business topics for business people, games/audio/video/fun for kids), Sony-Ericsson expects you are a teenager - even if you use the P990i. Which is placed in the market as the ultimate business tool.

This starts with getting addressed informally, when entering the website (in German: man wird geduzt) and continues with the topic "fun and downloads" (ring tones, games, etc.) in the section for existing customers. They (SE) do really not give me the impression, that they are prepared to handle existing professional customers or their needs. My assumption is that SE failed to clearly define the target group for the P990i, so they ended up in building a device which should make it for every (power) user.

All in all I would say, that the P990i is not usable as a business tool. Far from it! It hinders me more, than it helps. Sad but true! I don't know, why I have been waiting for this device so long. The problems are so fundamental, that I can not believe that any firmware update in a reasonable period of time could fix that. And I am sick of waiting, even more if I thing about the fact, that I have already spent 600 Euros for it. I am not willing to spend money for any functionality, which device should have onboard!

While closing this blog entry I am asking myself why I have spent again more than two hours of my time with this? I don't know. Maybe to compensate the frustration. Frustration after being a five year happy Sony-Ericsson user (P800, P910) - the P990i was probably my last device from this company.

By the way, not mentioned above: The absence of a VoIP client in the P990i even if Symbian OS9 has it, focus problems of the camera, missing possibility to stream mp3 via http from m3u playlists, problems with J2ME applications (e.g. MGTalk), etc....