The new Sony-Ericsson smart phone P-800

[Ed Hansberry]

At CeBIT, I got a chance to play with the new Symbian based smart phone for about 20 minutes. This is a very very cool device. It is well below 6 ounces, though just a bit thick for a phone, but not too much. Certainly worth the tradeoff given what the device does. The screen is great, 320 X 208 I think, reflective and side-lit, like all of the Pocket PC 2002 devices. Overall it seem well constructed, though I think they purchased the design schematics for their stylus from the HP Jornada 54x series and sliced it in half. Ugly and like using one those flat wooden ice cream spoons from 2nd grade.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/cebit2002/p800-1.jpg" /> <br /><br />It has a 1,000 milliamp battery, and the guy told me several times it would get 8 hrs of talk time, though I am not convinced he is talking about Earth hours. 8 hrs of talk time from a side-lit 16 bit touch screen device with only a 1,000 milliamp battery? Ok bub, whatever you say.<br /><br />You've seen the specs on what it can do here and elsewhere (music, take pictures, email, etc.) but as far as I know, few have had one to play with until this week. I can tell you one thing that will disappoint you and make you think twice about getting it. This thing is slow. HP Jornada 525 slow. Their sample devices had various data synced to them so I played with its inbox. It took about 3-4 seconds to launch the inbox app, than another 2-3 seconds to open an email. Then you could watch it redraw the screen line by line as it struggled to open a 15k Word DOC file with just text in it - which is cool - it has a Word, Excel and PowerPoint view, though I couldn't test the latter two. But <b>dog slow.</b> Lets hope the code hasn't been optimized yet, but we will need to see 50%+ improvements in speed.<br /><br />I also took a few pics with it. It can take 640X480 VGA pics, and takes them pretty quickly, though with no storage slot available, you won't be able to go on vacation and leave your other camera behind. A Memory Stick model is coming. The problem was opening the photo preview app. The app itself opened quick enough, but took at least 5 seconds to display each of the three thumbnails it had stored. No way to stop it once opened from displaying thumbnails that either me or the Sony-Ericsson rep could figure out, so if your device had more than 4-5, prepare for a wait and a painful scroll process.<br /><br />I know battery life is important, but not so important as to hamper the user experience. What good does it do to have 50% longer battery life if you have to <b><i>use</i></b> the device 50% longer to get things done?<br /><br />One design decision I question is the keypad. It isn't electronic. It is just a bunch plastic buttons that push through the keypad area. When you close the keypad, it triggers an app to launch behind the buttons that tracks the buttons pushed through to the screen. Not only will this wear on the screen, screen misalignment will cause you not to be able to easily dial, and using the keypad forces you to lose whatever info was on the top half of the screen as it goes into the "keypad" app with the device menu at the top.<br /><br />Those points aside, this is an <b>impressive</b> device, especially for a first crack. I am now more convinced than ever that mini-PC like devices are the future and that Symbian and Microsoft are on the right track with their multitasking OS's. The ability to do multiple things simultaneously without thinking about it. Zap out an SMS message, reply to an email, record a voice memo, IM chat, browse the web, the real web, not WAP or some text based facsimile that went out with the Lynx browser.<br /><br />PIM is assumed. It is no longer the focus. No longer the reason for buying a device. It is just assumed that your digital device is competent at doing it. It is about communication and information. I don't know who will win this war for mobile device dominance, or if anyone will win it, but with OS's like Smartphone 2002 and Symbian out, Palm is sooooo in trouble if OS5 doesn't exceed the low expectations they presented in PalmSource back in February. The Treo, only a month old, looks so 90's already, despite being a compelling hardware design.

[Jason Dunn]

Here are the full size images:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/cebit2002/p800-1.jpg

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/cebit2002/p800-2.jpg

[Janak Parekh]

Couple quick comments:

Battery life: If anyone can do 8 hours, Ericsson can. The T68 has fantastic battery life for a color-display unit: I use about 10% total each day.

Speed: The Ericsson T68 is also quite slow, so I'm not optimistic here.

My concern about the Symbian-based units is availability of 3rd-party software: I have a feeling that Smartphone 2002 will be much more aggressively sold to developers. We'll see, though :)

Re PalmOS: they require the multiple of 160x160 display, and to me, such constraining is terrible: they tie the UI to the underlying OS. I noticed this in particular when I did PalmOS development. Both Symbian's OS and Microsoft's OS don't have any such constraints (e.g., the front end UI is somewhat flexible, especially wrt resolution), so you'll see it many shapes and sizes. On the flip side, you can use any PalmOS application on any PalmOS smartphone. The question is, will people want to as a tradeoff for a physically bigger unit?

(btw, I'm not referring to the soft graffiti issue per se; I'm looking forward to Symbian and Smartphone 2002 units that have, say, a 120x240 display to accomodate a phone that has a narrower but taller screen...)

--bdj

[jlp]

though with no storage slot available, ... A Memory Stick model is coming.

a) looks like they always rush models to market; how good is such a powerful multimedia device that doesns't have an expansion slot nowadays?

and b) Since Sony is part of the deal they will push their stinking MemorySICK, arrh no MemorySINK, oh no sorry: MemorySTINKS proprietary slot and only Sony freaks will buy it.

No wait !!! I WAS a Sony freak until... a) they got very nasty with heavily restricting consumers' rights with digital content and b) went alone and made this proprietary MemorySTINKS/MagicHATE slot.

And I'm sure the P800M will sport the MagicHATE version of their MemorySTINKS slot. A close look at their 3G phone, as portrayed on the front page (for now) hints on this.

[werty]

Only way to connect internet is troughts GPRS.
With PocketPC it is possible to connect with WLAN,BT,Modem...

No memory card slot = no MP3 listening.

"Symbian OS is based on open standards."
Really ?

[Chubbergott]

Only way to connect internet is troughts GPRS.
With PocketPC it is possible to connect with WLAN,BT,Modem...

Hmmmm, it would seemto be a shame. Choice is never a bad thing. However, the networks in the UK (at least) charge data calls on GSM by the second while GPRS is by the Megabyte. This in mind, along with the added benefit of 'always on' technology, I don't see that this is going to be such a problem.


No memory card slot = no MP3 listening.

This is my biggest gripe. No doubt, models will be released with some standardised slots. Until then, I'll have to boil in silence.


"Symbian OS is based on open standards."
Really ?

Yes! Really! Cool eh?

I also question the physical design. I hope it comes in more 'subtle' shades! And that keypad!? Euch!

As for battery power, I think it would probably be more accurate to say 'up to 8 hours' which allows for the right temperature, screen brightness, currently running applications, time of day, mother's maiden name and cat's sexuality...

However, I can say without a word of a lie that I can be a whole shift (8.5 hours) in work with my Commiunicator on, medium brightness and connected to a PC while taking the odd call, making the odd call (both on speakerphone) and making the odd data call and the battery is only down by two bars (with two left). If this little beastie has a smaller performance factor with fewer power draining features, I reckon they could be quite close to actuality.

Thanks for this honest, open minded and <U>balanced</U> article Ed, but I don't think we can rubbish palm until we see what OS5 will be.

[Timothy Rapson]

MemorySTINKS/MagicHATE slot.





:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[dochall]

The flip keypad could well be a nightmare. The R380 really suffered from quality problems in this exact area.

[Chubbergott]

The flip keypad could well be a nightmare. The R380 really suffered from quality problems in this exact area.


Agree with you there mate, espacially if it is detatchable. It won't be long before people start losing them.