Sony Ericsson P900 review
Nov 4, 2003

Software
Luckily it was very easy to transfer my contacts from the P800 to the P900. All my 70+ entries where transferred within seconds using a Bluetooth connection. Even the pictures associated with my contacts was beemed over to the P900. There is no need to install any PC applications for this task.

The P900 fits nicely in the palm of your hand

One of the applications I use most on the P800 is Messaging. Checking email while I'm on the road is a simple task with the P800. But I receive a lot of spam email each day, and have chosen not to download the entire message before I know whom it is from. It is not amusing to receive 40 annoying "Install this patch from Microsoft" email virus to a mobile phone. To prevent this from happen I usually configure the phone to download messages smaller than 3Kb or only download the headers. This usually filters out messages with attachments, and other unwanted spam emails. But when using the P800 and text size set to small, only a part of the sender name and the subject of the message are visible. Sony Ericsson has solved this on the P900 by displaying more information about the incoming messages. Two lines of text are shown for each message. The first one reviles the senders name and email address plus the time (if received today) or date. The second line shows the subject of the message.

Received MMS messages are by default show in full screen view. Why didn't Sony Ericsson think of this before? It has never been a huge problem with the P800 because of the large display, but on older models (T68i, T610) the MMS presentation is never like the sender intended it to be.

You will need a screwdriver to remove or attach the flip

The new File Manager application installed on the P900 makes the organization of files easier than on the P800. With this application you have access to the same files as you can see when you connect the device to a PC. You can of course download QFileMan from the Symbian (maker of the P800/P900 operation system) site for free, but Sony Ericsson did not initially include this application with the P800. The File Browser is not as powerful as the QFileMan. You can only browse, rename, copy, move and beam user data. I.e. images, documents, sounds, other and video files. While the QFileMan will let you do this even with hidden OS files. The only advantage of the File Browser compared to the QFileMan is that you also can manage files outside the Memory Stick duo multimedia file handling (MMFH) system. This could be useful if you have used the Memory Stick duo in a digital camera and want to transfer images to a folder in the P900 file system. If you only use the Memory Stick duo in the phone, I think there is no need to swap your P800 with a P900 because of this application alone.

The user interface as an overall has been improved. You are now able to edit images directly from the Picture application. Something you only could do when an image was inserted in a MMS message before. Another shortcuts in the Picture application are the "Set as wallpaper". On all Messaging applications the often-used "New" function is added as one click button in the bottom of the screen. None of these improvements are essential but they shorten the time it takes to do many often-used tasks. I am sure old P800 owners find them welcome.

The P900 has probably the same camera found in the P800

An attractive addition is the Video application. With a click on the camera button, you have instant access to the Sony Ericsson QuickShare system. Click on the camera button and scroll the wheel to access one of the applications: Video, Message video, Message picture, Outdoor camera, Indoor camera, Night camera or Auto camera. Individual settings are possible for each of these settings. For instance: You can adjust the Indoor modus with high quality and high resolution while the Outdoor could be set to low quality and low resolution. This is a nice touch from Sony Ericsson. They obviously had a visit from Sony's camera division. With the Video application the recording length is limited only by free memory. Videos are saved as MPEG-4 files. If you select the "Message video", application files are also saved in the MPEG-4 format, but with the file extension .3GP. The 3GP files are ideally used in MMS messages and streaming. There is a 11 seconds or 95Kb file size recording limit using this modus and the quality of the recording is adjustable but the resolution is not. Other settings in the Video application are three levels of resolution, three levels of quality, brightness, contrast, backlight, flicker free, lighting, delay timer and finally "Video limit" which can be set to No limit, Messaging limit, Memory-limited and Time-limited. These limits are adjusted by using the stylus to drag a slide bar. Owners of digital cameras have probably heard of EXIF. If not, you have probably seen the information stored by EXIF. EXIF is hidden information stored in image files. Some of the information you will find in pictures taken with the P900 are make (SONY ERICSSON), model (SONY ERICSSON P900), resolution, date of time the picture was taken plus more.

Themes are familiar stuff for owners of colour display Sony Ericsson mobile phones. This time Sony Ericsson has added this option to the P900 as well. By switching themes, the colour and background image gets a personal look and feel. Something proven popular for other Sony Ericsson models.

Sony Ericsson is promoting a "New MP3 Music Player". I can't see much difference from the old one found in the P800. Yes, you can now use MP3 files as ring tones, alarm tones, MMS notification, SMS notification etc. but I do not feel this classifies as a brand new application announcement. The main improvements are support for RMF and iMelody file types. In addition to this the player now show information hidden in MP3 files about the artist name, album title and track title.

Playing VRally on the P900. View video (1.1 Mb)

Bluetooth improvements
Sony Ericsson has added Bluetooth FTP transfer protocol to the P900. The P800 only supported Object Push Profile (OPP) as a way to transfer files between devices. The lack of FTP profile in the P800 has been talked about several times before in our discussion forum. FTP profile is often needed if you want to transfer files between other Bluetooth enabled devices. The FTP profile is more widespread, and not all devices support the OPP profile.

Other features
In addition to the funtionality mentioned above, does the P900 have almost the same capabilities and software as the P800. To mention a few: Internet browser (both WAP, XHTML and HTML pages), calendar, tasks, jotter (notepad), sound recorder, viewer (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, PDF files), SyncML, Java, Mophun, games and more.

Conclusion
I have seen web shops selling the P800 for €649 and the P900 for €1032. I do not think the supplementary Sony Ericsson P900 features are worth the extra EUR 383. The prices above are collected before the P900 is available at leading mobile phone distributors. If you already own a Sony Ericsson P800, I would recommend you to wait until the price drop a little bit. However, owners of P800 are more likely to be early adopters and often swap phones compared to regular users. P900 is one of the best handsets out there and if you are willing to pay the price, I can certainly recommend the model.

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