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How satisfied are you with your SE P990i? |
bangsters
Joined: Mar 12, 2004
Posts: 124
From: USA
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still using my p910 but want to retire it (takes 5-10 mins to power on for some reason)...but wondering if i should go p990 or wait for p1i....p990 can be purchased lessthan 400 
so wait p1i or got get p990i?
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bjorne
Joined: Mar 14, 2002
Posts: 126
From: Spain
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I would recommend to go for it if you get a good price. When the improved battery comes (BST-40 I beleive) it will be even better, now a weakness for sure if used much, doesnt last a day.
Music, picture, email (active sync), calender, TomTom now works ok, but Swiss Manager is a must
Good luck
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Azizan
Joined: May 26, 2007
Posts: 1
From: Malaysia
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how about the new firmware?
R9F ?
any feedback from this firmware?
got seller at my place (Malaysia)
sell this p990i that come w/ this firmware
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suland
Joined: Sep 06, 2006
Posts: 122
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I would definately get a P990i. Prices are really going down now. You can get it for just $335 (here in US). P1i does not have one of the best things on a cell phone...the transformerable flip. This feature really rocks as you can have it for couple months and then just changing it to non-flip version makes your phone looking brand new again with new looks. The only major difference is the 3MP camera, but I doubt it brings shots as at least k810i. So, 100% - P990i. Oh..and that awkward keyboard on P1i is really a step back against P990i.
Good luck! |
ttsng
Joined: Nov 09, 2006
Posts: 61
PM |
After F9 update, it is stable. But it is still lack of 3rd party application and no EDGE support. I think I will try Nokia N82 in Q4. |
razec
Joined: Aug 20, 2006
Posts: > 500
From: Mars
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nobody have mentioned the start-up ram available of the P990 after turning off the transitions. can someone tell me how much have improved?
10 years at Esato |
zoom2007
Joined: May 25, 2007
Posts: 6
From: Down Under
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So you want to know about the P990i...
I had a P900 for 2.5 years before I got my hands onto the P990. Mind you, since the P990 was so delayed I advised my brother to buy an iMate. I then bought the P990i.
Here's the good, the bad and the ugly:
The good:
Music --> Not too loud, but sounds great with the headphones and easily managed. I love the bass! I listen to the same MP3s on my IBM PC and the P990 definitely sounds better!
Camera --> 2MP maybe but I compared it to all non-SE phones and the camera on the P990i is better then all of them. Actually the colors and clarity are comparable to a proper digital camera. Auto focus is brilliant, macro is excellent and I tested the flash in complete darkness and it is good enough. Video is much better as well. There are two problems though: 1 - The auto focus does not work well when you zoom in for still photos. 2 - There is no autofocus for the video.
E-mail --> Brilliant. Easy to setup. Just go to the SE website and but the details in, you'll then get a message and your e-mail is setup. This is one of the best things about buying an SE phone, you know that the company is not just pumping out phones without any thought to service.
Calendar --> Brilliant. Have all my appointments and reminders there. Birthdays, etc. Set repeats. Very easy to use.
Alarms --> Three different alarms with multitude of settings. I have one setup for workdays and another just on Saturdays.
Clock --> I am in Australia and keeping track of UK timezone at the same time.
Messaging --> I love it. I set it up for two languages and the phone is brilliant at picking up which language I am using. Since its a PDA you can also store many more "personal words" then any other phone.
The look --> I think it looks much better then any other PDA out there.
Touch screen --> Since the P900, SE has had the best hand writing recognition and this continues.
The keyboard --> Easy to use. I can type reasonably fast on it and without many mistakes.
Games --> Don't know about anyone else, but Vijay Singh Golf is almost like playing it on a PC. Mind you the performance of this game is so good I wonder why the other Apps like Quick Office run so slow. Maybe gameloft should start writing applications for PDAs!
Radio --> Easy to use and easy to setup. Love it.
Business Card Scanner --> Pretty good. Depends on the card design but is correct about 85% of the time.
Storage --> You can use up to 4GB MS Duo Pro. I have a 2GB version in there at the moment and that is plenty.
Connections --> Bluetooth, InfraRed and Wireless LAN all easily setup and easily used.
The bad and the ugly:
Quick Office --> Hyped as an excellent application but I find that it can't handle any medium to large sized files. The application is so slow that I type 3 words by the time it registers the first one. Annoying really.
3G --> I am 100% convinced there is a design fault on the 3G circuitry of this phone. If you turn off the 3G the battery lasts about 3 days. If you turn on the 3G, then the battery lasts about 8 hours whether or not you use the 3G features. So it looks like there is a current leak somewhere. So if you're after 3G functionality, don't buy the P990i. The new battery (BST-40, currently scheduled for July) might improve life a bit, but I am sure it won't last more then 10 hours anyway.
The camera --> As mentioned above, autofocus struggles when zoomed in and video doesn't have autofocus.
Sound recording --> Great for normal use, but I try to record the phone conversation I get an error message. So, not impressed.
Restarts --> The phone shuts itself down and restarts randomly to "improve performance". Nice, but there is no warning that it is about to do this or that it has done it. E.g. if you left the phone on your desk and it restarted then you will not know about it till the next time you pick it up. After the restart it waits for you to choose "Phone or Flight Mode". I think SE could easily set this so that the phone restarts on whichever mode it was in before the phone decided to turn itself off.
Overall, am I glad I bought this phone? Yes
Is it much better then my P900? Not that much. The main reason I bought this phone was for the 3G and the Quick Office and they are both disappointing.
Is it better then my brohter's iMate? Not sure. Personally I like the fact that the P990 looks better, definitely has a much better camera and the numeric key pad is very handy. However, his phone is much faster, lasts longer and has other extra features (although he doesn't use them).
Could I use anything else? Not really. I gave up on Nokia's about 5 years ago and not planning to go back. The convenience of a PDA is too great to miss.
I could not have waited for the P1xxx myself. And to be honest I am not even sure when it will come out. Don't think SE will bring out anything to replace the P990 before they get their money's worth from this model. Besides, with the P990 SE made so many mistakes (for one thing it hit the market very very late) that I think they'll be planning the next one much better.
There's my two cents worth, hope it helps you guys make a decision.
BTW if any of you are from Australia, the phone is not available here at the moment. But I bought one from the UK and am using it on a Vodafone plan. No network problems whatsoever. I have also been told that although not publicly announced, the phone has been approved for use on the Vodafone network.
For those that are on Telstra, don't hold your breath. I was told at the Telstra Shop that Telstra has decided they won't be supporting it. This doesn't mean that it won't work on Telstra network, it just means that it is not supported. |
bjorne
Joined: Mar 14, 2002
Posts: 126
From: Spain
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to Razec:
RAM has improved after the possibility to turn transisions off (a must), you get around 20-21% at startup (for me with active sync auto-started) but still the RAM-management is crap, when you close an application - its still open in the background, its solved with SM, I dont know any other way to do it (close the application). Should a machine in the category really need a 3rd party software??
to Zoom2007
Good conclusion!
After the new FM my P990 never do the restart-thing, and before I keept it under control, more or less, with SM. I dont use the camera much though. |
701
Joined: Nov 26, 2002
Posts: > 500
From: Romania
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I felt I have to include here my request. As I posted a few pages back i think my P990i is crap especially cuz it can't do one basic thing that I need from it and others like the M600i and P910i do: it can't run Opera, the music player and sometimes (just sometimes) the Agile Messenger at the same time.It can only run the music player and when opening the browser,the phone crashes by closing down one of them or both. i was never able to run the Agile Mess while browsing the net. Now. I know it's crap but I want you guys to gimme some kind of solution at least for running Opera and the music player at the same time.My partial solution is to use Opera mini and the music player and it works but the internet functions are crippled. Ares suggested to start both apps from SPM and I did but no luck,still crashes. I was thinking about another music player consuming less resources but I don't think so as the ones made by SE should be the best written programs. can you suggest me some other mp3 player? Please run it on yours if you already have it and tell how many kb's consumes from the ram available and i'l do some comparing. And if any1 has that IM+ messenger,can you pls how much eats from your Ram?I'd like to buy it if it's better than Agiles and consumes less Ram. 10x
" They say i'm sick; they`re right, it's called 'Terminal Boredom!' " Follow me on twitter.com/bogramaRead my Symbian UIQ 3.0 reviews at Juvo's |
zakc
Joined: Aug 28, 2006
Posts: 68
From: Exeter, UK
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I got mine a couple weeks before release and it's a vodafone branded one. I've been pretty chuffed with it and the only time i've updated it using seus was a week ago. Getting Tomtom for it really bought the tool to life. And the 4gb msdp card satisfies all my media storage needs. The headphones that come with it are a bit lame so i bought the HPM-82, which makes it a reasonable mp3 player. Sucks that it doesn't play wma but I'm hoping there's a player out to buy that does.
I get a free upgrade every nine months with vodafone, but last week I told them that I was ok for the time being because my set is doing well for me.
If you do get one, then make sure you also get a screen protector. |
doministry
Joined: Apr 13, 2007
Posts: > 500
From: PL
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Just 1 comment.
I use 3G all the time and in fact it is just perfect on that device. 1.5 days with heavy usage of mail and web. |
rkv
Joined: May 30, 2004
Posts: 5
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I own a P800, P900, P910 and P990 and I would strongly recommend the P990 over its predecessors. I bought all of these except for the P990 when they were first released. There was so much bad press including in this forum that I let myself be scared off. It was only six months ago that I finally decided to get one. I was very happy when I upgraded from the P900 to the P910 and felt that it was a much more usable device. I feel similary about the P990. It's a much bigger improvement than either of the previous two upgrades. I don't know if I was just lucky and happened to wait long enough for all the software issues to settle down. My own suspicion is that I should have bought it much earlier. To me the major upgrade in usability is that it really does multi-task better than any of the other P series phones. Principally due to more memory and some better builtin task management software.
I'm using less third party software on this phone, particularly in the area of the organizer and calendar, in part because the P990's offering is much stronger than it's predecessors.
As to complaints, the qwerty keyboard isn't a hit with me. It seems like it is slower than those found on blackberrys. Although this might be my fingers being too big or my not being patient enough to try it for long enough.
My only pet pieves are that the jog dial in combination with the menus is a downgrade from the P910 for those of us who liked to use the phone single handed and without a stylus. I find I can more readily operate the P910 single handedly than the P990. This is due to both the reduced jog dial functionality and its interaction with the menus of the new OS and applications. My only other negative comment is that the display while having received rave reviews for colour and resolution performs extremely poorly in direct sunlight.
If one wants a phone where you can run many different applications, take notes with handwriting recognition then the P990 is certainly a worthy upgrade in the P series. The only competing products which are generally lower quality in their phone performance would be PDA based devices. My recommendation is to buy one if you would like something in the next six months or wait for the P1 which should hopefully really be available by year end. I plan on getting a P1, mostly because of the smaller size and my wanting to try the different keyboard.
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zoom2007
Joined: May 25, 2007
Posts: 6
From: Down Under
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Right, I just checked the specs for the P1 and I have mixed feelings:
Positives:
- Smaller
- Better camera
- Possibly better operating system (we can't tell until we get to use it)
- 160MB internal memory should really ensure all apps run extremely well
Negatives:
- Expandable memory only 512MB??? How big a downgrade is that?
- No EDGE
- Not quadband (i.e. no 850MHz support)
- Quasi QWERTY keyboard? Lets lose the best thing on the P990i!
I love SE phones, but did they replace the head of the PDA division? The PDas used to be so good... I guess there's more money in things like the Walkman Phones. Or maybe it is the branding - some marketing guru must have said "the phones should have a similar image".
I don't want a PDA that looks like a Walkman phone, a PDA is supposed to be a "class above".
Please SE, get this one right...
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my_p990i
Joined: Dec 12, 2006
Posts: 91
From: Cebu, Phils.
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On 2007-05-26 13:35:53, zakc wrote:
I got mine a couple weeks before release and it's a vodafone branded one. I've been pretty chuffed with it and the only time i've updated it using seus was a week ago. Getting Tomtom for it really bought the tool to life. And the 4gb msdp card satisfies all my media storage needs. The headphones that come with it are a bit lame so i bought the HPM-82, which makes it a reasonable mp3 player. Sucks that it doesn't play wma ....
the latest firmware now plays wma files...it would be best to have an unbranded/unlocked device so you can easily update to a newer firmware once they release it at SEUS |
ares
Joined: Dec 11, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: Coimbra, Portugal
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701, like i already said, the phone runs the browser and media player easily at same time, if someone says the media player crashes upon loading the browser thats not normal at all...
your phone seems to need a format internal drive + reflash + no restore of old backups procedure
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http://pbase.com/ares - photography by ares aka antonioj
[ This Message was edited by: ares on 2007-05-26 20:02 ] |
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Posted: 2007-05-25 18:35
