The Most Advanced Phone
Written: Apr 01 '03
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Pros: Form factor, PDA features, Internet access
Cons: Sync software needs work, no belt clip, complex, expensive
The Bottom Line: If you want a great phone with PDA features, without the bulk of a PDA, this is it.
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| andypennell's Full Review: Sony Ericsson P800 GSM / EGSM Cellular Phone |
The P800 is a technological marvel: it is the most advanced cellphone available today. It is close to perfect for my needs, but there are some minor issues that bug me. My main reasons for choosing the P800 was that I wanted a cellphone with PDA features (like a decent Contacts and Calendar feature) to sync with my PC. I did not choose a PocketPC based phone as they are too large.
I got the P800 to replace my Ericsson T28, which was chosen based on its tiny size, and GSM dual-band features (I needed it to work in the UK). My wife has a T68i which was great in its day, but its Contacts feature was not sufficient for my needs (it doesn’t store addresses).
The P800 is bleeding-edge hardware: it took six months from the date I ordered it before it arrived. Its release was delayed several times by the manufacturers. This also means it is expensive: I got a SIM-free non-subsidized version for $700, which must make it the most expensive cellphone today.
The form-factor is very good indeed. It is slightly wider than most phones, but still a good size (bigger than a T68i but smaller than any PDA-based phone). It would fit perfectly on a belt, if only I could get a belt clip for it (sonyericsson.com lists one but it has yet to be in stock). For now I keep it in its supplied case in my pocket, which is not ideal but workable. The disadvantage is that it is hard to hear it ring when in there: the case does a great job of masking the noise, and also suppresses much of the ring-vibration. I find it weird that I cannot answer the phone by opening the flip cover (like a Star Trek communicator), I have to press a button as well.
The phone is stacked with features, for the full list see its web site: I will cover only those features that I use, and yet that still makes for a lengthy review. With the huge feature set comes complexity: you do have to read the manual, and some things are hard to set up (e.g. voice dialing took me hours to get working: I erroneously clicked on Done after getting it to record my voice: don’t do that, it will not save the recording). Once setup, voice dialing works well. This was a killer feature I expected, I loved it on my T28.
The stylus is very crude, but works well. Although it is possible to use your finger on the touchscreen, it is not very accurate, and popping the stylus off the side of the case is quick and easy. The phone comes with three spares so the makers expect you to lose a few.
The screen is gorgeous, as good as any PDA I have seen and better than any phone. It is very bright and easy to read. My phone came with a screen protector which dulls it slightly, but screen protectors are a good thing: my ancient Everex PocketPC screen was trashed by all the dragging required to play Solitaire.
The P800 comes with 16M of internal and 16M of external memory that plugs in the side. Unfortunately this external memory is a Memory Stick Duo (understandable given the Sony connection) but this is almost impossible to find, and much more expensive than SD memory for example. Sonystyle.com is the only place I could locate some, and only in the 64M size. Amazon lists Duo memory as discontinued: not a good sign. It does come with an adaptor so you can use it in a normal Memory Stick compatible device (e.g. my HP 2210 printer). The external memory is an easy and quick way to get larger files into and out of the device (eg MP3s) via your PC.
Synchronizing to a PC was a very important feature for me: life is too short to have multiple copies of everyone’s phone numbers and trying to manually keep them all up-to-date: that is what Outlook is for. I use Outlook 2002 on Windows XP. Installing the PC software was harder than it should have been, it took some messing to get the USB driver working. Once it was installed it is easy enough to use, but was not very reliable. I configured it to synchronize Contacts and Calendar from Outlook on my work PC, but it kept hanging. I have now learnt that exiting Outlook and doing a manual Sync (instead of auto-synching when plugging the phone into the base station) is 100% reliable, although not very fast. If the reliability of this process could be improved (I am using version 1.1) then I would sync via Bluetooth instead of USB, so I didn’t have to plug the phone into anything. My wife did this pretty successfully with her T68i and I am envious. Synchronizing my Calendar works very well and means I can go from one meeting to the next without having to return to my office to check where the next one is. Don't try syncing with Office 11 Beta: it crashes.
The P800 includes amazing internet features, but your carrier needs to support the right standards. I am a US T-Mobile customer, and while T-Mobile themselves do not (as of April 1 2003) offer the P800, they are aware of it and on request they enabled data access and sent me an SMS configuration message to make everything work. The P800 has a full HTML web browser, though the screen size makes this useful only if you are desperate. It works about the same speed as an old-fashioned modem. T-Mobile offers a WAP-based service called T-Zones and this works very well: I can quickly and easily get Movie times for my local cinemas. T-Zones has other features (eg stock quotes) but the Movies option is the killer app for me. The P800 supports SMS text messages, of course, plus also EMS & MMS which are graphical messages. However T-Mobile don’t support EMS/MMS currently. If you have an SMTP/POP3 email account you can also send and receive email on your phone. All this internet goodness costs money though: check the small print with your carrier. T-Mobile charge $2.99/month for basic data, which has a 1M limit. Go over that and it is $10/Mbyte, and it is easy to blow through those limits when using the HTML browser, especially as one of the two supplied Bookmarks is for a steaming video site. Web video is cool to show off the phone, but took me past my 1M limit immediately before I realized it. T-Mobile do have other options, but the cheapest is still $1/Mbyte.
The built-in music player works well on the few MP3 files I tried, though the internal speaker makes them sound pretty rough. With headphones quality is good. It supports a range of file formats including MP3 and WAV. Ring-tones can be any of the supported formats too, no more crude beeps: you can use any music or sound effect as your ring-tone.
The built-in camera is ok but not great. There is no flash and the performance in low-light situations is poor. It is perfectly acceptable for taking peoples pictures to add to the Contact information, so you can get video-caller-id and show their pictures on the Quick Call screen. I have tried to use it to capture whiteboard jottings from meetings, but the max resolution of 640x480 isn’t quite enough to get a usable copy. You cannot record video, although you can play video files. Sadly only MPEG4 format video is supported, which is not at all common (yet anyway).
The Jotter application I find very useful at work. It saves me dragging my laptop to most meetings, and the handwriting recognition works pretty well. It cannot handle joined-up writing (aka cursive) but for small notes it's great.
Although I haven’t used it yet, the P800 has a special mode where its radios (GSM and Bluetooth) can be turned off, so you can use the PDA features (and games) while on an aircraft, a very good idea. The supplied games are not great, but you can download extra ones from the supplied CD and from the internet.
I do love this phone. The hardware is excellent, and the software is very full featured. It even improves my productivity at work. I just hope the PC sync software gets an upgrade.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 700
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Epinions.com ID:
andypennell
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Reviews written: 7
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