The Sony Ericsson P800 is a big winner!

Sony Ericsson P800The Sony Ericsson P800 has got to be one of the most anticipated mobile phones of all time. As of the time I am writing this, it is still not quite available. Most sources are guessing a delivery date of January 2003, and it is currently the beginning of November 2002 as I write this.

So, what that means is this is not a production P800 I am testing. ANYTHING SAID HERE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Just because something didn't work for me, or was buggy, don't expect that it will be the same in 2 months when the real P800 is made available. Lemme make this clear again:

THIS REVIEW IS OF A PRE-PRODUCTION P800. ALL BUGS AND PROBLEMS ARE LIKELY TO CHANGE.

Ok, with that out of the way, on to the phone. In short, the P800 is a triband GSM Smartphone that supports GPRS (4+1) and HSCSD (2+1) for data, Bluetooth and irDA for connectivity, runs the Symbian OS with the UIQ interface, and has a 208x320 TFT 4096 color touch screen. It has a typical PDA form factor, and the typical PDA apps. In fact, given the ability to install new applications on the P800, it seems more PDA than phone on the surface. But it has most all of the phone features you would expect and is smaller in size than many PDAs.

I need a phone.
One of the big debates in the wireless world is what works better, a single device that does everything, or a PDA and phone combination. I'll say straight up that I sit in the "two devices" camp, favoring getting the best of both pieces and having the option to carry only the phone with me. But the P800 has me thinking about that a bit. So let's talk about the phone aspects of the P800 first.

The P800 has a nice voice dialing system. It supports the "magic word" feature that is seen in many other Ericsson and Sony Ericsson devices. How it works is that the phone is always listening to what is going on around it. When it hears the "magic word" that you programmed it with, it will prompt you for a voice dial command. Being the clever person that I am, I programmed it to respond to the word "P800." So as the phone is sitting quietly on my desk, I merely say "P800" and it will beep a prompt asking for a name of a contact to dial. The system works really well, better than on prior Sony Ericsson models. If I mention P800 in a sentence, it ignores it. But if I say it on its own, it picks it up. That means it won't prompt me when I say something like "Hey, check out my new phone. It is a P800." Once it prompts you for a name, you can speak any name that you have recorded for a contact in the phone. The recognition is great. One time I was calling myself, as I do often in these tests, but only managed a crackly congested sounding grunt that faintly resembled the word "Michael", due to the lingering effects of a cold. The P800, much to my surprise, matched it and dialed. The best recognition I have come across so far.

One feature that all mobile phones should have, but often don't, is a speakerphone. The R520m had one of these years ago and I thought it was the greatest thing. Well, the P800 has one, too. It, too, is pretty cool. It could probably stand to have a higher maximum volume, but it was very clear sounding and comfortable to listen to.

Of course the P800 also has the typical stuff like speed dialing, and call history. The call history system is better than that found in the T68 series, in that it always lists a separate entry for each call made. So if you miss two calls from the same number, you will know the time that each of them came in, not just the most recent one, with a (2) listed behind it signifying that they called twice.

One phone related item is noticeably missing from the P800, though. Profiles. There is no real profile support in the P800. You configure the rings and volumes to the way you like them normally. Then you have the option to put the phone into silent mode, but that is it. This is not really adequate. I personally always make use of a "meeting" profile that uses subtle beeps in addition to the internal vibration alert. I think people will miss this functionality, and I hope that it will be present in the final production version.

I need a PDA.
The other side of the two-in-one coin is, of course, the PDA functionality of the P800. To qualify as a PDA in my book, not only does the device need to support the typical PDA apps like calendaring and contacts, but it needs a relatively large display and, most importantly, a real method of data entry. Typically a keyboard or a touch screen. This is what rules out devices like the Nokia 7650 (though the newly announced Nokia 6800 is really blurring the distinction between phone and PDA).

 

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