Bidding my P990i goodbye!

September 12th, 2007 by venki

Sony Ericsson P990i, before this phone was launched there was a great buzz among the Sony Ericsson P-series users. It had great expectations to live upto. Having a good fan base for their PDA series SE launched P990i with some much needed upgrades like -

WiFi
Better QWERTY keyboard
Backlight on the keyboard
2MP camera with Flash

Its a tradition for SE users to face software bugs and slowperformance whenever a new handset is launched. Firmware upgrade andperformance tweaks follow immediately.

The good part of P990i was the easy firmware upgrade offered by SonyEricsson. Users could upgrade the firmware by downloading the new file fromSE website and use their Data Cable to upgrade.

The newer firmware did satisfy me, but the lack of EDGE was killing me. I never subscribes to GPRS as the rates are too high and i wouldn’t have enjoyed that speed on the P990i. So i stuck to my good old WiFi network.

Messaging is good (thx to the QWERTY Keyboard). I always preferred using my P990i without the Kaypad (see pic). And once i got some expertise with the keyboard shortcuts i was happy. But again the interface and usability isn’t something an average user can handle. Personally i feel getting used to a Treo (Palm) was easier than this.

Talking about the interface to be very frank it was not very user friendly. Had a hard time the first couple of days, but once u get use to it (if you at all do) its a gem.

The biggest disappointment for me was the excessive price slash. The set in India came down from INR 22000 to INR 13500 in 3 months. I just cant see any TDH carrying a P series who doesn’t even understand 50% of the features. The set became too common and combined with the bulky design and complicated interface it was a failure for me.

As far as the other features of the phone go, the camera of the phone is just 2Mp (which was the standard then) with flash, the quality of the pictures are also decent, Night shots were good (for a 2MP mobile Cam)

Currently the set sells at a mere Rs 13999 and i have upgraded to a HTC Touch (Review Coming Soon)