I've had a chance to play with a Sony Ericsson P800, on T-mobile, for the last little while, a much heralded "2.5g" cellphone. I have a bit of a phone fetish. So how do I like this current darling of the phone fansites?

I've used a RIM Blackberry as a portable email inbox for over a year, but when I saw that the SE P800 phone offered POP3 email handling, handwriting recognition, SMS, and a no compromise phone, all in one package, I was keen to try it out. It seemed on paper like a better option than the new phone enabled blackberry.

Since the P800 is a GSM tri-band phone, and I am a t-mobile GSM customer, it is painless to transfer ones SIM card from ones old phone to a later model one, no matter if the phone was purchases from ebay, or from a UK store with a US outlet on the web. All hail the advantages of GSM, over Sprint phones!

So I ordered the full package. The P800, a 128mb memory stick, a bluetooth headset, and a bluetooth USB adaptor for my home PC. Ouch! thats a lot of money! In theory, this combination would give me seamless (and wireless) operation between my PC and the phone, and offer a neat wireless star-trek like headset as well, for driving, or just looking like an idiot at the local coffee shop.

First impressions.

The phone itself is a fairly hefty item compared to recent samsung or other japanese handsets. Weighing in at about 150grams, it is literally twice as heavy as the latest clamshell or stick designs. the case is also not nearly as sturdy looking, with visible joins, in a flimsy plastic and a cheesy baby blue color (a grey color is reportedly now available as a choice). Although enthusiasts report dropping their P800 without breaking it, I don't feel that any device over 100 grams can survive too many trips out of a shirt pocket onto concrete.


Rather thin plastic, don't you think?

The semi opaque plastic flip, which contains the keypad, and uses the backlit screen as a backlight for the numbers, is the first decision for any new P800 owner. To remove or not to remove? It seems that SE couldn't decide either, so they included an additional plastic cover that obscures the hinge should you wish to remove the flip completely. The user interface on the phone without a flip changes slightly as well. Certainly the phone looks better flip removed, but operating it one handed without a flip is more difficult, and unclipping the attached stylus do do anything (with no flip, fingers cannot operate the user interface so well) is a pain.



Key Features

Anyone who reads specs or glowing reviews of the P800 soon finds out the following: the phone is a digital camera. It can also play compressed video clips (although not as yet record them). It plays music such as mp3s and other formats. It is an organiser, with a task list, calendar, jotter for pictures or notes. It also is able to browse the web either with its built in browser or with a free version of Opera. It is an email client too, able to use POP and IMAP email servers, and display microsoft office and acrobat attachments as well as text. It can of course send or receive pictures as well. Quite a list! in fact, if all things go well, it challenges your digitial camera, your mp3 player, your PDA, your blackberry and your laptop or palmtop PC, to all put themselves into a drawer and start gathering dust.


The application list. With a tiny scroll bar.

The Reality

Unfortunately the reality, as I soon found out playing around with it over the last few days, is that the P800 excels at nothing, and has a number of annoying drawbacks.

The Camera


Digital camera vs phone. Click for full size.

Is good for headshots or fun shots only. Although the resolution is not impossibly bad, the colors are far less vibrant than any average digital camera, the merest hint of grease on the lens (easy as it has no cover, and is indented on the case of the camera) blurs any picture, and the quality indoors is terrible (no flash, of course). Since the focus is fixed, you can't even use it like a "spy camera" to snap documents.


Keeping the lens clean is a fulltime job

The email client

The email client can be set, if you have bottomless pockets (see GPRS charges, later), and a bottomless battery (see battery, later), to check your email box at most every 15 minutes. For anyone coming from the "push" world of a blackberry, this alone makes the email function unacceptable. Even if urgency is of no consequence, typing more than a word or two in reply to an email is like assembling a tiny jigsaw puzzle with gloves on, as the on-screen keyboard is just too narrow for the stylus to use quickly. So the email client is reduced to one for sending an unprompted message to a friend of the variety of "hey! I got a new phone! check out this attached picture!".

The SMS/MMS system

MMS, the multi-media extension to SMS, is not available on all networks yet, and/or costs extra. I did not try MMS. SMS works ok, but as the phone currently lacks predictive text input, or "t9" - that most useful of inventions that makes one handed message sending so possible - SMS becomes a sit down with two-hands experience. Otherwise, SMS functions are as you'd expect. The extra memory of the phone means you can accumulate many more SMS messages before being forced to delete old ones.

The organizer

The personal organizer functions of the P800 are fairly basic. On a par with the first palms, with one exception: the designers assumed everyone would be using either lotus notes, lotus organizer, or microsoft office outlook for the PC end. So without one of those, the P800 comes with no PC support for keeping your organizer tidy from your desktop PC. Your PC is relegated to just backing up the phone, and to installing new software (more about software, later).

Jot - handwriting recognition

Jot is actually quite good, after you unlearn the palm way of doing things. It actually mirrors real penmanship more than the palm system. Unfortunately, you "jot" on the screen itself - over the application. Since tapping on the screen also functions to operate the user interface and move from field to field, you can easily get in a twist, as the phone has to make guesses about whether the current twiddle is a letter, or a tap. I much prefer a dedicated writing area than over-screen jotting. The included stylus, by the way, is awful. Like holding one of those plastic disposable tooth floss tools. It clips into the side of the phone, and is also (becaue of its insubstantial weight) fiddly to re-attach and detach.

The browser

It seems that the speed of web surfing depends on the quality of your GPRS network. Frankly, t-mobile US GPRS could use a LOT of work. I've used GPRS over t-mobile via an older more basic samsung, and over the last six months I'd say that 1 time out of 10 the GPRS network is either dead slow or unavailable. It is also usuriously priced, with GPRS data add-on packages giving the extremely ungenerous allowance of 50mb of data per month for $100 per month. Ideas of whiling away the outdoor hours browsing news stories and other web trivial pursuits, fly out the window.

Data transfer speed

Data once it gets going, flows at a reasonable rate, a little faster than a 56k modem. But there appear to be considerable delays (at least over t-mobile USA network) with the whole connection setup process. Expect to wait 20 seconds or more in order to see the start of the most basic page, or outright failures and error messages. Just as I am writing this, GPRS is failing to allow any kind of connection at all in my t-mobile cell ("could not locate remote server news.google.com").

Pricing for GPRS (t-mobile) currently runs at $20 for 5mb, $40 for 20mb, $60 for 50mb and $100 for 200mb. Thats right, $100 a month for 200mb - something even the most basic DSL line could download in just 10 minutes. All plans charge for overage - from $5 to $2 per megabyte extra. In playing (not using) around with the P800 for a couple of days, I've racked up 1.5mb downloaded. So I'd need to pay $60 a month in order to keep even these small browsing habits.


Viewing news.google.com - once - ate 1/5th of a days data transfer for the 20mb plan

Games

Because the P800 processor is on a par with an early 486, and there is a fair amount of free memory, a number of old school emulators have appeared for the phone, and if you are mind-melded with the warez scene, you can download enough sega and other game roms to sink your 128mb memory stick. Unfortunately, playing any game on the P800 eats the battery over lunchtime. I feel that investing in a gameboy SP is both a cheaper and more satisfying solution to portable game cravings. (plus the SP manages to game for 18 hours straight, with a backlit screen AND proper input buttons).

The mp3 player

I'm sure the phone does ok as an mp3 player. I didnt bother trying it. My existing mp3 player is more suited to the task. Even with the maximum sized 128mb memory stick, after reserving some space for other things, you cannot fit more than an hour or two of decent quality (128k+) mp3s on the card anyway. Having the phone be an mp3 player is of little use covergence wise, in my mind, because data transfer costs mean you are not going to be listening to streaming mp3s, or be getting new mp3s over the phone, any time this decade. The same goes but double for streaming or downloadable video. The phone can play (poor quality) video clips, but I've yet to locate a reason you'd want it to.

The bluetooth headset

The wireless headset is neat. It sits comfortably over the ear and cannot fall off. You can touch a button on the side to connect to the phone to voice dial, or pickup a call. You can also tell the phone voice commands for refusing a call, or tag anyone in the address book with a voice command. Standby time on the headset is ok, but talk time is poor. Having to worry about recharging (and yet another power brick) for the headset, is a pain. Since bluetooth should be turned off on the phone for battery conservation reasons, using the headset actually becomes a multiple step process.

Bluetooth ate my wifi

Speaking of bluetooth, it seems that standards organisations do not always get on with each other. Despite knowing that 802.11b and bluetooth are likely to interfere with each other (they both operate in the same spectrum), the industry churned out both standards. Although interference is likely to vary depending on ones setup, distance between stations, equipment choices, and so on, the end result is that when my bluetooth phone talks to my desktop PC, my wifi stops working COMPLETELY. To say I am upset about this is an understatement.

The phone itself

Ok, first and foremost, this P800 is a phone. How does it do? the answer is, it does ok. Voices are clear and signal strength is fine, although at first the quality sounded a little "hollow" compared to my old GSM phone. It also has a reasonably usable speaker phone mode. The phone integrates itself with the rest of the P800 applications reasonably well - if you associate a picture with an address book entry, and that person calls, their picture appears. You can have the phone prompt you to add contacts as new numbers are seen, it keeps track of calls and so on. Given the P800 can play mp3s, it is no surprise that you can have a ringtone be anything you want, from midi, to WAV samples to other formats - including record your own voice.


The phone with flip

My kingdom for a nuclear battery

The specs on the phone prove yet again the standby times in hours are the biggest lie since ghetto blasters stuck wattage stickers on their speakers. I believe the phone advertises 400 hours standby time. Wait, thats almost TWO WEEKS! In reality, I get little more than half a day (12 hours) out of it, because I want to actually use it a bit - view news.google.com and maybe read a couple of stories. Enter or edit something in the address book, fiddle around with the todo list. Change some settings, use bluetooth to install some software perhaps. Take a call or three. Make one or two calls. Nothing like the amount of time I'd use my blackberry in a day, but a little more use than locking it in a dark room with the screen off and no calls coming in! I believe that keeping bluetooth on all the time (in order to use the headset, for instance), setting up the "magic word" feature (so that you can auto-dial by voice command), and not religiously closing all applications in case they chew up CPU, drains the battery even more!

The phone charges in the cradle quite quickly, but this is not a phone for mobile road warriors.

The "free" software situation

Symbian has a growing collection of 'palmish' application developers working to patch over the holes in the OS and add specialized functions. Unfortunately my experience with some of this software is that is is both revision 1.0 quality (buggy) and yet also everyone and their dog wants to charge you 14.95 after you've played with their application for a day or so. Hmm. Not impressive. My memories of Palm software scene was the nagware and chargeware appeared later in the product cycle, after developers really got to grips with the APIs and started to turn out really useful applications.

Conclusion

Devices like the P800 are not really ready for mass market, they appeal to the gadget obsessed - someone who does not mind that their thousand dollar (including headset and memory stick) swiss army knife phone, when looked at function by function, is almost a throwback to 1989. As a vehicle to show stuff off, the P800 is without peer, but after you've finished showing your friends neat tricks, and have to run for a recharger, is it really useful? not to me: the networks are not really ready for the devices, and neither are the batteries. The operating system is quirky and not bullet proof (although under continual update - although unfortunately new releases of symbian are not user installable!), and the software is more frustrating for what it leaves out, than what it includes.

Critically, the lack of proper email push functionality (as offered by blackberry) and the expense of GPRS data packets, mean that the world is not going to be moving beyond SMS on their phone for a good few years yet. I've no idea how the Japanese cellphone industry and cellular networks manage to offer 80gram phones with color screens, that keep commuters occupied for hours over i-mode, without battery life issues, but they do. We're not there yet.