Imagine my excitement when I finally got my hands on the p990i – after several years of my faithful service to the SE P-Series the so called “flagship” promises so much, but in the end, delivers so little – here’s why:
- random reboots – “the phone has restarted to improve performance” ??? Come on! What a lame excuse for software engineering!
- software crashes – OK, so before I caould actually get some basic things to work (like wi-fi) I had to go through the clunky “Sony Ericsson Update Service”. The handset as delivered from Vodafone was at R4, after the update it’s now at R9. Now wi-fi works, but the web browser regularly crashes, even the calendar crashes! At R9 for heaven’s sake these things should just work!
- over complicated UI – UIQ 3 has animations & fade ins/outs? Forget that – the phone’s CPU is obviously struggling with the graphical load judging by the clunky appearance of some of these effects – just get rid of them!
- lack of usability over P910i – some of the most frequently used features that were accessible within 1 or 2 taps or clicks on the P910i are now hidden away in multiple menus or not there at all.
- pointless keyboard/keypad – the qwerty keyboard is too small – I get the feeling it’s merely a nod to the blackberry! When the flip is open, the multi-directional selector buttons should still be available, as some full screen apps need them. Ditch the keyboard, lose the flip and put the keys from the flip in the keyboard’s place.
And there’s the lack of a SIP client. OK – that’s not SE’s fault, but if they hadn’t taken so long to release the damn thing in the first place (originally touted for end-2005, appeared end-2006!) it might have ended up being a Symbian 9.2 device with integrated SIP stack….
Some people don’t agree, but the old-psion-days of 3’s & 5’s were better in one respect – the quality of the built in apps. As noted above, the P990i’s web & calendar have crashed on me several times, it’s not good… in fact, it’s appalling. If I get my way, the SEP990i will be going back!
cxf
Room 7609 