Sony Ericsson P990i Review

Overall Rating

Superb range of functions.
Excellent screen.
Feels solidly built
Internal (full QWERTY) keyboard well made and easy to use

- Unbelievably difficult to use user interface.
- Battery life varies from days to less than a day (if you accidentally leave some connection features on - but I've yet to work out where the warning is that they ARE on)
- Badly located button on the side means when the phone rings and you go to take it out of your pocket you inadvertently cancel the call by pressing the button as you grab the phone
- Main 5-way control toggle on the flip is badly-designed - half the time you'll select a feature before you've managed to navigate to where you want to be.

I can only agree with all the other comments here. When I bought this phone I bought it on the list of functions - and they are impressive (tri-band phone, radio, camera, video player, Internet access, etc., etc.). But having all these function is no use at all if you can't work out how to use them - and this is the biggest failure of this phone. The user interface is truly appalling.

A good user interface is one which is intuitive to the user; one which is organised the way the user thinks. And a user thinks in terms of what they want to do (phone someone, take a picture, access the internet, etc.). But this phone's user interface is not organised like that. Instead it is organised based on the functions they have built into the phone. So if you want to access the Internet you'll look in vain for an "Access the Internet" function. Instead there are some internet-connection functions under Connection manager and other elsewhere - but nowhere does it tell you how to make them work together - you have to use trial and error. It took me weeks to work it out.

Likewise the camera. The quality is good - but the way the controls for the camera have been organised is bizarre. You spend half your time trying to work out where the camera controls are rather than concentrating on the picture.

As an example of how bad the user interface is, whilst I was still trying to work out how to use this phone (it comes with a 150-page User Manual which is as badly organised as the user interface) I bought my daughter an iPod for her birthday. This does not come with a user manual; it has a single instruction sheet which basically says - plug into a USB port on a computer go to this website and click the "download" button. I did this and it downloaded the software, configured it, searched the PC for all the video clips, photos, and music (which were all over the place as one would expect given a teenagers' propensity for tidiness), organized it, indexed it, synced it with the iPod, uploaded it and updated the software). Now THAT is a well-designed user interface.

Meanwhile after spending days struggling to get the phone's WiFi to work I finally found by trial and error that if you have your Wireless LAN set up to NOT broadcast it's SSID (recommended for security) then this phone cannot link to it.

I have been a Sony customer for years - and this is my second Sony Ericsson phone in succession. But it'll be my last and I most certainly won't be buying another SonyEricsson. I am instinctively NOT an Apple fan, but having seen the iPod ease of use at first hand, if the Apple iPhone is half as good as the initial reviews say it is, then Sony Ericsson is dead in the water as a phone manufacturer and I'll be an Apple convert.