Sony Ericsson P800 Review

Good Points
Excellent combined features - the camera is like any ordinary phone camera, nothing special about it, but if you want to take professional shots, then you should buy a 10mpx Canon camera, not a phone :-).

The external interface is excellent, with the 5 way jog dial, short cut buttons and optional flip being very good design ideas.

Other points; Java supported, host of software available on the 'net for the phone, bluetooth..etc

Bad Points
The operating system does seem to be slightly unstable - I'm a heavy user, and seem to get a crash about every two days. It's not enough to make me want to dump the phone, but it is very annoying. The interface, particularly the phone speed dials...etc can be slightly confusing - I've often started calling someone when I just wanted to bring up the contact information, but once you get used to it, its fine.

The stylus has to be one of the most annoying things - why couldn't they have stuck to the original heavy weighted styluses they had in the old R38's

Other bad points - propietory memory card format; all they've done really is take SD technology from "Memory Sticks", change some pin configuration and made it smaller - there is no reason for this other than to force the consumer to buy sony ericsson memory. They do bundle a Memory stick adapter with it though.

General Comments
Functionality of this phone is quite outstanding, and puts the P800 as one of the leading phones on the market today. I would not recommend this phone to anyone who would not use the features it provides however. But, if like me, you require good PDA functionality, Internet access (full web browser, email...etc) without carrying around a palm and phone - then this is the kit you need. The handwriting recognition is also better than the palm.



I got my phone on upgrade from Vodafone - so only paid 150 UK pounds for it - hence my favourable value for money rating.



One quick word of warning - do not let the internal storage fill up!!!.... I was warned that my internal storage was nearly full, ignored it for a day, and the next day it rebooted and forced me to reformat the internal disk - losing all custom applications, contacts...etc.etc. It's a pitty the camera app doesnt give you the option of defaultly saving images to the memory stick duo card.



Some of the provided software is not brilliant - I would recommend installing Opera and use that in place of the bundled web browser - the one they provide offers no horizontal scaling of images, which can be annoying - Opera works very well under the P800 though.



To summarise - this is a most excellent phone / PDA combo, with a leaning towards being a phone with PDA functionality, rather than a PDA with phone functionality like many PDA's. May not be suitable for everyone, but it is for me.