Sony Ericsson P990i Review

Overall Rating

Still camera (if it does not crash the phone after capture)

The rest of it

Right, before I start my ramble please understand this and remember it as you read. I am a life long fan of the 'P' series PDA phones having owned every one and recommending them across the board to everyone.

The P990!!!!!!!!!! read on.

I have had a P990i for some 4 months now it is my second one, the first being faulty with numerous defects. I think 4 months is long enough to give a reasoned review.

I have the following problems with this phone;

Cannot use calendar, any attempt to access it results in a small box flashing 'busy' for 30 seconds before it tells me their is insufficient memory (I currently have 62MB on the phone and 960MB on the card). After this I have to restart the phone (again)!
The phone only rings on calls as and when it decides to, I can put it on my desk here with a full signal, call it from my landline and 3 to 4 times out of 10 it will not ring!

The whole phone process is extremely slow, painfully slow to be precise taking a long time to switch between screens in any application.

The video camera is useless, if videoing a person speaking the words are spoken almost half a second before the person moves their lips!

People will tell you to go to task manager and close the programs after you use them, why does the phone not do this if your not multitasking (try it its laughable). Their was no need to do this on the 910.

Sony will tell you to re-load the software from their update service (done this 76 times), restart it to free up memory blocks (usually occurs 6 - 10 times per day) or master re-set (very convenient).

Add to this a little story for you to read; at a New Years Eve party I received a call during a conversation with a person I had just met (yes the phone actually rang, novelty) after the call he looked at me and said "P990 eh" and then proceeded to reel off all the defects on the phone I have plus a lot more! does he have a P990? NO he is an independent reviewer of hardware released by or used by Orange and as he said and I quote "they are rubbish, simply rubbish".

To summarise, it's useless and I am really surprised by this after having all the previous incarnations of the 'P' series (910i was brilliant).

A very shoddy device which will cost SE many loyal customers, me included.

Sorry SE but the truth is painful.

****Update

Hi again,

Posted review of this phone yesterday.
Since then it completely failed just flashing black and white.
I called Orange, they sent a replacement and it arrived at 9am this morning (nice one Orange)

Guess what, it has all the same faults straight out of the box, this phone is absolute rubbish, don't go within a million miles of it, get a cheap phone and a notepad, way better.

Marcus (extremely disappointed)

Members' Comments onmcbutler's Review

• sticazzi on 13th Apr 2007

  I was going to buy one, but after reading reviews like this - no thanks!