Sony Ericsson P1i Review

Overall Rating

Solid well built and small (for a smartphone)
Loads of functions.
Reliable.

Nothing really. Its not a huge leap in terms of functionality.
I had to purchase sim free as Vodafone don't sell this phone and it cost me a fortune.

Having owned the P800 and P910 I could not wait for the P990. Oh dear. What a huge disappointment that was. However I was willing to give the P1i a go. I was not going to be an early adopter as I had with the others. I was the coward in the corner waiting to feed of everyone else misfortune and then make up my mind. The reviews were mixed but in the absence of anything else I took the plunge. I must say I am glad I did.

I had looked at the other smartphones/PDA phones on the market (HTC,Nokia etc) and whilst all were good and did what I wanted, the aim was to get the same functionality, in a smaller phone, that was reliable and quick. I think I have achieved my aim in the Sony Ericsson P1i.

Sony Ericsson seemed to have sorted things out with this phone and a good thing too. One more failure like the P990 and there would have been trouble.

Functionally it is a huge step up from the P910 but not much more than the P990. The main difference against the later is that it works. Hooorah!!!

The main problem with the P990 was the lack of functional memory. It only had 64mb and therefore crank up a couple of apps or the internet and the whole machine coughed and gave up. In the P1i Sony Ericsson have installed 128mb memory. So opening multiple apps is now possible. Not only can you open multiple apps but they open much much more quickly than the P990.

Aside from that Sony Ericsson seemed to have ironed out any wrinkles in the software and all apps seem to do as they are asked and are stable.

In the 6 weeks I have owned this phone I do not think it has locked or crashed on me once.

Size:
It is slimmer than the P990 and fits into a suit jacket without making you walk lop sided. It will fit into your jeans pocket with causing you any damage to anything important.

Looks and build:
It is a pretty smart machine. Nicely laid out with a brushed metal/shiny black plastic and rubberised casing. It looks good and clean and feels solid. Buttons are responsive and reliable.

Battery life:
As usual with Sony Ericsson phones charge time is short and the battery lasts for ages (depending on how you use the phone obviously).

Keyboard:
I was concerned about the ease of use of the rocker buttons on the keyboard but have found them to be accurate and reliable. Basically each button rocks left and right to perform 2 different functions. A pretty good idea that works.

Screen:
Very very nice. It works well in direct sunlight. Amazing. Really clear images. Nice and crisp with vivid colour. The best screen I have had on a phone. IT is touch screen also and the phone comes with a pen. I tend to use my fingers for most stuff though. My advice, get a screen protector. A few quid but with save your screen from scratches.

Connectivity:
WiFi
Bluetooth
GPRS
WAP
Internet
Oh yes and something called 3G which I have turned off to save battery power.

Camera:
3.2mp. Pretty good. Not a world beater but does the job. Takes good photos in daylight with digi Zoom and autofocus. Has a xenon type light but is only ok in low light. There is a cool editing function for the pictures and the user can do quite a lot to their photos.

Office:
The phone can read and write Word and Excel documents. It is a good function with basic tools for editing.

Business Card scanner:
A tool that allows you to take a picture of a business card and put the information directly into you phone book. (for those that know it does and OCR on the card once it has been captured by the camera). I would say it is a good 90-95% accurate and those in the business dealing with OCR will know that is pretty good.

Some other features:
512mb M2 card (have just bought a 4gb card for £25)
MP3 player
Video player
Easy sync with Outlook on the PC
Easy to back up
Cool golf game
Great web browser (but I would recommend downloading Opera Mini. Its great).
POP3 mail (I have it set up for my Yahoo account)
Mine came with Wayfinder Sat Nav and a GPS receiver. It is pretty good and has served me well so far.
Radio (will also get track info from a snippet of recorded music)
PDF reader


Conclusion:
It is not earth shattering. It is not the future. It does what the P990 should have done and a little more. It does it better, quicker and more reliably in a smaller, better built and more attractive package. Functionally pretty similar to the Nokia N95 (without GPS built in) just better looking and smaller. I would recommend this as it will be at least another 12-18 months before something better is going to come along and this does everything that you will want at the moment.

It makes the functionality of the iPhone look like a piece of pre-historic rock but then so does my 13 year old Maxon brick.

Members' Comments onOllsbols's Review

• FlyGuy on 16th Apr 2008

  In the process of selecting a new phone, thanks for a very informative review,