Sony Ericsson P910i

I have Tom Tom Mobile 5 Sat Nav installed and operating on this phone and have had no problem whatsoever with this add on other than having to power the 910i from the car's cigarette lighter socket, otherwise the battery runs low after a couple of hours. As a phone it has worked faultlessly.

When I bought my Sony Ericsson P910i mobile phone it was cool, but after a while the picture quality is poor, sending text is tedious, and you have to have a case, because if not the screen will be scratched. It is very gimmicky, but I would not buy one again. Vodafone is good, but I will not be buying a flip phone again. The battery life is not great either, and when using Bluetooth the battery life is shortened.

I like the Sony Ericsson P910i mobile phone but do no not like certain hardware features, such as the thumb-wheel.

The screen is not sharp enough to properly view photographs.

My biggest gripe is with the software. The PC inter-connectivity is very poor. After all this time I still have not worked out an easy way to transfer files to and from my PC.

For example I have tried to transfer downloaded sound files to the phone, but so far I have not been successful. The manual contains no information re this.

My most recent previous phones (over 5 years) were Handspring (serious faults due to poor build quality) and 4 generations of Nokia communicators. The Communicators were excellent, both in terms of build quality and usability, but much too large to carry around all the time.

I bought this phone in October 2004 and I have been impressed with it ever since. The main ability, is to use normal internet (not WAP) on a phone, however Vodafone charge me a fortune to do this! I wanted the phone for one thing really, I needed a phone that plays MP3's, that used a Sony Memory Stick Duo, and also that would enable me to organise the pics on my camera, which is also a Sony.

After getting the phone it has done everything I ask of it. The only drawback is the size. If you want a phone to take out with you you're better off without this one, as it is very big. Overall, I am very impressed though. I am reverting to a Sony W800i at my next upgrade, and I will miss a lot of the functions, but at least I'll be able to take my phone clubbing!

I've had my P910i for around 5 months now. It cost around £220 for the phone itself plus a £30 a month contract. I originally bought it on Vodafone, but returned it to exchange for the T-Mobile version.

Unfortunately for all you prospective buyers reading this I have to say I'm starting to regret buying it. At first it seemed cool, but in the long run it's just been a large unusable brick to carry around. Before you start shouting at me let me explain why, in my opinion, the P910i is a bad purchase:

1. The screen is not as sharp as you'd expect. Nowhere near as sharp as the new Samsung D500 for instance. Not what you'd expect from a wannabe PDA. The general use is awkward and there are no advanced 'tricks' you can use to speed things up. For instance, on a proper iPaq PDA if you press and hold the pointing stick down on the screen, you get a 'right click' with a context sensitive menu, just like a normal PC. On the P910i this would have been really handy, yes something so simple has been omitted.

2. Using the little pointing stick is Ok for short periods, but will cause hand cramp in the long term, especially if using hand writing recognition. For me HWR is just a waste of time on the P910i anyway. I've tried extensively to make this a viable option for input but it's mostly awkward and often letters/numbers won't appear correctly. I do use HWR on my work PDA and it works well, but in comparison the P910i isn't up to the task. I find it much quicker to tap out words with the on-screen keyboard or even the QWERTY keypad behind the flip.

3. The phone is very big - and in it's own carry case it's just huge. The most annoying thing is you simply HAVE to use the case to stop damaging that big screen, and in doing so it ruins it's mobile-ability completely. By that I mean if you're on the move and you get a call, you'll just tend to not bother answering it, because by the time you get it out of the case it will have gone to answerphone plus I find it embarrassing having to pull out this whacking great brick in public.

There is also the drop-ability factor - because of the shiny outer case it tends to be very slippery and coupled with the awkward case... Clunk! Mine has been dropped twice trying to get it out of the case in time to answer a call.

4. The phonebook contacts database is usable but nothing special. It will keep a lot of info about a contact which is a plus. Unfortunately the P910i again makes a hash of things that should be easy, for instance sending all your contacts to the SIM card should be an easy task, but the P910i makes you take the long way around and do it one by one.

5. The Calendar is not bad, it is at least usable. But again suffers from little niggles that bring the phone down. Why oh why?

6. Text editing in most of the applications is poorly realised by the programmers. Things you'd expect to work logically just don't. Makes you wanna scream sometimes. A further annoyance is that different applications on the P910i have the same interface for typing, but the same options do different things hmm!

7. Application Software on the P910i at first glance has quite a lot going for it - pocket versions of Word, Acrobat and Excel. But unfortunately none of the features on any of them ever seem to be that good - there is always a drawback or limited functionality to every one.

For instance, Excel is just unusable full stop because of the screen size - you just can't fit enough cells in (even at the smallest zoom setting). The biggest single niggle is the fact that no matter how you arrange the column sizes, they are never saved so you are back to square one every time you open the same spreadsheet. As a plus it has some fairly advanced formula options but none seemed to work properly whereas they would on a normal PC version of Excel. For instance in a simple formula like if(A1="Y","Yes","No") it refused to recognise the Y. Replace the Y for a number and it worked. How annoying.

Word is very fiddly and eventually offputting because of it's penchant for losing information, plus as previously mentioned the text handling is abysmal and annoying. In addition, while the phone can read .docs from your PC, transferring them back to your PC again cannot be read (to my knowledge - perhaps there is some obscure converter out there). The same goes for .xls files.

8. As a plus, the potential for mobile gaming is huge, but so far the few games available are very expensive. Stock games (chess and solitare) are Ok. The demo of V-Rally looks very good admitedly and runs about on par with the PS1 version.

9. Email does it's job and never failed to connect to my pop server. Messaging is easy using the front keypad with the flip closed. Open however, it suffers the same text problems as mentioned above.

10. Battery life is excellent if you don't use the phone lasts about 5 days which is pretty good all things considered. Start using the phone (and therefore the backlight and processor) and that will drop severely. It might not even last a day.

11. Finally Sony Ericsson have even managed to mess up something as simple as putting the keypad lock on. On a normal phone you might press MENU then # to lock and unlock the keypad. On the P910i you have to unlock it with MENU then button number 1. To lock it it's MENU then #. Why why why!!! Just keep it with MENU & # for both!!! Simple you might think, but it's very annoying in practice.

You can use the scroll wheel, but DON'T get me started on that.

To sum up, the Sony Ericsson T610 had EVERYTHING you could think of for a phone option-wise. It was a feat of genius by Sony Ericsson. Unfortunately the programmers responsible for that were obviously on holiday when the P910i was being made.

Its dull, poorly designed, big, awkward to use and worst of all the software feels "beta" all the way. It feels like there should be so much more to it, and after some tinkering you will be disappointed. My advice is to try it for a good few days before you buy it.