Sony Ericsson P910 Review

“I recently upgraded from a P900 to the Sony Ericsson...”

Written on: 13/01/2005 by ssghafori (9 reviews written)

Good Points
Display, Sound, Bluetooth....

Bad Points
Weak battery life, Not a very good Camera, Price.

General Comments
I recently upgraded from a P900 to the Sony Ericsson P910. To be honest there is nothing the P910 can do that the P900 can't. Although the P910 is built on the same platform as the P900 and for that matter the P800, its a completely different device.

To begin with lets discuss the main phone features:

Reception is satisfactory. But unlike other brands , most SE devices I have laid my hands on, with a weak reception act quiet normal, that is you don't hear anything and the other party don't hear you either, and you are quiet sure your voice hasn't got through. With other brands you hear half of what is told and they hear half of what you say. This I call an advantage since you know for sure you haven't conveyed your voice.

Messaging is just like the P900 , like a breeze and smooth, but on the P910 you have an extra feature in the form of the hardware Alfa keyboard behind the flip. I personally think this is useless, unless you have small fingers. One drawback is that this new keyboard is not illuminated rendering it useless in dark places. I still believe, the handwriting recognition is the fastest and safest way to type in your message. But unlike pocket pc's the recognition functions letter by letter, not word by word, or sentence by sentence. This really slows you down. I was hoping the P910 would have solved this problem, but it did not and it acts exactly like the P900/P800.

The numeric keypad is nice and glassy looking with white illumination instead of the blue you had on the P900. The keys are better designed and it's easier to dial while driving. Overall keyboard layout is the same.

The connectivity feature are the same as the P900. Bluetooth and Infrared work perfect, but consume a lot of power. Adding new devices is fast with the bluetooth. Remember try to use the SE Bluetooth headset, I noticed occasionally the P910 looses the connection with other headsets and you have to restart the matching process all over again.

The camera is also the same CMOS camera as on the P900.The picture quality is nothing to brag about and don't even think of comparing it with a Nokia 7610 pic, regardless of the resolution. The max. resolution the P910 can offer is 0.3 Mega Pixels and that's a heartbreaker for a device with this price tag. The best use I found for the camera is shooting and attaching the pics to your contacts. Video recorder is also the same rubbish as on the P900.

The voice recorder still doesn't work while you are speaking via phone. But normal recording is great with outstanding playback.

The audio quality is one point the P910 beats the P900. It's astonishing, loud and clear. The music player sounds stereo while its actually mono.

With the P800 you got 12 MB internal and 16 MB external RAM in the package. The P900 boosted a 16 MB internal and 32 MB external. With the P910 you get 64MB internal and 32 MB external and capability to support 512 MB external RAM. SE has promised software upgrade to support up to 1 GB. The P900 could support only 128.

The display...umm....umm... I really don't know how to tell you about the display. It's simply incredible. I have never seen a screen(On a mobile), so clear and so crisp(260K).

Both the P900 and the P910 come with a 1260 mAH battery. Since the P910 has a brighter screen which consumes more power, you get shorter battery endurance. If you don't play with the feature a lot, you can squeeze 2 days out of the battery. It is still a question to me why the P910 doesn't come with a more powerful power supply.

You can now create and read Pdf, Quicksheet and Quickword on the P910. But I found it useless on a screen so small.

Most of you folks must think now why pay a third more for a phone not so much different from the P900. This you have to decide when you see both phones standing together. I bet you go for the P910. I call this the LCD SCREEN MAGIC.

If you need a simple device and if you drop your phone a lot, don't go for the P910(The LCD screen costs 250US$). Otherwise this phone can impress almost everybody.