Russell Beattie

Once again from Erik, I just saw that SonyEricsson showed off their new P800 at Comdex. This is definitely a cool phone too, though I actually haven't seen it in person, so I can't give you a detailed review. I can tell you what I know about the phone (and what I just learned by checking out the website).

This is another Symbian phone and will use v7.0 of the OS. Unlike Nokia, SonyEricsson didn't create their own UI, so they're using what was called Quartz, but is now called the UIQ directly from Symbian (screen shots). I've played with the UI via the emulator and it's not bad. It's definitely made for more of a PDA, which is why this phone comes with a stylus, 12 megs of onboard memory and all the PIM functionality you need. And also why it's going to cost upwards of $500 at launch, "sometime early next year". For those people who are really put off by the lack of a stylus on the Nokia 3650 (Niel) or want to use the phone to replace their PDA (that would be me), this might be the phone for them. The rest of the specs are spot on with the Nokia including lots of protocols, multimedia and Bluetooth. The only thing I really don't like is that it uses Sony's proprietary MemoryStick for extra flash memory. Ugh. Expensive, low-memory and DRM laden... that's a real downside.

It's a bit bulky too like the Nokias, but it's not too bad. It weighs the same as the 7650 (150 grams), but has twice the screen real estate (208x320) so it's not a bad trade off. As a comparision, my Palm Vx weighs 120g and the 3650 weighs 130g.

I'm not sure about the market segment that SonyEricsson is targeting with this, but it seems to be very "business-friendly". This is a bit odd since it's a Sony as much as it's Ericsson, so you would assume it would have more of a consumer push instead. Here's a bit from their home page, it's very interesting. Especially the mobile Notes stuff...

For Business

Software included in the P800 makes it possible to log in to secure networks via single-use password generation.

Corporate applications may be deployed on the P800, extending information access to the smartphone:

The Citrix Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) gives handheld devices access to Windows, UNIX and Java applications using low bandwidth links

Lotus Mobile NotesTM will be available for the P800

Oracle and Sybase database and e-commerce solutions in development

IBM device management solutions in development

It should be interesting to see what happens with this phone. I don't see SonyEricsson having as much influence in the telecom industry as Nokia, nor the developer focus to get the apps out (though the effort to port between Symbian variants should be minimal). However, it IS Sony, so this phone could start popping up everywhere... I'll have to read up more on this to get a better idea of what they're doing.

So, in summary, it looks good. It's a Symbian, so I'm all for it, but I think that the Series 60 is going to rule the smartphone world with Nokia, Phillips, Samsung and Sendo licensing it... But that doesn't mean this is a loser, because it may be aimed at an entirely different market segment. If it starts getting decent apps, it could make headway into the Communicator market that Treo is ruling right now.

Honestly, beyond this, I don't know. I need to hold it in my grubby little hands to tell you my real impressions. When I have the chance I will. ;-)

-Russ