Sony Ericsson P910a Phone (Unlocked)

by Sony Ericsson Mobile

Product Details

Product Manual [3.41mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0009JKJQ2
• Item model number: P910a
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

Product Description

Amazon.com Hands-On Review

The Sony Ericsson P910 is the latest incarnation of the company's popular P-Series of communicator style smartphones. Like other smartphones, the P910 runs a real Operating System (OS) and works much like any computer or personal digital assistant (PDA) would; that is to say, you can purchase new software to be installed on the device in order to add new functionality. In the case of the P910, the OS is the Symbian OS, currently the dominant smartphone OS. As such, there is a large developer community and an equally large catalog of software available for the device. The beauty of this is that you get all of this computing functionality in a device that weighs under 5.5oz (155g) and measures only 4.5" x 2.3" x 1" (115mm x 58mm x 26mm) in size.

Type emails on the integrated QWERTY keyboard.

Record still photos and videos with the integrated VGA camera.

The P910 is a hardware and software update to the P910, and maintains most things in common with the older device. But not everything is the same. For example, the P910 has a new 262k color touchscreen display that is brighter than the older model's display, and has an adjustable brightness level for saving power, something the older unit lacked. The user interface has also been tweaked, offering larger icons and better use of color. The P910 also sports a larger battery and managed to achieve 12.4 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge. The internal memory storage was boosted to 64MB (from 16MB), and application RAM was doubled to 32MB, which means you can run more programs at the same time.

Two other very significant upgrades include support for Memory Stick Duo Pro memory cards that are available in capacities of up to 1GB (as opposed to 128MB for the P900) and the addition of a full QWERTY keyboard. The QWERTY keyboard is on the back side of the numeric keypad, which has a new hinge that allows you to support the entire weight of the device from the keypad without worry. The new keyboard is cramped, but for many people it will be much more convenient than having to use a stylus and handwriting recognition or the virtual on-screen keyboard.

How will you use your P910?

The P910 includes good Bluetooth support, which lets you make use of wireless headsets and other devices, such as Bluetooth GPS units. The built-in antenna is a reasonable performer and works on networks both in and outside of the USA. The P910i works on T-Mobile and all international GSM networks while the P910a variant will work on Cingular, T-Mobile, and on many international networks - but not all of them. You'll also find a decent speakerphone and an uninspiring VGA camera that records still photos as well as videos.

If you are a mobile warrior, a good email client that supports POP and IMAP email access, a great web browser, and a new suite of software for reading and editing most Microsoft Office documents will keep you in touch with your business as well as your friends and family. When you are just trying to relax, however, the ability to play MP3 files and the inclusion of a stereo headset in the box will let you put those large capacity Memory Stick cards to good use.

Sony Ericsson's P-Series handsets are great performers, but they are starting to show their age a bit now that we are seeing literally dozens of new Microsoft PocketPC based PDA phones on the market. But even though the new devices might be faster and more powerful, few manage to balance being both a good PDA and a good phone as well as the P910 does.

Pros:

• Both QWERTY keyboard and stylus input
• 12+ hours of talk time
• 1GB memory cards available
• Large, bright, colorful display

Cons:

• Expensive
• Keyboard is very cramped
• Slower than PocketPC devices

What's In the Box:
P910 handset, standard battery, travel charger, 32MB Memory Stick PRO Duo, Memory Stick adapter, SyncStation with USB, stereo portable handsfree, carry case, wrist strap, cleaning cloth, 1 extra stylus, flip replacement, flip replacement tool kit, PC Suite CD, applications and content CD, user manuals.

--Reviewed by Michael Oryl, editor in chief of www.MobileBurn.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Certainly not perfect but still best in its class!, September 29, 2005

By 

neosynthesis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sony Ericsson P910a Phone (Unlocked) (Wireless Phone Accessory)

As a road-warrior and gadget lover, I've been using so many phone and PDA devices over the years and finally settled on this phone to reduce the number of devices I carry. And I quite like it.

Again, as with all my reviews, I've written this for very serious users of devices concerned with usability and productivity because I found very few reviews of the sort so I'm hoping to contribute more to road-warriors out there.

Pros:
- Still the best pen-based combination of a phone plus PDA currently. It still offers the option to watch movies in high quality and full wide-screen, but the battery life doesn't suck like most Windows based machines.
- The PDA features are still more intuitive and usable than any Windows based PDA.
- Black Berry push email support now available!
- Push and talk support now available!
- User updatable firmware (I've done this 5 times now without problems).
- Size is still comparable to other pen based PDA phones with keypad.
- It has both pen input and keyboard input (albeit keyboard is cramped)
- It has the option to remove keyboard (no other PDA phone offers this option, as far as I'm aware).
- It's the only smartphone that has a decent keypad for making phone calls.
- Great battery life.
- Incredible one-handed operation convenience with a 5-way jog-dial. You can truly use most of the features you need most often with one hand.
- Flexible OS (Symbian) lets you customize many of the features by mapping them to keys, jog-dials, buttons.
- Voice commands that work.
- Removable battery.
- Ext. antenna option.
- Great hand-writing recognition (as far as my experience goes).
- Best sound quality (out of the stereo output jack) of any PDA or phone (other Sony PDAs excluded). It sounds even better than my iPods and my Toshiba Gigabeat. Don't believe me? Get some quality ripped mp3s, hook it up to a decent clean amp and output it to home speakers and compare.
- Great bluetooth range with wireless headsets.
- Great phone reception! I'm still getting decent reception in deadzones where all my other phones has no signal.
- Call sound quality is superb.
- Speaker phone works very well and it's activated quickly during a call by simply flipping the keypad open.
- Awesome sounding ext speaker, too bad only mono, but then on such a small device there isn't enough spatial separation for 2 speakers to produce true 3D sound anyway.
- Comes with very decent software bundle to edit Word docs, Excel sheets, view PDF, music, video player, WorldMate Pro, Handy Date are thrown in for free as well.
- Very complete out of the box experience: good amount of internal RAM for productivity, S/E has thrown in a decent amount of very popular software, decent (certainly not great) carrying case, USB sync dock, stereo headset/hands free, syncs great with Outlook, Notes out of the box.

Cons:
- At full price, I'd expect WiFi, but at time of writing, you'd be silly paying more than $450 for a new P910 series.
- Cramped keyboard, I mean really cramped. But personally I don't have any problems with it, albeit I do have flexible, precise musician fingers.
- VGA only cam, but whatever, I certainly hope no one is so easily pleased that they'd be impressed by photo quality from any phone on the market.
- MS Duo expensive, but this should only impact those who insists on watching all their videos on their phones, I personally found its internal memory more than enough for a PDA.
- Should've taken out the camera and made the device smaller.
- Slower processor. When the phone switches from one app to another, it definitely delays for a second or two. But then that's why the battery life is so great, your pick.
- Symbian UIQ PDA feature doesn't quite match up to that of the Palm OS (no Palm's fast global search, customizable hand writing short-cuts like copy and paste). I'm a road warrior and I use a lot of short cuts to save time and by far. Palm is the most usable PDA OS for productivity, followed by Symbian. Most road warriors in my office consider Windows based PDA toys and I agree. But then even Palm no longer makes a pen based PDA phone to take advantage of key stroke shortcuts, so this con point is moot.
- Does not come with travel sync cable, you'll have to take the dock with you or buy an aftermarket cable. This is ridiculous, they should've made a USB cable that can plug into their dock so you can still leave the dock at home while on the road.
- When paired with Moto's popular bluetooth wireless headsets, the voice quality for both the speaker and the listener isn't as good as when Moto's headsets are paired with Moto phones.
- Bluetooth connection to wireless headsets are prone to static a lot more than Moto phones.
- Built in speaker phone can be louder. I doubt it'll be usable in loud environments.
- While the audio output jack is stereo and is a standard, universal micro-jack, it would have been better if the jack were a standard mini jack so I can use any of my headphones without having to use an adapter (sold separately).

Conclusion: Overall, for a PDA and phone, the P910 is still the best of both worlds at time of writing. I didn't wait till the next update of the phone to buy because the next phone will have a stupid built in keyboard that cuts away half the screen and most likely the pen based option will not be available on the next P-series. That's too bad because the pen is still the best when it comes to fast input. Without the pen, I'd have to waste time scrolling through different fields just to enter data into the one field I wanted to get to. Plus, I like to see anyone input Chinese characters with an English keyboard (yes, I know I can use Pin-Yin, but then I'm a road warrior, PinYin is simply too slow. With a pen, I simply write). So if you like pen based PDA phone with a keyboard and decent keypad for dialling, get one of these puppies before they're gone. Have fun shopping!

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent phone. Terrible Customer Service, May 30, 2005

By 

I. Eke "I.E" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony Ericsson P910a Phone (Unlocked) (Wireless Phone Accessory)

Phone is good but lacks WIFI, which considering the price is a huge drawback. Sony Ericsson also doesn't do a great job of helping themselves. The phones software can be upgraded online but Sony Ericsson has extended their terrible customer service to that area. I upgraded my P910 only to find out that it had been crippled by the update, making it impossible to make or receive calls. This was all thanks to the fact that Sony Ericsson released untested and bugged firmware. Continuing in their pattern of woeful customer service, Sony Ericsson admits it's their fault but can't do their customers the simple courtesy of sending back their phones overnight. I had to wait exactly an extra week after my phone was repaired to receive it even though my location at the time was only 7hrs away from the Sony Ericsson repair center. When splurging this kind of money on a PDA phone, you need to decide if it's something that you will use alot. I use mine for work and depend on it alot. If this is the case for you I suggest looking elsewhere because if the phone dies on you, you will have a serious dilemma. If you travel alot ouside the country it might still be worth it though because the average time for firmware upgrades and such outside the U.S is only a few hours.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most reliable phone/PDA combo, hand's down! (don't even THINK about a Treo), February 24, 2006

By 

Robert H. Morrow "ultramatricity" (Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony Ericsson P910a Phone (Unlocked) (Wireless Phone Accessory)

So, I survived the Treo 600/650 thing...barely. Then after hearing my Treo reset 5 times in one evening (while doing nothing but sitting on the counter charging), I decided to pitch it and go with the P910a I'd been looking at for a year. Especially in light of the class actions that got filed by users and companies alike over the Treo ROM's reliability.

I should mention a bias I had going into the purchase decision:
I previously had a Sony Ericcsson T616 for 3 years that had been kicked across the street (more than once--don't ask), had been soaked in water, and generally abused--but it always worked. Further, a friend of mine watched his SE T68i get submerged in a piping hot cup of java, which he then cleaned and used for another 2 years (with no defects--other than the occasional sticky key). BTW, he still has his T68i and a 1 year old Treo 600--guess which one still works and which one doesn't :)

I should also mention that the Treo I got had been for free (my company had some crappy app for field engineers written only for the Treo--thanks, Sun!), but the p910a was $500 out of pocket for me via Amazon and that I was a P910a "late adopter" with the P990 coming out right around the corner (although I expected that the "introductory" price of the forthcoming P990's $799 was out of reach for me financially). Even free, the Treo was overpriced :)
I don't ask much out of a phone. I just want ALL the features to work ALL of the time, every time. I also want to be able to add applications and customize it without fear of OS crashes/freezes and for it to remain usable.

I've had the P910a for 3 months and I love it! Not one unintentional reset, the apps just work, and it does bluetooth syncs quickly and easily (a must-have, no cords should be required for any information appliance made after the year 2000!)

The jog dial is nice for quick access (although it does take all of 5 minutes to get used to). The keyboard feature is good to have for quick SMS's, but the one thing I miss relative to the Treo is the back-lighting on the keyboard (difficult to respond to SMS's in the dark with the P910a's flip keyboard.)

I tried it with and without the flip on. It's much easier to do typical phone tasks with the flip attached.

The SD card issues (price/size, etc.) are the same as the other phones (except you get more "free" memory with this phone).

The handwriting recognition software is excellent! It just works.

Other than the occasional usability quirk (getting to speakerphone mode is a little tedious--it needs a single button instead of calling, waiting for sound, then opening the flip), I have nothing to complain about. Although I was always fond of how well SE products work (especially if you have a Mac).

The bluetooth headset pairings I've tried have always worked better on the P910 than on the Treo.

One other thing: the beauty of this device is that it has never been sold locked to any company/network. So, if you change carriers (or if you're stuck on "Cingular Blue--the old ATT wireless", like me, and don't know when you'll be forced to "Cingular Orange"), you can have no fear that the SIM and your number will certainly migrate to the new service.