Customer Reviews

Sony Ericsson P990i Unlocked Cell Phone with 2 MP Camera, 3G, MP3/Video Player, Memory Stick Pro Duo Slot--International Version with No Warranty (Premium Silver)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Bought this phone yesterday (not from Amazon).

Amazing little device with a lot of innovative features. For example, the phone notifies the user of failure to connect to a WiFi network by crashing and rebooting. A dialog box pops up after the reboot to tell me that the phone restarted to "improve performance." Same thing happened when I tried to scan in a friend's business card, tried to fetch my email, take a photo, sync by bluetooth... the list continues. In fact, in just one day the phone restarted itself to 'improve performance' so many times, the performance must be getting really great by now.

Maybe a firmware update will help? Downloaded the Sony Ericsson Update Service (2.6.4.9). Ran it on my XP box at work - once installed, it played a Sony Ericsson eyecatch animation, then crashed with a 'java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException', but at least it kept planing the eyecatch over and over. Ahhhh. Tried it on my XP box at home - this time the installer came up with an empty window which stayed empty. No luck there. Finally tried it on an old Windows 200 laptop - this time it worked, recognised the phone, downloaded about 150M of something from the internet, pretended to flash the phone with new firmware. The result - same firmware, and more 'improving performance' messages.

The bottom line is - it is a very promising device. The hardware is good, the software is not even a public beta quality - proof of concept prototype at best. Not ready for public consumption in any shape or form. This seems to be a trend among smartphone manufacturers - release the product once the hardware is finished, promise to finish the software in new firmware releases, stop releasing firmware updates as a superseding model is in the works - leaving the consumer with a kind of working device. Sort of. Sometimes.

I've had this phone two weeks. A few times, when just going through the menus, I've gotten the "blank" screen mentioned previously and wondered "what happened.".

So far, I don't think reception with Cingular is quite as good as I was gettng with the Razr.

Putting it in or out of my horizontal belt case opens the camara lens twist door on the back of the unit. This in turn, for some reason, deactivates the "keys locked" feature which is a pain because when closed, the flip open keyboard sticks out from the rest of the phone and the slightest bump starts things happening.

FM radio will only function with wired headphones as it needs the wire for an antenna.

On Razr, during a call I could push a button to activate speaker phone. On this phone you must go into a menu during the call and select the appropriate two options. This seems to be a step backward in functionality. Sony support confirmed there is no other way.

I like the way the software handles contacts, calendar tasks and all other data entry. Easy to input and access data in a variety of useful ways.

For me, the size and weight of this phone is perfect as before I could not accept carrying around the Palm and Blackberry sized units.

Ranking high on the list of reasons I made the move was the Wi-Fi capability. I haven't tried this yet as my router is on order. If it works, it will be very useful for me.

Bottom line, all the phones I've had before have had inconveniences to get used to. The Sony P990i is no different, but I don't see any show stoppers.

I'm glad I made the purchase. Biggest advantage is total functionality in a good looking "regular" sized phone. (No question, it is a looker)



UPDATE, October 31: I take everything negative back. In the last four weeks I've learned more about how to use the phone and have to say it is awesome. No complaints.

Even though I purchased and grew fond of the Nokia E62 and E70, I decided to give this smartphone a try due to my good experience with the SE W810i model.

My first impressions on the first couple days were absolutely DISMAL from the numerous crashes that required taking out the battery to cut off the phone. After the 15th crash, I called SE customer service and calmly gave my opinion on the performance of this phone. By suggestion from the operator I downloaded the firmware upgrade from the SE website and must say that all is well. The technology packed into this phone is amazing, and not mention the eye-catching looks of the silver covering.
The ability to input info via the qwerty keypad and the touchscreen/stylus is a HUGE draw for me, a former Palm pda/Treo 680 owner.

Accessing WiFi and setting up bluetooth with my MacBook Pro was pretty simple, but synching the address book and calendar is a different story. In lieu of no Mac iSync support I am using a third party software called p990iCal to sync my calendar data and using bluetooth transfers for my address book vcards, and both methods work just fine.
Navigating the phone does take some patience and time, but using the manual with good common sense is usually enough to suffice.

The bright, crisp screen is relatively large compared to the Nokia E70 and the qwerty keyboard, though small, is a joy to type on with my thumbnails. There is one gripe about typing on this keyboard: I love the support for Quickoffice on the smartphone, for I am addicted to writing on the go with Word. Where the Nokia E70 and E62 shines concerning text processing on the qwerty is where the SE p990i rests on its laurels. The SE cannot keep up with my typing speed whereas the Nokias could without a doubt. After pressing each button there is a taskbar that pops up at the top of the screen showing the selected character being highlighted and then placed into the document body. This truly slows up the typing process...and if you keep typing as the p990 tries to catch up, it gets lost and inputs jumbled letters. I have disabled the predictive text feature, but that apparently only handles the words and not the individual characters.
I have deducted one star for this reason alone.

The screen that shows spectacular imagery in clear color cannot be seen at all in outside sunlight, so be aware of using this outdoors. The photo quality is amazing and the flash is very strong while the video quality is great but not stellar. The media player application plays mpeg4 video files that my Nokias were unable to play, and the music player and FM radio is great as long as you have good headphones(the speaker is in mono). I surely took advantage of the space I had in a 2GB memory stick I had used with my previous W810i model.

The task manager is an absolute godsend! Instead if having to go through the menus to access recent apps you can go here and reopen them again! Voice dialing is good but must be programmed for each contact entry which the Nokias did not require at all. Handwriting recognition on the touchscreen appears to be the same as any other Palm device.

This is definitely a neat little tech package for those who love gadgets. Downloading the firmware upgrade should alleviate any problems concerning its performance.

Update for May 2007:
I have long since this review sold my p990 device and returned to Nokia. I am currently using the E61i until my preorder for the E90 Communicator is fulfilled. The p990 was and is still a great device, but just not for my purposes. This is a real shame, for I will always have a soft spot in my techie heart for touchscreens and styli in navigating that p990. I just couldn't tolerate the inconvenience of no Apple iSync support and a slow Quickoffice Word interface in writing my poetry and blog entries. Nokia has provided reliable stability in both these areas and I plan to remain with them as a loyal customer. The p990 is still a capable device for what it can do, only as long as it is updated to the current firmware and can adequately meet one's needs.

I love this phone. I've wanted a p-series phone for like 4 years now and once i got enough money, i bought it from amazon. Before buying it, i read all the negative and positive reviews about it on this and like 10 other websited. i made myself research for like a month on the phone because i dont just want to waist 600+ dollars on a phone that turns out like crap. But i went for it anyways and it turned out great. It is very easy to use for a pda. Before this i had a sidekick 3. After the sk3 i bought a t-mobile mda, but returned it because it was too confusing. That was my biggest fear buying the p990, but it proved me wrong. I also have NOT been experiencing and random shut-downs or long wait times. It's actually alot faster than my sk3! The screen resoulution is outstanding for a touch screen. the camera is awsome and i love that it doubles as a flash light. The buisness card reader ACTUALLY WORKS! I tested it with a buisness card with a website, e-mail, phone, name, and company name and the damn thing read everything and saved it in the phone book flawlessly. Wi-fi works great too. I connected to my Hotspots account and the phone performed great. 3G is kinda usless for me right now scince t-mobile dosent offer 3g, BUT! i just read that t-mobile just signed an FCC contract to roll out a 3G network in 07!!! So the video phone with soon come very handy. Overall, its the best phone ive had yet. Great look, intuitivness, and sound quality. It truly is THEE PDA Killer.

After the first day, I was frustrated with the phone (software problems, connectivity) until I updated the software and found further menu's and how-to's. Now it's perfect. I recommend the phone for people who likes gadgets, pda phones, smartphones, etc, but if you're not into that, this phone can get very complicated to use.

I havent had problems with rebooting or program crashing so far, unlike some other customers. If you want a hi-tech phone, I recommend getting this.

I bought this item from Amazon when it first listed for $649.99, and after reaading all the negative reviews.
I have been using iMate for the past 3 years, and wanted something similar but something that looks like a normal phone. The P990 is just that. All the power of the PDA with a great phone, MP3 player, FM Radio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, good camera, and if you load the correct software, it makes coffee for you.

I have faced some problems mentioned in the other reviews, and the phone has rebooted couple of times. But then again, I am a Windows user :)

I connected the phone to my laptop and it synched all my outlook (calendar, contacts, email). The FM radio is great, and the MP3 player is as good as my iPod - and ever since buying this, I find myself listening to lots of music - something that I never did with my iPod, simply because it is there!.

I put in a 2 GB memory stick and there is plenty of space there for photos, music and other stuff.

If they had released it with a more stable firmware, it would have got 5/5.

I'm a gadget addict, had to have this phone because , on the paper, it's the best phone/pda/younameit that was ever made. Now the TRUTH: This device is full of bugs, it's ssssssslllloooww, it freezes, it's bad news. I had to return mine ( did not buy from amazon). Do your own research and see what people say.
Shame on S.E. for releasing this. Like many, I was waiting for over a year for the P990. As I said , love gadgets.
JT

I have owned several different types of phones (Cingular 8125, Cingular 3125, Cingular 2125, Sony 600i) and this has moved to the top of phones that I have used.

Pros
**Styling: Love the styling of it. It is a good looking phone that is a little funky but has a nice clean look.
**KeyPad and touchscreen: I love having the keypad on the front so that I do not have to type a phone number on the screen. It is convenient. Then to be able to flip it open and be able to type in on the screen or with the small keyboard. Nice.
**Syncs with Outlook: I have had few problems having it successfully sync up with Outlook and to have all the contacts for easy access...very nice.
**Phone quality: So far so good. My calls sound good and people tell me that it sounds good when I am tlaking to them.
**WiFi: I love it. It still surprises me that the high end smart phones don't carry t (such as the Palm phones) but this phone does and it works well and is easy to use.
**Lock feature: It is a quick slide action on the side to lock the keyboard so you don't accdiently dial. There is no need to press 2 buttons to unlock as it is just another flick on the side of the phone and it is unlocked. Easy to use and quick to use and thats appreciated.

Cons:
**Kinks: Yes, there are some kinks with the software but this is to be kind of expected in that it really is a computer that acts like a phone at times. But, I haven't had the problems that others appear to have had in regards to slowness, etc.
**Camera: Good quality, but it takes a bit to get comfortable in using.
**Learning Curve: I have used windows mobile and I have been comfortable using that software as an interface for my phone. Now switching over to Symbian has taken me a while to get use to icons and functionality. It is a good operating system from what I have seen, but it has taken me some time.

Overall, it has been a terrific phone and I plan on using for it the next year. Well done Sony.

When i purchased this phone over 6 months ago, I was leary of all the issues that the reviews and comments mentioned. But nonetheless, I purchased it to see how it was for myself. I had a P910i and it paired with my car's Bluetooth flawlessly, but I was extremely bugged that the P990i could not pair up with my Bluetooth on the BMW. But with a couple updates from Sony Ericsson it was fixed.

In the beginning there were a few bugs, like the certain softwares on the phone took longer to load (i.e. camera), and if you had a couple programs running together (i.e. music player, camera, web browser) it would have a tendency to freeze up. But the wonderful parts about this phone are that Sony Ericsson's firmware updating team has been doing a great job in keeping this phone up to date and running at it's best, it's features are second to none. (2mp camera - great pictures, Wifi, QWERTY, Sony's music player[MegaBass], PDA, web brower).

So don't worry about the other reviews that claim it has bugs, all the majors issues have been ironed out and the phone is running well (with the latest update from SC) It's a great phone, but I only wished that SC made it slight smaller so it wouldn't be so bulky in the pocket.

Firmware:
Phone: CXC162037 R9G007
Bluetooth: CXC162058 R5A01
Organizer: CXC162036 R6D23
CDA: CDA162007/1 R6D23

When I first heard about the P990i and the specifications, I was really impressed. After I received it, this became less and less. So many bugs and crashes with a cell phone! Incredible! So I waited for the long promised firmware update, everything should be ok then, at least they promised. But this phone is still of minor use. Here are some major reasons why:

1. No transflective display, barley to use outdoors in a sunny state like CA!
2. Far away from the promised 14 day standby (6 days in best case)!
3. Restarts quite often when using it with 3rd party applications!
4. Also built in applications do crash sometimes!
5. No icon "appointments today"!
6. A backup saves only a part of the settings and no third part applications/settings (and even worse: all recorded voice commands are lost)!
7. Crashes sometimes during a phone call!
8. User buttons can only be defined with a few and different functions, dependent on the button!
9. Number keys can only be defined for phone numbers, no additional functionallity like "Bluetooth on/off"!
10. Office sync does not work for international phone numbers!
11. Have you ever had a phone that takes almost 2 minutes for booting after turning it on???

These are only some of many problems this phone still has. After all that trouble I wish I could give it back and buy a working phone from a different vendor. It really seems like this phone and its software was built up in a rush and nobody ever was testing it in real business conditions (leaving the SQA for the stupid customers). This is really poor after all that long development time. I will definitively never buy a SE phone again, the market is full of much better working devices. And it will become even better in June... Good to know that there are at least some companies who really know what counts to keep their well paying customers!