P910i has some 'must-have' features
Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta
Like shopping for a luxury sedan, choosing a cell phone that will meet your requirements can be difficult.
You want a full-featured cell phone that can function as your organizer, store all your contact numbers, take some decent pictures and short video clips, let you surf the Internet, enable you to read your e-mail, let you play some games, play back music files, etc.
Above all, you want a cell phone that makes you feel good each time you use it in public.
On the market, just a handful of models will do most of these things. The P910i from Sony Ericsson certainly ranks among the top tier.
While it may not have the most comprehensive set of advanced features available today -- none really does -- it excels in several areas.
The P910i is the third generation of Sony Ericsson's flagship cell phone PDA series, the predecessors being the P800 and the P900. Courtesy of Sony Ericsson Indonesia, I was able to play around with it during the recent Idul Fitri holiday.
Sony Ericsson focuses on making cell phone handsets and other mobile accessories such as GPRS, EDGE and Wi-Fi cards for the notebook computer.
The company was founded by Sony and Ericsson with equal share ownership in 2002 to capitalize on Sony's proven prowess in consumer electronics and worldwide distribution network, as well as Ericsson's strength in mobile communications technology.
The lowdown "We consider the P910i a smartphone," head of Asia-Pacific operations Kazuo Nakai told me in an interview at Sony Ericsson Indonesia's office in Pondok Indah, South Jakarta.
"With it, you can read and edit Word documents and Excel worksheets and zap Powerpoint presentations via Bluetooth to a Bluetooth-capable digital projector.
"You can also synchronize your data in its PIM (Personal Information Manager) with Microsoft Outlook," he added.
Extending the list of productivity tools are the Opera microbrowser for surfing the Web, a PDF reader, a handwriting recognition tool, a calculator, a calendar and a file manager.
The Symbian operating system ran without a glitch during my review test. The cell phone responded quickly to any input. Synching is done via Bluetooth, infrared, USB or RS232 cable.
SyncStation, a charging cradle that connects to the PC, is also included in the box.
As you would expect from a high-end product bearing the brand name "Sony", the P910i has an excellent fit and finish. You can feel the Japanese company's legendary craftsmanship in building small and stylish electronic gadgets when holding this cell phone in your hand.
By the way, I have always shunned PDAs that do not have keypads. While you can tap on the screen with the stylus to make a call, I have always found that pressing the keypad is a faster and less error-prone way to do it. Luckily, the majority of today's PDAs come with a keypad of some sort.
In the case of the P910i, both a keypad and a full "QWERTY" keyboard on its back are available so that you are not limited to the touchscreen and the stylus for input.
The QWERTY thumb board is surprisingly adequate for entering text. Unfortunately, if you try to use it with both thumbs, the entire cell phone will dance all over the place and reading the text on the screen will become well-nigh impossible.
The large touchscreen is simply fabulous.
The 18-bit (262,000) color TFT display is bright, and it is miles better than the one I saw in the P800. I also admire the five-way jog dial. It is definitely one of the greatest features I've found in this cell phone.
It is very thoughtfully placed on the left side, right where your thumb will normally be. You can use it to call up the menu, scroll up and down the list, select a highlighted menu item or go back to the previous screen -- all without touching the keypad or the screen.
For example, with the keypad closed, you can use the jog dial to go to Messages to read or send SMS, MMS or EMS messages, to start the phone function, to retrieve your list of contacts, to check appointment schedules or to invoke the list of applications and options.
Once you've tried the jog dial, you'll agree with me that other PDAs should have one, too.
The P910i also comes with an MP3 audio player and an MPEG4 video player, so you can have music in your leisure time. It still uses a VGA digital camera, not the one-megapixel type that an increasing number of cell phones in our local market currently have.
"This particular model is aimed at business users rather than the imaging market," replied Nakai when I asked him about it.
As you might guess, this cell phone uses a Memory Stick Duo slot for additional data storage. Sony Ericsson throws in a Memory Stick and an adapter in the box.
One step at a time
What's still missing from this sleek smartphone? Support for EDGE is one thing that you'll notice immediately, given that such services are already available here.
The news is, Nakai says, his company will launch the EDGE- capable Z500 model in Indonesia within the first quarter of next year. I guess the successor to the P910i will support EDGE as well.
Support for Wi-Fi is also missing, unfortunately. Some latest PDA models now come with Wi-Fi already included. Very recently, NTT DoCoMo released probably the world's first Wi-Fi cell phone model, a 3G FOMA cell phone that will allow people to talk via VoIP wherever there is a wireless LAN.
Having a 1.3-megapixel CCD camera such as that used in the Sony Ericsson S700i would be nice, but you must understand that it would further increase the price of this sleek gadget.
My wish list would also include an I/O slot that would enable you to add, for example, a Wi-Fi module to this cell phone PDA.
But then again, such an extra feature would increase the thickness of the device and affect its overall design.
Well, you can't have everything, can you?
For now, if you want a great-looking, feature-rich and easy-to-use cell phone PDA that still fits into your shirt pocket, this is very likely to be the one for you.
Be forewarned, though; this tri-band cell phone will set you back around Rp 7.5 million.