Sony Ericsson P910i review

The P910i is more of an upgrade to the existing P900 rather than a brand new product.

From the outside it looks very similar, with the same size case and a flip number pad hiding part of the 3" screen. Only the darker colour scheme and blockier design show that this is a different phone.

The phone is bigger than regular handsets. Whether you can handle carrying it around all the time is down to personal preference, but we feel that we could.

Like its predecessor, when the flip number pad is up, the remaining part of the screen becomes a regular mobile phone display, making the P910i compare well to any other phone around. Open the flip and the full screen springs to life in brilliant colour. It's large enough to replace a PDA and, due it being touch-sensitive, is simple to use.

The phone runs Symbian OS 7.0 with a UIQ 2.1 user interface. It's easy enough to master, although not quite as polished as Microsoft's Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. For example, there's no friendly home screen showing you upcoming appointments, and it doesn't deal as well with contacts either. With Microsoft's OS, you can use predictive text to jump to a contact, while with Symbian you have to scroll through the list.

In the P910i's favour, it has a QWERTY keyboard on the underside of the flip. It may be a tiny keyboard but it's surprisingly easy to use and certainly faster than using predictive text or handwriting recognition. If you need to write a lot of emails then you'll be glad of this addition.

Inside the processor is the same 156MHz ARM processor used in the P900. It's fast enough and we had no problems. Fortunately, the memory has been upgraded from the P900's 16MB to 64MB. Sony Ericsson also provides a 32MB Memory Stick Duo card. We'd suggest using this for digital photos, so that the onboard memory remains free for applications, personal data and work files.

And work is a real possibility with this phone. You can edit all your Microsoft Word and Excel documents with Quickword and Quicksheet. There's a built-in email client too, so there's no reason to be out of touch when you're on the move.

When tethered to a desk, there's a cradle in the box that's used to synchronise data with a PC. Should you prefer, there's also Bluetooth, which you could use to connect a notebook to the internet wirelessly. There's no WiFi, and no way of upgrading at the moment.

Whether you choose to buy the P910i will depend on your needs. For day-to-day use its size may prove to be a hindrance. However, if you'll be working with documents, emailing and web browsing, the large touch-screen and QWERTY keyboard make it ideal, although it is expensive to buy SIM-free.