Sony Ericsson P990i review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 17 May 2007

Price when reviewed: £90

Supplier: http://www.orange.co.uk, www.vodafone.co.uk

Reviewed By: Chris Finnamore

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

User Rating

Like the M600i, Sony Ericsson's P990i runs the Symbian 9.1 UIQ operating system.

The device is huge but well designed. The numeric keypad is on a flip-down panel. When this is closed, the touch screen is disabled and the phone is set up for easy access to contacts and messaging using the directional keypad or thumbwheel. When it's open, the screen expands and more options are visible. It's a neat way to differentiate between phone and PDA modes. Opening the flip also reveals a QWERTY keypad, but typing isn't particularly easy. The keys are too small to press with your thumbs, so you have to use your thumbnail, but it's still quicker than using predictive text.

The P990i supports 3G data and wireless networking. The wireless setup wizard makes it easy to connect to a network, but the phone supports only older WEP encryption and not the newer WPA. As most wireless networks are encrypted with WPA, this could be a problem. We weren't impressed with the P990i's web browser. It's slow and struggled when rendering complicated websites in full-screen mode.

The P990i's call quality reminded us of VoIP services such as Skype. Recipients found that our voices sounded slightly robotic, but there was hardly any background noise. The P990i's impressive battery ran for over 24 hours in our test. Despite this and the phone's clever design, though, there are far better choices. The P990 is expensive on contract and its usefulness is limited by a poor web browser and the lack of WPA support.

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