Sony Ericsson P990i

Here is the article about the RAM problem with the P990i : http://uiq3.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Info/Memory_Leak
Symbian OS uses a Garbage Collector as memory manager - in theory this should ease programming.

However Until Symbian 9.5 Symbian only uses an inferior non moving collector. (To be fair: moving collectors don't go well with programming languages which support pointer arithmetic)

With a non moving collector memory becomes fragmented into ever smaller parts until larger memory requests cannot be satisfied any more. To make matter worse: Fragmentation happens a lot quicker of only little free space is available - Which is the case for early UIQ3 phones.

This leads to the dreaded "Restart to improve performance" as restarting is the ultimate way to reclaim and compact all memory. Just ending all programs won't help since there are quite a few programs on the phone which will never end.

As mentioned Symbian 9.5 rectifies this shortcomings and now uses a moving collector which will be able to re-arrange memory so that free memory will be available as one great continues lump.

[edit]XIP or the lack of it
Prior to SymbianOS 9.0, many Symbian devices used XIP (eXecute In Place) NOR based memory, which mean nothing had to be loaded into RAM to execute, but this came at the cost of very slow write times. Starting with 9.0, most devices moved to a NAND based memory system, which does not support XIP, and so EVERYTHING has to be loaded into RAM (and kept there) in order to execute. That's why it takes over 40MB of RAM to run the system, as everything is kept at all times.
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Advice needed

Hey guys, i need a bit of advice; the new f/w has now been out for a while, and most of you seem to have been running it since release. So far i haven't switched to it; here's my problem-

I wont be able to change firmware for the next 3 months, so in your experience, is it worth switching or not?
 
PaddyTM said:
Hey guys, i need a bit of advice; the new f/w has now been out for a while, and most of you seem to have been running it since release. So far i haven't switched to it; here's my problem-

I wont be able to change firmware for the next 3 months, so in your experience, is it worth switching or not?
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In my opinion, I think it is worth while to upgrade to R6. There is a lot of improvements. Camera's Autofocus is hugely improved, WLAN is faster and more realiable, and the built-in Opera Internet Browser is the biggest improvement. Faster, stable etc.

Memory leak is still there.

A new spacebar-related bug is now introduced (mostly affects you if you use the phone without the flip), but there is a solution for that. Just download and install the following app from CellphoneSoft (the creators of the amazing SwissManager). It's free. http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32776&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

There's a email bug, that when you write email of more than 2000 characters, the email app will crash. Personally I haven't seen this one yet since I don't wrote big emails on my phone.

So if you can live with these few cons, it's definately worth the upgrade.
 
Anybody had the point of their Stylus break off inside their phone? Quite a hassle to get it out again.

Something else: I'm really struggling to access internet through my wireless network. WPA PSK key is correct - phone picks up network etc, but can't seem to get on internet. Any suggestions?
 
ErnestF said:
Anybody had the point of their Stylus break off inside their phone? Quite a hassle to get it out again.

Something else: I'm really struggling to access internet through my wireless network. WPA PSK key is correct - phone picks up network etc, but can't seem to get on internet. Any suggestions?
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Re Stylus, Mine got stuck in there, P910i. removed the point and used instant glue to fix. Now OK.
 
Here is SE Developers response to further firmware updates for the P990i :

Hi all,
Sorry for the delay in getting this info. No new firmware is planned to be released for the P990 and W950 after R6D23 released on June 15, 2007 via the Sony Ericsson Update Service. The last firmware release for the M600 was R6A16.
I have got an official statement from Niklas Sivander who is the Head of Product Management, Open OS.
So here it goes:

"These firmware releases meet the requirements of bug fixes prioritized by our operator customers and the Customer Services organization within different markets. The decision to freeze the P990, W950 and M600 firmware versions at this point has been made based on meeting these requirements. As with any phone project, no product is ever completely flawless. Any remaining issues are of course unfortunate, but we feel that with the level of quality on the latest P990 firmware we now have a good, solid product.

Due to all heavy features in P990, the need for RAM memory has grown. When running multiple memory-consuming programs at the same time, the available RAM memory runs low and sometimes results in the memory manager closing down one of the applications. We have been working on improving memory management during the whole lifecycle of the P990. The low RAM memory situation for the P990 will unfortunately remain for the heaviest users, and would not be fixed by a new firmware update since it's hardware related. Multi-tasking on the P990 however works satisfactory provided that you don't run too large and memory-consuming programs at the same time. Performance improvements have indeed been made for the new P1 phone compared to P990 and the user RAM available for applications has been increased with >400%, significantly improving multi-tasking performance and application behavior so that you can run a lot heavier programs simultaneously.

Many users are comparing the P990 with the stable and relatively problem-free predecessor P910, which was an excellent smartphone. The P910 was based on an earlier Symbian OS and UIQ platform version with only an incremental software development update from the P900 (Symbian OS 7.0, UIQ 2.1), which made the development work a lot smoother at the time. With the P990, the Symbian OS capabilities have however expanded quite significantly and as with any major platform update, this was expected to introduce some new issues to solve. Sony Ericsson however underestimated the complexity of the development work for UIQ 3 and it took longer than expected to implement and quality assure things like the platform security mechanisms, the multimedia framework and other advanced connectivity aspects like 3G, videotelephony and WiFi. It has been a tough journey for all of us. Please extend my thanks and appreciation to the user and developer communities for all their patience, support and feedback which has helped us identify bugs and improve both existing and upcoming products."

In addition to Niklas's comment above, I have managed to get hold of a list of the major bug fixes as required by operators and Customer Services and solved as of R6D23, I am going to filter out the user bugs and translate some of the stuff into a non tech jibberis before I publish them here.

Sony Ericsson has not found any memory leakage problem in the platform or product in its testing of the latest firmware. Those additional third party applications that users may download should be ok and not create memory leakage provided that they have been developed according to UIQ 3 standard guidelines but it is up to the developer in question to ensure correct development and testing procedures of their apps.

The comments about new bugs from our forums and http://uiq3.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Phones/P990i#Known_Bugs having been introduced in R6D23 have been forwarded to the development projects and will be reviewed over the coming days and I will try and get some comments back to the forums from product development on them.

Bugs reported on this forum and from the P990 wiki at sourceforge has been sent to the development organization. Many of the reported bugs have been fixed as of R6D23.

I appreciate your continued patience on this topic and fully understand your frustration and disappointment on our lack of communication and clarifications up until now.

Cheers
Johan
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WTF? Can this really be how SE conduct themselves? How the h*ll do you run a business like this?
 
Gecko said:
Ja, me too.. I wish someone knows whether we have any legal legs to stand on facing SE with this matter.
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I must still use this phone for a year and a half, before I can upgrade again. Well, like I said before, I'll wait for all P990is to disappear from the market and then my phone will have an 'accident'...

Cannot believe SE's arrogant response! This is their 'flagship' phone and they're dumping it in the bin! :mad:

My next phone will be an iPhone or Windows Mobile phone.
 
Gecko, watch the my-symbian thread, I think some people there will start some form of action.( BTW thanks for your eloquent letter on the devs forum)

kingrob, yes it is. Who knows how it will function in the real world, however if it works like my ibook, well it'll run anything we throw at it without breaking a sweat :)

I'll use my P990 till it's natural lifespan is over, it's still a good phone, anyway I've figured out how to work around the bugs and leaks, it's just not what it could have been.

And when it dies I'll move on to another brand ( Nokia E90 vs iphone ...)

But boy am I angry with SE and their attitude.

What a kick in the teeth.
 
aqualung said:
Gecko, watch the my-symbian thread, I think some people there will start some form of action.( BTW thanks for your eloquent letter on the devs forum)

kingrob, yes it is. Who knows how it will function in the real world, however if it works like my ibook, well it'll run anything we throw at it without breaking a sweat :)

I'll use my P990 till it's natural lifespan is over, it's still a good phone, anyway I've figured out how to work around the bugs and leaks, it's just not what it could have been.

And when it dies I'll move on to another brand ( Nokia E90 vs iphone ...)

But boy am I angry with SE and their attitude.

What a kick in the teeth.
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I feel exactly how you feel, but I still can't believe SE is dropping their 'flagship phone' like a hot patato!

I'm absolutely speechless.
 
I actually feel like sitting down and cry!

I KNOW the P990i can still be a great phone, if SE 'bless' it with Symbian OS 9.5 - but now that will never happen. :sick:
 
How does that song go??

And now, the end is near. And so I face, the final curtain.

Only joking guys.

That is really not on. Isn't there anyone out there that can create a version 9.5 for the P990i?

I mean, the i-Mate Jasjar came with WM5 and then someone went and create a WM6 version for the Jasjar.
 
Thanks aqualung. I wrote that letter in the very early hours of the morning, very tired myself and tired of Sony Ericsson's attitude.

But I sort of expected a statement from SE that they acknowledge all the problems users are experiencing, and will at least release one more FW update to address those obvious bugs. Their response however is shocking.
 
Piesang said:
How does that song go??

And now, the end is near. And so I face, the final curtain.

Only joking guys.

That is really not on. Isn't there anyone out there that can create a version 9.5 for the P990i?

I mean, the i-Mate Jasjar came with WM5 and then someone went and create a WM6 version for the Jasjar.
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Don't think it's possible, we must use SE Update Service to update the phone's firmware.

The phone is only one year old (from release date) and SE dropped support for it!! It's still unreal. :(
 
I have to ask, is this definitely for real? There's no way this is a prank? I just cant believe that any serious company would do this and hope to escape unscathed- untapped markets or not; i believe the majority of prospective smartphone users will research the phone before purchashing, and the amount of negative publicity this will attract cannot be good for any business.

Many models later, i think this is the end of it between me and se
 
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