Sony Ericsson P990i

OK people, NOW we can OFFICIALLY celebrate! We've managed to persuade Sony Ericsson to release another FW release for the P990 and W950 in August.

Here's Johan (one of SE's Developers in Lund, Sweden) official posting:

SEMC Developer Support posted the following message:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Hi all
First of all I would like apologize for the long wait but now I finally have the official statement that you guys and gals have waited for, here it goes:
“In response to recent feedback from users and as a result of additional internal testing, Sony Ericsson has determined to offer a further firmware update for the P990 and W950 Walkman® phone. This move illustrates Sony Ericsson’s ongoing commitment to its existing ‘smartphone’ customers and the company’s desire to be responsive to customer feedback in order to provide an optimal user experience.
The next firmware release for the P990 and W950 will be available from the Sony Ericsson Update Service from August 2007.”

Cheers
/Johan
--------------------------------------------------------------

You can read it here:

http://developer.sonyericsson.com/thread.jspa?messageID=105965


Thank you for everybody posting on the SE Dev thread as well as contributing to the P990 R6D23 Wiki. Sony Ericsson is presumably going to use this as reference to fix the FW bugs.

For those who missed the earlier posts, the Wiki is located at:
http://uiq3.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Phones/P990i#Known_Bugs

Please add any new bugs (and feature requests) which is not yet listed, and importantly, please CONFIRM existing bugs - so that SE can see which ones are really obvious and important.
 
* Where are the 'party' icons ? ;)

Yes this is great news.

The immovable edifice that is SE has actually stirred, and responded to it's customers....!

Thanks everyone who contributed to the cause, either by posting on the threads and wiki, or by contacting SE support.

Please help us fine-tune SE's focus on the bug issue by reporting any reproducible bugs, as above.

*HOORAY* :D
 
This is FANTASTIC news!!! (The king jumps around.)

Now I definitely will have to buy another P990i, while they're so dirt cheap. Who knows, with SonyEricsson starting to focus on their Walkman phones in the Asian market, it might be the last smartphone from them. :)

And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. ;)
 
MyDraadloos said:
Keep telling that to yourself chum and eventually you might actually believe it.
Click to expand...

And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i.

Ok, I'm a believer.

:p
 
kingrob said:
And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i. And there is no other phone on the market that comes close to my P990i.

Ok, I'm a believer.

:p
Click to expand...

:p:p
 
The question is the new firmware actually going to adress the issues that we are having. Some of the issues are not firmware related but rather hardware/OS related. The memory issue is not related to the firmware but rather uiq3 on Symbian 9.0 and it appears that it cant be fixed.

That why the P1i runs tons more RAM. The problem will still happen, it will just not happen as quickly as with the P990.

See here.

http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=147368&start=90#

On a different note, the P1 will not be any different than the P990 except that it will take longer for the memory leak to show itself. I strongly suggest that you skip on the P1 and wait for a Symbian 9.5 device unless you want to experience the sad P990 feelings all over again.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Info/Memory Leak
From UIQ3 open-source software

"Garbarge Collector

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.

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."

Its a solution, not an ideal one, but it appears that the solution will work for most people.
 
Wynsam said:
The question is the new firmware actually going to adress the issues that we are having. Some of the issues are not firmware related but rather hardware/OS related. The memory issue is not related to the firmware but rather uiq3 on Symbian 9.0 and it appears that it cant be fixed.

That why the P1i runs tons more RAM. The problem will still happen, it will just not happen as quickly as with the P990.
Click to expand...

My only question - will there be a successor to the P990i? Aqualung reckons that Sony is moving away from the smartphone market and is only concentrating on their Walkman phones.
 
kingrob said:
My only question - will there be a successor to the P990i? Aqualung reckons that Sony is moving away from the smartphone market and is only concentrating on their Walkman phones.
Click to expand...

I think there will be in 2008.

It will run symbian 9.5. There are many improvements in 9.5 that solve the current RAM issues. My guess is that it will also do HSDPA, wireless G, GPS etc.

Look at the specs of the Nokia E90, imagine that in the P series form factor with touch screen, maybe taking a few cues from the Iphone interface. Nice.
 
kingrob said:
My only question - will there be a successor to the P990i? Aqualung reckons that Sony is moving away from the smartphone market and is only concentrating on their Walkman phones.
Click to expand...


I agree with Wynsam here. Apparently P990's successor will be released sometime in 2008, although they are very quite about it. Maybe they learned from their previous mistake by announcing the P990 too early.

Also the fact that they acquired UIQ in Sweden early this year is an indication for me that they are serious to compete with Nokia and WM6 in the smartphones market in future.
 
Can someone please clarify if R6E28 is available for general updating? i know its available on EMMA 3 system, but have no idea what that means.
 
PaddyTM said:
Can someone please clarify if R6E28 is available for general updating? i know its available on EMMA 3 system, but have no idea what that means.
Click to expand...

It looks like you're right, PaddyTM!! Dammit, I can't wait to go home and perform the update!! Apparently the email bug & spacebar bug have been fixed + the memory management has improved... but how is it possible to improve memory management if we have the Symbian OS 9.1 limitation? :confused:

First will have to see if this is for real.... :p
 
PaddyTM said:
Can someone please clarify if R6E28 is available for general updating? i know its available on EMMA 3 system, but have no idea what that means.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but if it is on EMMA3, it is not yet available via SEUS to the public. EMMA3 is being used by official Beta Testers like AJACK.

Unless you can prove me wrong. :p

Just be carefull you go through the whole upgrade process, just to end up with R6D23 again..
 
Gecko said:
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but if it is on EMMA3, it is not yet available via SEUS to the public. EMMA3 is being used by official Beta Testers like AJACK.

Unless you can prove me wrong. :p

Just be carefull you go through the whole upgrade process, just to end up with R6D23 again..
Click to expand...

Eish. :sick:
 
i was praying you wouldn't say that; still on R5, dont really want R6d
 
problem is, from next week i'll be in an internet free zone for the next 3 months, thats why i cant afford to mess around with f/w; whats done to the phone is done until i'm back.
 
PaddyTM said:
problem is, from next week i'll be in an internet free zone for the next 3 months, thats why i cant afford to mess around with f/w; whats done to the phone is done until i'm back.
Click to expand...

I understand. R6 is a improvement to R5 though. Except for the long email CText bug. But it's your choice. By the time you are back, the P990 should have it final FW release.
 
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