Kingrob are you still enjoying your phone. I'm a little weary about the phone since I've read all the bad review. Scared of making a mistake
Should be picking mine up on Wednesday.
Cheers
B
Hi Bruce000 (and to those who might be interested)
I’ve received my phone a week ago, and so far I’m very happy with it.
I’ve had the P800 and P910i before this, and I’m not disappointed. I feared the worst having read the literally thousands of negative remarks about the phone on the international forums, but knew that most of them are written by people who does not know what they are talking about. Most of the issues they saw as “bugs” are more “finger trouble” and plain stupidity (on their part). Most of all, some people are just pissed off they had to wait so long – and for that they expect the P990i to be the phone of all phones. And it is not. But it is still a damn good phone in the true P-series tradition.
Granted, SE made big mistakes in their planning of this phone’s development, but mostly I think some of the development issues were mostly out of their control (development of UIQ3.0 running late etc.). I say this due to my involvement in software and hardware development. One thing slips, and the whole project suffers. Worst thing they could have done was to announce the phone so early before they knew everything was under control.
Coming back to the phone. It is definitely not the most sexiest phone I’ve ever seen. BUT it is built well. Good materials used, good general design, and it feels good in your hand. And it is surprisingly light. I think it is partly due to the battery being so much smaller and thinner (cannot judge the battery life yet). I must say the P990i looks very sexy when you remove its flip keypad. And you get used to it after a while – the more you look at it, the more you like it.
All the buttons works and feel good, and the qwerty keyboard actually works well if you get used to it. I would have like a more dedicated numerical key allocation like in the Treos though..
The screen is a nice upgrade to the P910’s screen, and is very bright and clear. There are better ones out there, but it is still very good with a high resolution. It does not work well in the SA sun though…
The big controversy is the OS. Some people say it got way more complicated, everything is “different” etc. etc. But I like it. Once you’ve got to know it (and I’m still learning), and is willing to get out of you comfort zone for a little while, it is actually very nice. I find it much easier to get into this OS than the UIQ2.1 of the earlier P-series models. How I see it is like this (and I saw this reference by someone in another respectable forum too): It is like the big jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. And you know Windows 95 created the platform for 2000, XP, Vista etc.
Only problem of this phone (and everybody knows this by now) is the memory issue. Don’t know if it is a memory leak, or just plain bad management, but it runs out very soon and can cause instability. That said I actually haven’t had too much instability issues during my first week. I’ve loaded this Swiss Manager app everybody is raving about, and it seems to definitely help. But SE is known for fixing their bugs (with a little bit of wait) and I am quite sure they will address this problem. I hope so, otherwise they seriously under-designed the memory for this phone.
I’ve read on the Esato forum that there MIGHT (just might) be a new Firmware release next week (Week 48), so I’ll watch that space. Current firmware versions are: Ph: R7A001, Org:R3B01, Bt:R4F01.
Last thing that might be worth mentioning is, is the applications for Symbian 9 UIQ3.0. Not a lot out there at the moment, but hopefully will add up soon due to the OS also being loaded on the M600, P950 etc. Also I’ve heard somewhere that Nokia now is also launching (or have already) a Symbian UIQ phone. That will stimulate the development community out there..
Lastly, and I heard this from Sony Ericsson themselves, is that the P990i’s that are “branded” like Vodacom/Vodaphone/O2 do with theirs, causes all kinds of problems: memory, crashes etc. - A huge frustration for SE since they are not allowed to remove the branding from the phones. So in Europe you hear of huge return rates due to this very reason.
Fortunately for MTN customers – they supply you the unbranded clean spanking VIRGIN phone! Gotta love MTN for that.
So Bruce000, I hope this answered your question a bit. Of course this is all my personal opinion after having the phone for 1 week, so please consider it as such.
Regards
Gecko
