Sony Ericsson P1i review - UIQ 3 smartphone with 3,2 megapixel camera

Sony Ericsson had big problems with the P990i UIQ 3 device and many of the P990i owners were unhappy with their smartphones. Sony Ericsson released many updates for the P990i and the device came more stable but in the end Sony Ericsson had to admit that there’s nothing more they can do, the lack of memory was the biggest problem. It was time for the next generation smartphone. Sony Ericsson announced the P1i in May 2007 and the phone hit the stores in Q3/2007. The design is similar to M600i and you could even say that it’s the successor of the M600i. Sony Ericsson P1i has a new UIQ 3.1 operating system, which is a bit different than the 3.0 version. P1i also features QWERTY-keypad and a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus.

Sony Ericsson P1i official images

Key features:

- Symbian UIQ 3.1
- 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus
- Secondary camera for video calls
- UMTS
- WiFi
- 2.6” 262K colors TFT touchscreen
- Memory card slot (M2)
- Bluetooth
- FM Radio with RDS

Sony Ericsson decided to leave the old flip design, used with the P800i, P900i, P910i and P990i, behind and I think that’s a great thing. Thanks to the new design, similar to M600i, the P1i is a quite small and compact smartphone.

Sony Ericsson P1i live photos

Sony Ericsson P1i has a lot to offer but just like with the K850i Sony Ericsson has left out some key features. K850i dosen’t have WiFi but it has EDGE and HSDPA. The P1i has WiFi but the lack of EDGE and HSDPA might be a big disadvantage when you can’t use WiFi.

I’m a former M600i user or actually I still got it but I don’t use it much, so I’m a bit skeptical if Sony Ericsson has really fixed all the problems. I was so disappointed in the M600i that I didn’t even consider buying another UIQ 3 device and that’s why it was very interesting to get P1i for a review and see if it really is a better device than the M600i.

Design and build quality

Like I already mentioned Sony Ericsson decided to give up the flip design used with older P-series phones. Thanks to the new design, the P1i (106 x 55 x 17 mm) is much smaller and lighter than the P990i (114 x 57 x 25 mm) Sony Ericsson P990i weights 150 grams, which quite much these days. Luckily, the P1i is much lighter and weights 124 grams but it’s still heavier than the M600i which weights only 112 grams.

P1i in hand front/back/top

The front side of the phone is quite stylish. It’s combination of silver and black. The 2.6 inch screen covers over half of the front side. Below the screen there’s the QWERTY-keypad, which is quite unique. I guess Sony Ericsson is the only manufacturer using this kind of keypad, at least if you only count in all the biggest mobile phone manufacturers. I’m a bit surprised that no one has copied Sony Ericsson’s idea because I think the keypad works great. It was the main reason why I bought the M600i. Above the screen there’s of course the speaker and the secondary camera for video calls.

Let’s take a closer look to the QWERTY-keypad. If you have ever used the M600i, you know how this keypad works and you can skip this paragraph if you want. There are twenty buttons and basically all buttons, excluding the last five buttons, has two sides (left and right). The first fifteen buttons has three or four characters and depending on which side, left or right, you press the phone determines which character will get printed. It might take a while to get used to the keypad but after the learning curve it performs great! I used the M600i for a year and then I bought the W880i and it was quite odd to use the regular keypad again, especially when writing SMS.

P1i back side / P1i camera / P1i and M600i

Then, let’s take a look at the back side. There’s nothing special but the 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera and the dual LED flash will probably caught your attention. Second eye catcher is just above the camera lens, a reflecting silver line and if you I have understood right, it covers the loudspeaker.

On the left side, Sony Ericsson P1i has a hand strap eyelet, a Jog Dial and a back key. On the right side there are two buttons, an Internet button and a camera button. There’s also M2 slot on the right side.

How about the stylus? P1i’s stylus is similar to M600i’s stylus. The biggest difference is color and length, P1i has a bit longer stylus.

In my opinion the P1i looks pretty nice and it feels nice on hand. Actually, it feels pretty much the same as the M600i.

The UIQ 3 user interface

If you have used some older UIQ 3 phone, such as the M600i or the W950i then you know how the UIQ 3 user interface works and the P1i won’t offer much new in this field. Of course the UI is now faster and nicer to use, thanks to the bigger memory.

Stanby screen / Main menu / Task manager

The standby screen is something I really liked in my M600i because it has some features that non-smartphone Sony Ericsson’s doesn’t have. P1i’s standby screen has only minor changes and the biggest change is probably that now you can have more than five shortcuts on your desktop. Pressing the arrow above the shortcuts will reveal two new lines, so you can actually have up to fifteen shortcuts. In my opinion the today list is probably the best thing the standby screen offers. Pressing the plus on the left side will open the list, which displays all recent unread SMS messages, e-mail messages, calendar entries, tasks and missed calls. One nice thing I want to point out before we move on. If you look at the upper left corner you will notice a triangle. Pressing it will reveal a new pop up menu with options: New, Connections, Volume, Time and Lock keys. I usually use only the Connection menu, because it a fastest way to turn Bluetooth or Infrared on/off.

The main menu has nine icons in 3x3 grid and if you have ever used Sony Ericsson mobile phone, non-smartphone or smartphone, you are familiar with the main menu. Although, we are talking about smartphone, so there are some nice ways you can customize the main menu, like if you don’t like the default icon view, you can change it to list view. Font size can be chosen from three options: Small, Medium and Large, and of course the theme can be changed. Unfortunately my review unit had only the default theme.

Sony Ericsson P1i is a smartphone and multitasking is a very important feature. These days even non-smartphone Sony Ericsson’s can do multitasking, for example my W880i can have multiple application open, but of course it’s not quite same. I was glad to notice that P1i can have multiple applications open without any problems. That’s something my M600i wasn’t able to do. Of course, my M600i didn’t have problems if I only had few applications running but when we are talking about running something like 10 applications at the same time, my M600i started to have problems. So, P1i user interface is definitely much enjoyable to use!

Calendar

Sony Ericsson P1i has a quite nice calendar application and that’s a good thing because it’s a smartphone. The default view displays the current month and below it you can see upcoming appointments. The calendar offers monthly, weekly and daily views. The P1i’s calendar also offers a nice find function, which allows you to search appointment in the past/future.

Default view / Creating an appointment / Daily view

P1i’s calendar can have four kinds of entries: Appointment, Reminder, All day event and Anniversary. Appointments can have different kind of information. For example you can define start date, end date, location, start time and end time, and of course you make the appointment repetitive.

Sony Ericsson P1i has one big advantage if we compare it to my M600i. It works with Apple’s iSync. I just wonder why it’s impossible to create a working iSync plugin for the M600i, because P990i, W950i and P1i have working plugins? I have read that it got something to do with the M600i’s firmware. Well, who knows?

Anyways, I think Sony Ericsson P1i has good calendar. It’s nice and pretty fast to use. You can even backup your calendar entries without using a computer!

Contacts

Like I have pointed out in my W880i review and K850i review contacts are very important feature. It’s a feature that all handsets have and you should always take good look at the contacts feature before you buy any phone. So, let’s see what a Symbian UIQ 3 smartphone has to offer in this field.

Sony Ericsson P1i can hold unlimited amount of numbers. You can great groups, backup your contacts without computer and you can even choose the font size (small, medium, large). All your contacts can be sorted by: Last name, First name; First name, Last name; Company, Last name; Company, First name.

One contact can have a lot of different kind of information, such as phone number, email, web page, job title, address, city, notes and more. You can also add a photo that appears when you have incoming call from the specific number.

Camera

Sony Ericsson P1i has a 3.2 megapixel camera with dual-flash and autofocus. I was positively surprised when I took the first photos with the P1i’s 3.2 megapixel camera. I guess the autofocus makes the difference and because of it the photo quality is quite good. The camera definitely beats my W880i’s 2 megapixel camera but of course it can’t compete with the K850i Cyber-shot handset. I think the P1i’s camera can take at least almost as good pictures as the K800i/K810i.

Sample camera photos

When you start the camera software there’s a small lag before you are able to start shooting. For example, my W880i’s camera software start much faster, but of course P1i is a smartphone and there’s always a small lag when you open some software. That’s just something you need to get used to.

The camera interface is quite similar to the latest Sony Ericsson handsets and you won’t find it hard to use if you have used some other Sony Ericsson handset, such the K850i. Unfortunately the interface isn’t as fast to use. Non-smartphone Sony Ericssons have much faster camera interface, but like I mentioned already, the lag is just something you need get used to when you are using a UIQ 3 smartphone.

The camera interface offers all the common adjustment settings. Photos size can be chosen from four options: 3 MP, 2 MP, 1 MP and VGA. Autofocus menu has three options: Normal, Macro and Off. The P1i’s camera offers automatic white balance but if you aren’t happy with it you can choose white balance from five options: Cloudy, Daylight, Fluorescent, Incandescent and Automactic. Of course you can add some effects too: Black & White, Sepia, Solarization, Negative.

Office applications

Sony Ericsson P1i has some nice office applications to make your life a bit easier when you need to work with MS Word or PDF files. Quickoffice is the right application if you need to create or modify MS Word, MS Excel or MS Powerpoint documents. It’s actually pretty handy software but it’s not fun to deal with complicated word files with P1i because the screen is too small for this kind of stuff. PDF+ is a PDF reader. Unfortunately files that I tried to open with PDF+ looked a bit weird. My favorite application is the Notes. It’s a very handy software when you need to write or draw something. For example, you can easily draw driving instruction and send via email.

Notes / Calculator

Using Internet via WiFi

The P1i has one major advantage if you compare it to the M600i. Sony Ericsson P1i has a WiFi. These days many places, like coffee bars have free WiFi spots and that’s why it’s an important feature.

I found the P1i’s connection manager software pretty easy to use and I didn’t have any problems to get connect to my home network or a public network. Everything worked well!

Opera 8.0 web browser

After you have successfully connected to the Internet, you are ready to open the web browser. Sony Ericsson P1i comes with the Opera 8.0 web browser. The browser supports HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, and SSL and TSL security protocols. I’m not sure if it’s the best browser available but it does its job quite well. I still would recommend you to check out the Opera Mini also.

The browser offers some basic features, such as you can easily switch between portrait and landscaped mode. You can also view web pages in fullscreen mode to make most out of the 2.6” screen. The Opera browser also has some shortcuts that makes your life a bit easier. For example, pressing the ALT key and then the 1 key shows the address bar. The browser also features tabs, so you can have multiple pages open. Navigating between tabs is quite hard without the pen because the tabs are so small.

Email client and RSS reader

The default email client can be found from the Messaging menu. Of course before you can use the email you must create a new email account. Creating a new email account is pretty straight forward if you know what to do. P1i’s email client supports POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols.

From the email accounts menu, which can be found from control panel, you can adjust a lot of stuff. For instance, you can choose if you want to download the whole message or just the header. I prefer downloading only the header, because it’s faster and if you get a lot of spam there’s no need to download the whole message. When you choose to read the message, the email client starts to download the message.

Writing an email is just like writing a SMS. Of course there are some stuff that regular SMS message can’t have. For example you can add attachments and customize the font style.

RSS reader / email client

Sony Ericsson P1i comes with a built-in RSS reader. The reader can be found from the Multimedia menu. It doesn’t offer anything special. It’s just a basic RSS reader. Anyways, you can choose if you want to update you feeds manually or automatically and you can add folder to keep your feed in order.

Music Player, Video player and FM-Radio

The P1i’s music player looks quite lame if you compare it to the W960i Walkman player. There are no graphic visualizing stuff but the player supports album art. You can view you music by Artists, Albums, Tracks and of course you can create your own playlists.

The video player is pretty nice. You can watch video is landscape mode and create folder to keep your video in order. The P1i has support for streaming H.264 video content.

Unlike the M600i, Sony Ericsson P1i has FM-Radio, which of course works only if you have plugged in the headsets. The P1i supports RDS and you can save up to 20 radio stations. The radio comes with the TrackID function, which allows you to record a song coming from the radio and then use the TrackID function to find the artist name and song name.

Sony Ercsson P1i vs Sony Ericsson W960i

Sony Ericsson W960i is almost the same device as the P1i, but there are some changes in the design and the software. Probably the biggest differences are that the W960i has 8 GB memory, Walkman Player and a regular keypad. It doesn’t have QWERTY-keypad.

Sony Ericsson P1i vs Sony Ericsson W960i

Obviously, The W960i has a better music player. It offers some great visualization, such as fullscreen-animated backgrounds, the player looks much better than the P1i’s music player. You can also sort your music by using the Rating and Mood categories. The player offers automated playlist creator, which creates a playlist based on rules, such as most played tracks or latest additions.

The W960i is pretty much same sized as the P1i, but the look of the phone is quite different. The phone is almost black. Can’t say which one looks better but the P1i definitely has a better stylus.

Anyways, the phones are pretty much identical. If you need a business phone then P1i is your choice, but if you are looking for a smartphone with great music functions, the W960i is what you need.

Conclusion

So, it’s time to sum things up. There’s no denying the fact that the P1i is probably the best Sony Ericsson smartphone available. It’ brings a better performance than the P990i and the UIQ 3 interface is much stable to use. The best thing is probably that the P1i can offer so much in so small form factor. It has QWERTY-keypad 2.6 inch touchscreen, 3,2 autofocus camera and so on. Although, I probably wouldn’t buy the P1i. Why? Because I just don’t like the UIQ 3 interface. Go and try out the phone before buying it! You might like it or hate it!

05.03.2008. 10:41

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