Kudzu's Sony Ericsson P800 Review

I travel a lot, and while I absolutely love my Sony VAIO, many of my travels it is just too much. I needed something that was better for day trips, as well as some of the trips I make where I do not plan to work, but need to keep in touch. I often travel to various parts of Russia, Siberia, and other parts of the world. After researching many options including PDA's + a GPRS phone, I settled on a Sony P800 instead.

The P800 is an amazing machine, and I strongly recommend it. However I have still found many shortcomings that I wish Sony had addressed. Knowing Sony, I suspect they will in the future. The one thing that really separates Sony from other brands (And this shows in the VAIO line time after time as well) is that they not only know the technology (many companies know this), but they know the consumer. I am anxiously awaiting the P810 in the meantime. :)

At the time of writing, I have had my P800 for 2 days now. I will update this review over time with additional findings and corrections as necessary so please check back in the future for updates.

What is the P800?

There are thousands of pages describing the technical aspects of the P800, so I will not replicate them here. The P800 is a combination PDA and mobile phone. Sony Ericsson P800 Information.

What I Like

The functionality that the P800 provides, and the expandability of the Symbian OS is a fantastic combination. Many third party applications and games are already available, with more coming. Many existing Symbian and J2ME applications that are not specific to the P800 can run on the phone as well.

I travel a lot and so compactness is important. I was a palm pilot user in the past (I still have one that is labeled US Robotics) and while the palm pilots themselves were compact, the cradle chargers and sync cords were not. For the traveler it was necessary to buy separate and overly expensive travel versions. Not so with the P800, the power cord unplugs from the charger and also doubles as the travel charger. No planned extortion for a separate travel charger such as is common with other PDA's. Synchronization if necessary while on the road can be done over blue tooth or infrared. Unfortuntely the thoughtfulness did not extend to the USB cable (discussed later).

The P800 contains an input device called a jog dial. The jog dial is very similar to that found on Sony VAIO notebooks. The jog dial is kind of like a mouse wheel. At first I assumed the jog dial was just a small wheel. Not so - the wheel can not only be "clicked", but pushed forward and backward. Very useful for input, control, and games.

Flight mode is an option to turn off all the radio devices (Bluetooth, phone) so that the P800 can be used as a PDA on airplanes. Someone was paying attention when they added this option. They realized that its not just a phone, but truly a PDA too.

The speaker is incredibly loud, except for the default ring tones. But for loud MP3's and other, it can be quite loud. And while it will not produce HiFi sound, it is not tinny sounding either. For best sound, plug in the headphones of course.

The P800 has a zoom option of large, medium, and small to adjust the amount of data that can fit on to the screen by making the text smaller. Even better yet, it is a per screen option so you can adjust each screen as necessary.

Other Likes

• Extra Styli - The P800 includes 4 styli, not just 1 like others. So if you lose it you have more and you do not have to be stuck for weeks on end and then pay an exhorbanent price for a tiny piece of plastic.
• Screen - The LCD screen is a good quality easy to read, bright color screen.
• MP3 Player - This is a great option and very useful.
• Voice Recorder - Have not used this yet, but definitely useful.
• Size - The P800 even as loaded as it is, is pretty small. Large than the average phone, but still comfortable in even pants pockets and not heavy.
• Battery Life - The battery lasts quite a while between charges, and charges rather quickly.
• Easy Reset - On the occasion that some program you installed does crash the phone it is easy to reset. No need to hunt down a paper clip or other like on the Palm Pilots.

What I Dislike

I would like to say I liked everything, but that is so rarely so. Some of my dislikes are minor, others bigger. Do not let the number of dislikes dissuade you - I am very critical, and none of them are show stoppers. The P800 is a great phone.

Dislike - Connection Management

There appears to be no explicit way to control the GRPS / CSD connections. Many third party applications can use the connection but cannot initiate it. Thus I find myself forced to check mail to connect first, then run the other software.

Dislike - Camera

The camera sucks, point blank. Imagine a 99 cent webcam on special at some computer store. Now take it home and spit on the lens. Take a picture, and it will likely be better than the P800's camera will ever do. I took some test pictures of my wife, and I am quite sure if I showed them to another person they would not be able to determine if it was my wife, or me (And no we do not look similar!).

The camera is a pretty useless doodad that just consumes space. This valuable space could have much better been used for something else.

Dislike - Short stylus

I have big hands, not unlike most male techno geeks who the phone is targeted at. Prolonged or even medium length usage of the stylus causes cramps. The stylus snaps into the side of the phone and is only about 3/4's the length of the phone. It could easily have been lengthened for better usability. There are pen size styluses available, but then you have to keep that handy while you are traveling too.

Dislike - Infrared

Many laptops these days have given up infrared ports because of costs. In my opinion the P800 should have too. Infrared requires line of sight, so it is pretty useless for anything other than serving a laptop, which can be better done by USB. Infrared is slower than USB and consumes extra space and adds cost to the P800.

Dislike - Bluetooth

Bluetooth may be cool, but it is a major disappointment. Its support on PC's is horrible and buggy. Its a real pain to get Bluetooth up and running to a PC, and a quick search on Google Groups confirms that this is normal. Bluetooth has cool options like cordless headsets, but to most of us, while cool is not essential.

Bluetooth can be used to provide a GPRS modem to a PC and also synchronize with a PC, but these can be done just as easily with USB, and many more PC's and laptops have USB than bluetooth. Since the P800 can operate in modem mode and synchronize over USB, it further makes bluetooth a toy. WiFi would have been a much better option.

Bluetooth can also be used to provide the P800 with an Internet connection when at home or near a laptop, however none of the native software recognizes this. Only Opera (Which is a free download by the way. Great option) seems to take advantage of this fact, which leaves the native browser, mail, and other applications useless when not used on GPRS or CSD.

There are many other bluetooth devices such as Ethernet bridges, printer interfaces, modems and more. Unfortunately these are rendered nearly useless since none of the native software recognizes any of these devices.

Dislike - No landscape option

While several games switch to landscape mode, the main operating system and applications all run in portrait. I find that writing is much easier in landscape, and browsing web pages would be much easier in many cases as well. A landscape option, possibly per application would have been a very welcome option.

Dislike - Parts of documentation

The documentation is pretty good, and much is even in the phone for quick tips. However the parts covering mail, Internet connectivity and others are pretty sparse and a lot of experimentation is required.

Another example is the wrist strap. Its identified in the parts list, but I was not able to find in the manual how to connect it to the phone. Maybe it is in the book somewhere, but I did not see it listed in the table of contents or index. Only a web search solved this problem. The web search also found many users searching for the same answer.

Dislike - Ringtones

The included ringtones are really poor sounding, even cheesy. They are also not very loud. I know the P800 has incredible capability for volume as demonstrated by the sample audio that is included in the P800, which my neighbors were able to hear. Fortunately you can download a variety of formats and add as many ring tones as you like.

Dislike - Minimal USB Support

The fact that the P800 supports USB is fantastic. Unfortunately the support is quite limited to providing a GPRS modem to a computer, and syncing. It does not appear to be able to support plugged in USB devices such as printers, modems or other. This would be a great way to work around the absence of a compact flash card. Some of the places I travel do not have GRPS, and CSD is very expensive. It would be a nice alternative to plug the P800 into a USB modem and use it as a PDA.

Unlike the power cable, the USB cable does not provide a travel cable for the P800, and the P800 has no standard USB port. It would have been a very nice addition to provide a secondary mini USB port on the P800 for travel, and for device connection.

Fortunately if you need to travel with the cradle, it is relatively small and flat. It is not hard to travel with like others such as the Palm cradles.

Dislike - No screen controls

While battery life is good, it would have been a nice option to be able to control the screen contrast and back light level as the back light is a major component of battery usage.

Dislike - Flip placement

The P800 has a flip down numeric keypad. Unfortunately it is on the bottom and gets in the way when writing. It would have been much better placed on the top where it would flip up without interfering with big hands during writing.

Dislike - Writing

The writing recognition is much closer to normal writing than the system on the Palm of special characters that must be learned. However after learning the Palm glyphics, entry on a palm is much faster. Several characters such as the I are awkward on the P800. Worse yet, if you write a straight line down thinking is an I, it make an l, but in the P800's font a lower case looks like an I. This has caused me a lot of grief, especially when configuring GPRS and I had entered the name lnternet.nw, instead of internet.nw. But on the P800, the l, looks very much like an I.

There I's and l's should be better differentiated, and the l glyph made in the shape of an L, and the current awkward I be made to be recognized as the current l is. Furthermore, I would like to see two modes: The current one (with improvements), and a Palm like glyph language for those of us willing to learn it.

Dislike - Keyboard

The P800 has a pop up keyboard which you can peck away at with the stylus. However the keys are rather small. It would be much better to make the keys bigger, and in landscape mode it could be done very much so.

Dislike - Application menu

The application menu is very similar to that of the Palm with a drop down menu for selecting categories. A tabbed notebook style would be a much better option.

Dislike - Cradle

Actually the cradle is pretty good, and small. However initially it is frustrating to dock the P800 into it as it does not slide into it. It needs to be set in at the perfect angle, then laid back. After a while it becomes easy, however I am quite convinced that many new users have broken the connector trying to snap the P800 on in the manner that appears to be correct, but is not.

Dislike - Flip Removed

There is an option to remove the flip, and use a virtual flip. Since the flip was always getting in my way when writing I tried this for a day. However the process of locking the screen (so you do not download half the Internet, or call China while the phone is in your pocket) and unlocking with the virtual flip is tedious. I also had troubles with the virtual flip temporarily locking up the P800 for 2-3 seconds at various times while it was visible.

What is missing

There are a few things I would like to have seen on the P800, with one in my opinion being a major omission.

Missing - Compact Flash

The P800 really needs a compact flash slot in addition to the memory stick slot. The memory stick slot is great for memory expansion, but a compact flash slot would have added minimal extra weight and dimension to the phone and allowed for many PDA cards to be plugged into the P800. Available for compact flash are modems, WiFi, Ethernet, and every other conceivable device. The inclusion of a compact flash device would have allowed nearly every one of my other comments about missing items to be solved by user add ons.

Unfortunately because of limitations of how the P800 OS sees the infrared, bluetooth, and USB it is very difficult to expand the P800 beyond very specific uses with additional devices.

Missing - WiFi

With free and pay WiFi access in major hotels, coffee shops, and even many major cities the omission of WiFi is a major disadvantage. GPRS is great, until you attempt to roam. GPRS is often unavailable to roaming phones, requires reconfig, and very expensive. While WiFi is growing and within a year or two I expect McDonald's will jump on the bandwagon and really make WiFi popular.

If you are not familiar with WiFi, its the common name for wireless Ethernet.

Missing - FM Radio

This is a very minor gripe as few phones actually have this, although the Nokia 6800 is one that does. This is a feature I have wanted in a phone for many years and while not a critical feature, would be a big bonus in my opinion.

Missing - Light

Ok, now I am just being darn picky. But I would love to have a LED flash light built into my phone. That way its always handy, and easily accessible when ever you might need to find your keys, etc.

Conclusion

Fantastic device that stops just short of phenomenal. With a compact flash slot, it could have been phenomenal. None the less, if you are mobile and cannot always drag the laptop around, the P800 is a winner.