Sony Ericsson P910i

The feature-rich P910i was the most advanced Sony Ericsson on the market at the time of writing this review, and is heavily modelled on its successful predecessor, the P900.

The P910i is larger and heavier, at 155g, than conventional mobiles but smaller than rival smartphones such as the O2 Xda IIi. It is small enough to slide into your pocket, but only just.

The most striking feature of the P910i is the flexible keypad which, when flipped down, exposes a large 208 x 320 pixel, 262,000 colour TFT screen--a significant upgrade from the 64,000 colours supported by the P900. The screen of the P910i is touch-sensitive, but the included stylus can only be used when the keypad is flipped down. Flipping the keypad down also exposes a QWERTY keyboard underneath, but be warned--the keys are small, very close together and not all the standard keyboard keys are provided, meaning it is easier to use the keypad or character recognition to type your messages.

When the keypad is flipped up, the screen size adjusts for the smaller space and the keypad and jog dial are used for input. The jog dial makes screen navigation very simple; it can be rolled up or down, pushed inwards or outwards and also pressed like a button. One gripe is that more options are available for each application when the keyboard is flipped down and the stylus can be used. However, it is possible to remove the keypad flip altogether and make calls using a numeric keypad displayed on the screen, which we recommend doing.

The P910i uses the Symbian OS and is equipped with a 156MHz ARM9 processor. Compared to other smartphones such as those in the O2 range, the P910i was slower to open and run applications. The 910i comes with 64MB of memory, four times as much as the P900, and a Memory Stick slot is provided for extra capacity. Sony helpfully includes a 32MB card in the box, but for the phone to act as an MP3 player or to store large attachments, you would have to buy a larger memory card.

The 910i features a range of useful applications, from the standard calendar/tasks/organiser functions to Quicksheet and Quickword for editing Excel and Word documents. A PDF viewer is installed, along with a picture viewer, video player and music player for multimedia functions. The 910i supports SMS, MMS and Internet browsing and comes with a cradle for USB synchronisation. Bluetooth and infrared are the wireless connectivity; Wi-Fi support is not provided.

The P910i comes with all the essential features of a smartphone and scores points for its large colour screen, multiple input options and large number of included applications. However the annoyances posed by the flipdown keypad, lack of Wi-Fi support and the fact that only a VGA camera is provided mean that P910 is too expensive at $1,400.