When we talk about an SE mobile, we think . SLIM!
Well this SE is not SLIM at all, in fact it is one of the bulkier Mobiles from SE. We can all discount off this shortcoming as this phone is supposed to be replacing P990(?) which is as big as a pillow!
now on to the phone’s review
Sound Reception- As usual, SE maintains its name by churning out a phone with awesome sound reception. In fact the speaker phone of this particular phone throws out good quality and consistent sound output, unlike my W910i where the speaker phone is not all that great
Ease of Use- Some say a stylus is an easy way of using a phone. I would like to agree only and only if the touchscreen was the only option provided in the phone. SE has pitched the phone as a dual input, both touchscreen and keypad, phone. This has done two things, it has shrinked the screen size to some extent and it has shrunk the key size too. I may have to summon my 1 year old niece to operate the keypad, each key has two letters and u almost always end up pressing the letter next to the one u intended to press.
Having said that, the touch screen is really really very good. Response is pretty good, even if the screen size is small, the Icons are of pretty reasonable size.
Style and Design- Disappointing maybe the word to use!. We almost always expect SE to churn out phones that are extremely sleek, stylish and feature rich. This one is Feature rich but may not be sleek and stylish at all. The model is bit bulky, has a silver & black theme to it, and has Red numeric keys and white text keys. Iam pretty sure SE had to compromise the styling a lot as it wanted to ensure that the model was loaded with features. I would prefer a HTC over SEp1i wrt style
Range of Features- You have a grand winner in P1i as far as the features go
a. Connectivity:- Bluetooth, infrared, GPRS, WIFI, I found the WIFI to be amazing in terms of speed, tried that out on my home wireless and the speed was near to what my PC gave me. I was disappointed with the Inbuilt browser which gives me an XML parsing error for quite a few sites. My W910i has never returned such an error till now. The model is also blackberry ready and to show this, it carries all the keys and a jog dial on its side.
b. Camera- The model comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus( one of the main reasons for the thickness of the phone). The camera interface my frighten you away, but the ultimate output is pretty crisp. The camera underperforms in dim lighting conditions. SE could have worked better on the camera interface
c. Messaging- I have to make a speacial mention of the messaging here. The model is capable of handling SMS and MMS, nothing speacial I would say. What is special is the modes of text input that are possible. You have a choice of using the phone’s keypad, the onscreen keyboard and text recognition, meaning, you just write the text on the screen and the phone recognizes it :), this was a feature worth mentioning
d. Audio/ Video- You may not expect the audio of a non walkman phone to be all that great. Get ready for the shock of your life. The model’s audi output is stunning. The speaker provides kind of simulated 3d sound output. The number of equalizer options that you have is much much more than your Walkman series, ( includes mega bass too folks). I found the media handling portion bit disappointing, not as good as the earlier( W) models. The headphones provided with the model throws a higher volume output than a W series phone. chek it for yourself.
Video output is amazing too, with the 1gm memory card that we get, we can store a couple of full movies and carry these with us, The Screen is big enough to ensure that your eyes are not irritated, and like mentioned earlier, the audio out is fantastic, overall the video experience would be quite enjoyable
e. others- the phone comes with the Symbian OS and gives the users lots of options to load few additional applications, games, themes etc. The phone is loaded with few quick launch option keys. and of course the phone is a good as, well. a standard phone:). I learn that the model is GPS ready too, just hook up the GPS receiver and load the software, you can trak ur location.
Reliability & durability- ive not had the phone long enough to talk about the durability, but I found the piece to be quite reliable.
Value for money- Yes, Yes and definitely yes. you pay 17k for an instrument which gives you more features than what HTC or Nokia or Samsung can give you. A truly multi-purpose PDA!