| Review of the Ericsson P800 |
| Review of the Ericsson P800 |
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The Sony-Ericsson P800 is a PDA/phone that uses an optional flip cover that makes the unit look and feel like a standard cell phone one minute, and a full-screen PDA the next. If you want it to be in PDA mode all of the time, the flip is removable. Last Updated: 29-Dec-2003 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
General
I was given a chance to live the P800
for a couple weeks, courtesy of Fido. They provided me with the phone and a SIM
so that I could put the phone through all of its paces. That gave me a chance to
really get a feel for what the phone was capable of, and who might find it of
value.
Let me begin by admitting that for first time I had to change my usual
phone first point-of-view, since the P800 isn’t the type of product you
would buy if what you really needed was a phone. The P800 is first-and-foremost
a pocket-sized computer with a permanent mobile connection to the Internet. It
also provides its user with phone functionality, but that is clearly a secondary
feature. For that reason I am going to review this product as data device first
and a phone second.
To provide the user with the greatest amount of screen real estate the P800 has
a screen that fills all the front face. That left no room for a keypad, but in
order to provide one so that the device would be used like a standard cell phone
it comes with a rather imaginative flip that contains a set of normal cell phone
keys. These aren’t real keys however, but instead just pins that press against
the screen below to actuate their designated functionality. For those who don’t
need the keypad it is possible to remove it completely and used the P800 in full
PDA mode. A virtual keypad is provided for phone use.
If it weren’t for the existence of the P900 I
might be a bit more charitable about the fake keypad. However, it has a distinct
lack of feel, despite a concerted effort on Ericsson’s part to give the keys
positive click when pressed. I found it a bit mushy and indistinct, though to be
fair, it worked as well as one might expect. The P900 offers a real electrical
keypad built into the flip, which has much better tactile feel.
The screen is a TFT device with a resolution of 208 x 144 pixels. That isn’t
particularly impressive resolution, especially when you consider that the
Sharp GX22 has a smaller screen boasting an
astounding resolution of 320 x 240. The P800 only supports 4,096 colors, which
means that graphic images (especially photographs) don’t look quite right.
However, for most non-graphic work it is more than enough.
The screen isn’t like many of the other Ericsson color displays, in that it can
be seen very clearly in bright sunlight. In fact, it looks pretty good in
sunlight, and it can be seen quite readily in non-direct outdoor lighting
conditions as well.
Sadly the colors look a bit washed out. The following images were photographed
on the P800 and on my LCD computer monitor using the same GIF. Notice the
dramatic difference between the colors on both images. Once again, a comparison
to the GX22 screen is hard to avoid, as the GX22 looks remarkably close to the
quality one gets on an LCD computer monitor. Granted, the GX22 is a completely
different animal, but the point of the comparison is that Ericsson could have
done so much better. Note however that the colors on the P900 look markedly
richer.
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| Colors on the P800 | Colors on a Computer LCD Monitor |
Like any self-respecting PDA the input is provided through a touch-sensitive
screen. A small stylus (that lives on the right-hand side of the phone) provides
excellent accuracy. Throughout my entire time with the P800 I was always very
happy with the overall accuracy and predictability of the stylus and screen
combination. As for text input, that could be achieved using either handwriting
recognition, or with a virtual keypad. The virtual keypad worked exceptionally
well, but because of its extraordinarily small size using it required 100% of my
attention.
When using the phone in phone mode, the P800 provides a terrific
multi-function wheel on the left side of the phone. The wheel is rotated to move
up and down through menus and lists, and it can be pressed to select items.
However, it can also be flipped backward to cancel an operation or flipped
forward to access the context menus. I quickly became used to it, and I found
that it worked exceptionally well. The wheel also doubles as a volume control
when talking on the phone, or when playing audio or video clips.
In terms of memory, the P800 comes with 16 MB of internal storage, and it
supports the Sony Memory Stick (full-sized, and DUO types). My P800 came with an
extra 16 MB memory stick, which I presume Fido provides with the P800 as
standard. That gave my device 32 MB of memory. The memory sticks can be
live swapped without powering down the phone.
The P800 is capable of displaying or executing a very wide range of files types,
including sound files (MP3, WAV, AMR, and MIDI), still images (JPG, GIF, BMP,
and PNG), and video (MP4 only). It also has viewers to look at Microsoft Word
documentations, Microsoft eXcell files, PDFs, and many other document types.
Certainly other viewers and or players could be added to the device from 3rd
party vendors.
Because the P800 is a connected device, it supports all sorts of message
formats, including SMS, MMS, and POP3/IMAP e-mail. Because of the phone’s wide
range of supported file types it is capable of playing or displaying virtually
any type of email attachment. Just like a home computer, it can detach and save
email attachments to memory. You can also attach any file you can store to an
outgoing email message.
Also provided is a built-in 640 x 480 camera, though I wasn’t particularly
pleased with its quality. One of its biggest problems (which I also noted on the
P900) was that focus was only sharp in the central area of the pictures. At the
fringes the focus got a little blurry. I made sure that the lens was spotless
before taking the pictures, but even that didn’t help. Surprisingly Ericsson’s
MCA-25 attachable camera (which I tested on a T300) was a better quality device.
Having said that however, I do recognize that the purpose of a camera on such a
phone is to provide small pictures to use with internal features. For example,
you would use it to take photographs of your callers to use the Picture ID
feature. It can also be used to take quick photos of something prior to emailing
those photos to someone else. I’ve provided photos at the end of this review
that compare the P800 with a Nikon Coolpix 990 (set to 640 x 480).
GPRS connectivity is only 4 + 1, which means that uplink speeds will not be
especially great. This can be an issue if you send a lot of emails with big
attachments. Downlink speeds should be markedly better (and certainly as fast)
as any other GPRS phone presently on the market.
However, the biggest drawback to doing a lot of data transfer isn’t really a
fault of the phone per se. Both GPRS and CDMA’s 1X are both saddled with a
rather nasty limitation. Phones cannot transfer data and carry on voice
conversations at the same time. This means that all incoming calls will go
directly to voicemail when a data session is taking place. If you do a lot of
data work, you will either need a second phone to receive calls, or you’ll have
to put up with calling people back a lot. The P800 warns you of this by
displaying an icon on the screen that looks like a telephone headset with a
cross through it. When this icon is display, no incoming calls can be received.
The phone comes with a 1000 mAh Lithium-Ion battery, which in terms of pure
standby (no use of the phone, just leaving it sitting around waiting for a call)
you can easily get between 3 and 6 days of use. However, if you start doing some
heavy-duty PDA use, you can run the battery down in as little as 4 hours. The
enemy is likely that large and bright backlight.
The phone comes loaded with many of the popular applications you’d commonly use,
such an audio player, video player, HTML web browser, contacts manager,
calendar, tasks, voice memo recorder, calculator, etc. You can also upload your
own applications, either in Symbian O/S format, or Java applets. You are limited
only to the amount of memory you put in your P800.
The HTML web browser allows you to surf to the same web pages you go to on your
home computer. The screen is a little skinny for comfortably navigating standard
web pages and it makes one wonder why Ericsson didn’t provide a landscape mode
for browsing. It is often better to have a screen that is wider than it is tall.
Possibly 3rd party browsers are available to address this oversight.
But what about PC connectivity? Well, aside from both infrared and Bluetooth,
you can also put the P800 on the Sync Stand that comes with the phone.
However, don’t let the USB connector fool you, the speed of the connection isn’t
anywhere near the approximately 12 megabits per second that USB 1.1 is capable
of. I measured the transfer rate to be approximately 80 kilobits (which is
barely twice the speed of GPRS). It’s ridiculous that Ericsson couldn’t do
better than that.
With the PC Suite loaded into your computer you can access the various files in
the P800 as a device in the left pane of Windows Explorer. This allows you to
easily drag-and-drop files to and from the phone. That makes it easy to download
your photographs or upload MP3s and other files you want to take with you on the
road. However, not all files in the phone are accessible. For example, all of
the text/image files created by the Jotter application don’t appear in any of
the phone’s directories.
RF
Performance and Audio Quality
Now that we’ve covered all of the great
data-centric things that P800 can do, how does it stack up as a phone? I’m happy
to say that it does quite well in this regard, but there are a few sour notes
that make it a poor choice for someone who demands excellence.
RF sensitivity is very good, and much better
that we’ve been seeing from Ericsson over the past few years. While not quite as
capable as my Nokia 6310i at pulling in fringe
signals, the difference isn’t all that big. Over-the-road performance and
handoff handling are both excellent, and so I have to give the P800 very high
marks for RF capability. This is just as important when using GPRS as it is when
taking phone calls.
Audio quality isn’t quite up to the task however.
Overall reproduction is decidedly unpolished and scratchy, with a sound that is
reminiscent of a cheap piezo-electric speaker. Fortunately the tonal balance is
quite good, and the earpiece volume is generally more than adequate. Another
thing that bothered me about the sound of the phone was the presence of
Sidetone. This is a sample of the microphone input fed to the earpiece. In quiet
environments it isn’t noticeable, but in noisy environments it can be downright
annoying. It isn’t as bad as other phones I’ve recently tested, such as the
Nokia 3595. Outgoing sound quality is quite good by
comparison.
So as a phone the P800 is a bit of mixed bag. It has almost faultless RF
performance, but lackluster audio quality. Still, it sounds better than a lot of
phones I’ve tested, and since the phone functionality is really only a secondary
feature of this model, I’m not sure that it’s really bad enough to put anyone
off buying a P800. If you are going to be doing a lot of data-centric things,
and only a bit of talking, then the P800 is a great phone. However, the P900
improves the audio in a number of key ways, and so if you also need a stellar
phone to go along with your data-centric device, you might want to invest the
extra money and effort and get a P900.
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Note the focus problems in the corners of the pictures. These problems were not caused by dirty lens, as the lens was thoroughly cleaned before hand. The same focus problem can be seen on the sample picture I took with the P900.
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| Photo taken with the P800 |
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| Same view taken with a Nikon Coolpix 990 in 640x480 mode |
Now look at a blown-up section of the above photos. Notice the weird pixilation and lack of detail in the P800 photograph, despite coming from a picture with the same 640x480 resolution:
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| P800 | Coolpix 990 |
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