Sony Ericsson P990i Press Release

Sony Ericsson today revealed a host of unannounced applications and entertainment content features for its flagship Wi-Fi enabled UMTS smartphone, the P990, which was introduced to the Global Developers community in October 2005 They include:

* Details on supported push email partners
* Anti-virus/Firewall and VPN clients for secure corporate business
* Business card scanner
* New entertainment content and features

The P990 is the next in a line of successful Sony Ericsson smartphones - the P800, P900 and P910 - and is based on the same proven concept and recognisable form factor. It is designed to be first and foremost a great mobile phone but offers all the benefits of UMTS including video calling, high-bandwidth multi-media downloads and the ability to browse the Internet with full HTML pages. These are viewed in landscape on the new Opera 8 browser.

“The P990 is a very significant new product for us. It’s a sophisticated device that gets us to the point where mobile executives can really start to minimize on the number of devices and paperwork they carry around with them,” says Jan Wäreby, Corporate Executive Vice President, Head of Sales and Marketing, Sony Ericsson. “The push email capability especially helps to bring true business mobility and we have deployed technology and formed partnerships to ensure that mobile email and web browsing access is provided in a safe, secure and fast environment.”

Push Email
Secure, simple and fast access to email and the Internet are critical requirements for true office mobility, and this is an area where the P990 excels. The ability to access email and calendar while out of the office is critical for mobile executives as they no longer need to return to the office to perform this task. The P990 will support a range of push email services from the partners listed below:

AlteXia
Ericsson Mobile Office (EMO) (Try and Buy)
iAnywhere OneBridge
Intellisync
Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync
RIM - BlackBerry Connect
Seven
Visto
Standard Email - IMAP IDLE working on all standards compliant servers

Security
Sony Ericsson has partnered with antivirus software giant McAfee to offer McAfee VirusScan and Firewall Mobile to further strengthen the P990’s email and web browsing security. This Try & Buy software provides scanning services on emails, attachments and web downloads for cellular communications, all to the same standard as its well known computer applications. Secure access to corporate networks completes the remote email story as Sony Ericsson offers a free VPN client powered by Certicom.

Business Card Scanner
Cameras in phones have any number of business applications for capturing and sharing images. Creative minds have moved a few steps further by turning the P990’s 2 Megapixel with AutoFocus camera into a Business Card Scanner, using character recognition software to convert the scanned information from the card to Contacts on your P990.

The large 2.8 inch QVGA (262K TFT) touch screen and large viewfinder help you to capture the full business card size in one go.

Entertainment
P990 users are expected to spend a fair amount of their time travelling on business and more has been added to the smartphone to make this ‘downtime’ in their working life as relaxing or entertaining as required. The P990’s suite of entertainment applications is supported by a 3D Hardware Accelerator and exciting 3D Java games such as Vijay Singh Pro Golf 2005 from Gameloft, which will lighten up the longest journeys together with a fully equipped music player that supports MP3, AAC and AAC+ formats, and includes a flight mode allowing the music player to be used when the phone is switched off.

Application Shop
The broadest possible choice of new applications for the P990 will be available at launch from the Sony Ericsson Application Shop. The Application Shop is an important part of the Try & Buy concept. It will feature the full versions of the trial applications that are preloaded on the Memory Stick of the P990, included in the box. With the new mobile storefront, applications can be purchased directly from the phone and downloaded over-the-air.

The P990 will be commercially available in Q2 2006. The variants will be:

P990i Dual mode UMTS (2100MHz) - GPRS 900/1800/1900 for Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa

P990c Dual mode UMTS (2100MHz) - GPRS 900/1800/1900 for Mainland China. (Launch for mainland China dependant on availability of 3G services.)

P990 - Features at a glance:

Imaging & Messaging

* 2 Mega pixel camera with AutoFocus
* 2.5 x digital Zoom
* Video Telephony application with dual cameras and MPEG4 support
* Camera light
* Streaming video and playback of video (30 fps QVGA)
* Touch based Picture editor
* Large 2.8 inch QVGA (240 x 320)
* Touch screen with 262 k colours

Entertainment

* Stereo Bluetooth support
* DRM: OMA phase 1
* Ring signal: 40 voices MIDI,
* Music player: dedicated access button, play lists support (m3u) and MP3, AAC ,AAC+ and E-AAC+ and m4a support
* MusicDJâ„¢
* 3D touch based Golf game
* FM RDS radio with Clock radio
* Stop watch and timer

Connectivity

* 80 MB internal memory
* 64 MB Memory Stick PRO Duo in the box
* Memory Stick PRO Duo support up to 8GB
* Bluetooth 2.0
* IrDa
* WLAN 802.11b
* High speed UMTS modem (384 kbps)
* USB Desk stand
* USB full speed and charging
* USB Mass storage
* PC synchronisation software

Business

* Business card scanner
* Backlit thumb keyboard available in 4 hardware keyboard variants: QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY and Russian
* Smart typing: Word completion, next word prediction and handwriting character recognition
* Word, excel and PowerPoint viewers/editors (text only)
* Adobe PDF viewer
* Opera 8.0 web browser with landscape full screen support
* RSS news feeds support
* Flight mode (Activate WiFi )
* Office hands free (speaker phone)
* External antenna connector
* Calculator and Converter application
* Multi tasking
* E-mail provider support:
- AlteXia
- Ericsson Mobile Office (EMO) (Try and Buy)
- iAnywhere OneBridge
- Intellisync
- Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync
- RIM - BlackBerry Connect
- Seven
- Visto
- Standard Email - IMAP IDLE working on all standards compliant servers
* Security and VPN support
- Anti virus - McAfee (Try & Buy)
- Firewall - McAfee (Try & Buy)
- Encryption - Pointsec (Try & Buy)
- VPN - Certicom (Free)

* Symbian 9.1 and UIQ 3.0 software platform
* Size - 114 x 57 x 25
* Weight - 155g with battery and flip keyboard

Sony Ericsson P990i Reviews

CNET has a review up of the Sony Ericsson P990i and writes, “We tested the triband (GSM 900/1800/1900; UMTS) Sony Ericsson P990i in San Francisco using Cingular’s service and were pleased with the excellent call quality. Callers couldn’t even tell we were on a cell phone. The speakerphone didn’t sound as good, however, and we found ourselves having to raise our voices in order to be heard. … The Sony Ericsson P990i may be the perfect smart phone for tech-minded consumers, but its exorbitantly high price may put a lot of people off.” Link.

3G has a review up of the Sony Ericsson P990i and writes, “we’ve made our point that in usability terms the P990i isn’t all that hot. Which is a huge pity because there is oodles of good stuff here. When you are working in touch screen mode the handwriting recognition is superb, and in our experience the predictive text system guesses the words you want to write very accurately which can make writing longer words in particular fast. … What all this adds up to is a handset which has a huge amount going for it in software terms, but which is a bit of a let down when you come to actually live with it. Fans of the series will hunker down with the manual and discover the beauty within. Newcomers to smart phones might prefer something that is a bit easier to get to grips with.” Link.

AllAboutSymbian reviews the Sony Ericsson P990i and writes, “The P990 is excellent as a phone and basic messaging client, which is vital because this is the core functionality (the 15%) that everyone uses. The flip closed mode works very well - it is quite possible to carry out the majority of tasks in this mode. Non-phone features tend to show more depth that the P990i’s competitors, which adds to the overall feeling of available power..Hardware and design-wise the P990i is impressive - from the large screen to the easy to use camera, the P990’s design pedigree clearly shows. The size will be an issue for some, although I suspect for the target audience size is less crucial that for the RAZR-toting plebs. Software-wise the picture is less clear and more subjective. … So will the P990 do well? Yes, but perhaps not as well as its predecessors. It remains a best-in-class device (especially with forthcoming software fixes), but compared to the earlier models (2002, 2004) there is a much broader range of competing devices lined up behind the P990i.” Link.

Infosync has a review up of the Sony Ericsson P990i and writes, “More than a year old already, the Sony Ericsson P990i seems like last year’s idea of what a smartphone might eventually look like. Advanced features like Wi-Fi and 3G support are welcome, and we were impressed by the handset’s robust multimedia capabilities, but the P990i’s interface is so different compared to other smartphones we’ve seen that it almost requires a secret handshake for accessibility. Meanwhile, the phone’s sub-par productivity apps and sluggish performance are sure to disappoint hard-core business road warriors.” Link.

ITWeek has a review up of the Sony Ericsson P990i and writes, “Unfortunately, the P990i does not synchronise through a standard USB to mini-USB connector, but uses Sony Ericsson’s proprietary version operating at USB 2.0 rates. Transferring data off the mobile phone memory involves setting the phone to ‘file transfer’ mode, while synchronising with Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express requires the user to switch to ‘phone’ mode, but modes cannot be changed when connected to a PC with the USB cable. Sony Ericsson said there is a Lotus Notes client for the device.” Link.