Also you can listen to a radio but it requires to plug in your headset (it serves as an antenna) and now it comes with RDS support which is a cool feature.

 

Being a business oriented device P990 has Quickoffice group which is an editor for Word (Quickword), Excel (Quicksheet), and PowerPoint (QuickPoint) documents. It also comes with support for PDF documents in form of PFF+ application.

Bussines oriented device doesn’t mean in this case that game support is absent in this device. The 2D/3D graphics accelerator (PowerVR from ARM and Imagination Technologies) complies with OpenGL ES 1.0 APIs. Running at 80 MHz, it delivers a performance of 150 Megapixels per second and 1.25 million polygons per second. A demo game that comes preinstalled Vijay Singh Pro Golf 2005 is showing what the P990 is capable to do in 3D.

In our tests device managed to stay 2,5 days on single charge using about 30 min of talk, 30 min of SMS writing, 20 min of WLAN and taking few pictures with it. It could probably do more if we had more powerful battery than standard BST-33 which has only 950 mAh and that is an absolute minimum for such feature rich device. Voice quality is excellent; the speaker has enough power to clearly hear conversation even in the loudest environments. Also the external loudspeaker is capable of producing some convincing loud tones so you will be able to hear it in loud environment as well. The only drawback is the lack of bass frequencies in the loudspeaker. Vibration is on the average.

 

After new firmware R5A17 have been introduced there is an option to switch the transitions off and it that case menu speed improves dramatically, and the phone seems now faster then before. It scrolls much faster through contacts, e-mails, SMS.  Also, it seems that the phone handles RAM better then before and that you can run several applications at once. Some users reported that applications are using less memory then they used to do before. Java applets are loading much faster now as well.

It looks that it took almost nine months for Sony Ericsson to produce good firmware for this phone and I think they have restored the faith in this specific device.



From this point of view we think that Sony Ericsson P990 is a capable smarthpone. It does brilliant job as phone and the other stuff like push e-mail and connectivity.

Conclusion

The range of functions on this phone is truly staggering, and in a form factor that is really capable. We would only like to see GPS sensor on board in future, maybe a camera with more megapixels and larger battery, and then this device would be the ultimate smartphone. The new firmware really fixed a lot of issues and now it looks for a new phone. It is good for a business people and it has Wi-Fi.

I guess it is almost time for a new P series from Sony Ericsson and there is some space for improvement. P990 is the most equipped model from Sony Ericsson to date and its Camera, or MP3 player are doing a great job. It is a good business phone with some glitches finally fixed. 

 

 

Specifications: 

Size	114 x 57 x 25 mm 4.4 x 2.2 x 1 inches
Weight	150 g 5.3 oz
Available colours	Premium Silver
Screen	262,144-colour TFT 240x320 pixel
Memory	Memory Stick PRO Duo™ support Phone memory 60MB* *Actual free memory may vary due to phone pre-configuration
Networks	GSM 900 GSM 1800 GSM 1900 UMTS
Data	GPRS :Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps HSCSD :Yes EDGE :No 3G :Yes, 384 kbps WLAN :Wi-Fi 802.11b Bluetooth :Yes, v2.0 Infrared port :Yes USB :Yes, v2.0
Performance Talk time: Standby time:   Video call: UMTS 3 hours 300 hours   - GSM 900 9 hours 340 hours   - GSM 1800 9 hours 340 hours   - GSM 1900 9 hours 340 hours