Sony Ericsson P990: The Ultimate Mobile Phone

Posted by Frank Bisono Categories: Smartphones

Wow…we are still speechless.  MobileWhack got the scoop on the specs for the new Sony Ericsson P990, and I am still wiping the drool off of my desk.  This literally made me want to smash my Treo 650 on the floor and repeatedly stomp up and down on it.  Short of Apple coming out with a phone of this caliber, I may just have to rethink my cell phone selection.  Why doesn’t Apple just buy Sony and get it over with?  Check out the awesome specs (after the jump):

Push E-mail: The Sony Ericsson P990, which excels at keeping your e-mail synchronized while you are on the move, will support a range of push email services from the partners listed below.

Security: E-mail and web browsing security has been beefed up via McAfee’s VirusScan and Firewall Mobile. This Try & Buy software provides scanning services on emails, attachments and web downloads for cellular communications. Secure access to corporate networks completes the remote email story as Sony Ericsson offers a free VPN client powered by Certicom.

Business Card Scanner: This is one feature I simply love. The Sony P990’s 2 Megapixel with AutoFocus camera now acts as a Business Card Scanner too, using character recognition software to convert the scanned information from the card to Contacts. Wow!

Entertainment: All work and no play? No way. Play Vijay Singh Pro Golf 2005 from Gameloft on your Sony Ericsson P990. Bored with teeing? Switch to the music player that supports MP3, AAC and AAC+ formats. There’s also a flight mode which allows the music player to be used even when the phone is switched off.

Application Shop: A wide choice of 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. Applications can be purchased directly from the phone and downloaded over-the-air.

That about covers everything. Will Sony throw in more surprises? One can only wait (and continue drooling). The Sony Ericsson P990 will be commercially available in Q2 2006. There will be two variants:

• 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.)

Sony Ericsson 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 MusicDJ™
• 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

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