Hands-on with the Sony Ericsson P1 business smartphone

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We got a chance to rock the unique keys on the Sony Ericsson P1, Sony Ericsson's new 3G Symbian phone. Will it ever make its way stateside?

At a recent press event in New York City, we got our hands on Sony Ericsson's unique P1 device. The P1 was announced in may with a slew of high-end features, including UMTS support for 3G networks, Wi-Fi and a 2.6-inch QVGA touch screen. The phone eschews the strange flip-down keypad of the older Sony Ericsson P990, which also featured UMTS and Wi-Fi, albeit in a much chunkier form. The P1 is a bona fide push e-mail smartphone, with BlackBerry Connect built in, as well as Exchange ActiveSync support. Because its a Sony Ericsson phone, you also get a media player, FM radio and some games, as well as a 3.2-megapixel camera.

Instead of the tiny keys of its predecessor, the P1 uses rocker keys that each act as two letters. Press to the left, you have a "Q;" press to the right, you get a "W." We tried a bit of typing, and it was slow at first, but we could see it getting easier with practice. The rocker keys are unique, but as soon as you start using them, you feel the curve. We wonder why Sony Ericsson wouldn't have opted to use RIM's SureType keypad design, which also doubles up letters, but relies on good predictive input software to determine your choice of words, instead of a physical rocker key. Our experience with SureType has been pretty good from the start, while the P1's rocker keys are going to have to convince us.

We'll have to be convinced about the UIQ interface, as well. Sony Ericsson recently purchased UIQ, which is unfortunate, because it is the worst smartphone interface we've used. We prefer BlackBerry's heavily texual lists, Microsoft's pile of open programs, and even Palm's dated look to UIQ's cryptic icons and strange structure. Floating cubes and spheres do not represent "Menu" and "Applications" shortcuts in our mind. In fact, we challenged the Sony Ericsson rep to defend UIQ, but in the end he simply agreed with our assessment that it's really meant for the European smartphone market.

That's probably why we don't see U.S. bands on the UMTS radio, even though AT&T's network could easily support it with the right frequencies. Importers should beware before they buy, as the Sony Ericsson specs only list GSM bands, and does not explicitly mention GPRS or EDGE for data, which would leave this phone essentially dead in our harbor. Still, we'll do our best to get our hands on one for an in-depth look, and see if its improved over the older P990i
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