Digital Gadgets

Sony Ericsson to launch the downgraded version of the P990

Sony Ericsson has confirmed the specs for its latest P990 handset first announced in October 2005.When I saw the headline this morning, I really thought that Sony Ericsson has launched the P990, but it wasn’t so. Actually, they revealed new features of their Wi-Fi enabled UMTS smartphone.

In addition to the features it announced the phone would have in October, Sony Ericsson has turned the 2 megapixel camera into a business card scanner as well as a camera and also added support for email clients including Blackberry Connect and Seven.

Rumor has it that Sony Ericsson is getting ready to launch the lite version of the Sony Ericsson P990 Symbian based smartphone. This new handset will be known as the P970 or P980 and will not include 3G, WiFi and instead of a full QWERTY keyboard, the P970/P980 smartphone will have a Blackberry-like keyboard setup.

Finally, the company has added Microsoft ActiveSync support to the device for windows users. Features include a 262.000 color QVGA touch screen, push email, WLAN, Bluetooth 2.0, USB, Symbian 9.1 and UIQ 3.0 software platform, music player that supports MP3, AAC and AAC+ formats with a flight mode allowing you to listen to music while the phone is turned off.

The new model will be 3G and Wi-Fi enabled, have a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and feature a new hardware keyboard beneath the flip-down keypad. The P990 is the next in a line of successful Sony Ericsson smartphones - the P800, P900 and P910 – and is based on the same concept and recognisable form factor.

Sony Ericsson has turned the P990’s 2 megapixel camera with autofocus into a Business Card Scanner, which uses a character recognition software to convert the scanned information from the card to contacts on your P990. If you were drooling all these days eagerly anticipating the launch of the Sony Ericsson P990, I am afraid for you. I am afraid that you would have to double, no make that triple, your drooling because Sony Ericsson today revealed a host of unannounced applications and entertainment content features for the P990. I am so excited that I can hardly see what I am typing. Anyways, here goes.

The Sony Ericsson P990 will contain 80MB of internal memory and 64MB will be located in the box. When this smartphone was first announced, the company said it only had a slot for 4GB removable memory. It seems that they’ve decided to double that, slot for up to 8 GB now being available. The P990 will hopefully become available in Q2 2006. No price information revealed.

The P990 will be commercially available in Q1 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
The P990 will be available in four hardware keyboard variants: QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY and Russian

Specifications of Features Sony Ericsson P990

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