You have to wonder when the pace is going to let up. It’s difficult to keep up with the unrelenting speed of technological advancement these days. Cellphones have become the newest culprit in this category. No one’s complaining, although you need deep pockets to keep up.
Sony Ericsson’s latest release is the new P900 “smart phone”, which hit the South African market last week in a big way. It’s the much-vaunted successor to the chunky P800 phone, which has been in the South African market for some time now.
It’s a funny kind of phone that sits somewhere in between a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a cellphone. It’s a phone that will probably suit “power users” rather than the average person who only wants his or her cellphone to make calls and not do everything else besides the dishes.
One of the disadvantages of PDAs has been their lack of cellphone capability. This means you would have to carry around both your cellphone and your PDA — which is perhaps a bit too much admin when you know they should be the same thing. Sony Ericsson has now made it into one thing in its P800 and P900 range.
The P900 comes with more memory than its predecessor.
This has been increased from 32-megabytes to 48-megabytes. An extra 32-megabyte memory stick is included with the P900, and memory sticks of up to 128-megabyte capacity are supported.
The phone also features a more attractive and solid stylus, which is an improvement over the awkward, plastic stylus of the old P800. The phone is also smaller, slimmer and generally better-looking than its older cousin.
Other significant upgrades include video-recording capability and a 65-kilobyte colour touch screen.
Sony Ericsson says the phone provides a good gaming experience. To test this I downloaded Doom, the old PC classic and the father of 3D gaming.
The full-colour game worked remarkably smoothly and without any bugs or reduced performance.
A few years ago it took a PC the size of two big briefcases to run this game, so it’s simply mind-boggling to think it now runs on something not much bigger than your sun- glass case.
Price: R8 000 without a contract.
Web guide
www.sonyericsson.com/p900/