Sony Ericsson P990i

VF doing £25/mth with a handset cost of £140.

Looking at this phone in addition to the M600i. I like the idea of a camera in a phone but it's not essential. However, what I really like about the P990i is the WiFi. I presume that this means that if you have a wireless network in the house you can surf the net from the P990i without having to pay any mobile phone network charges - am I right? Also, as I've never dealt with accessing the Internet from a mobile phone, how does the billing for Internet use from such a mobile work out; is it free or is there a charge by the network provider?

My other query to those who already have this phone is about the document reading capability of the phone. In practice what does this mean? Can you read and modify MS Office files for example on the phone? Can you also view docs on a wireless network from the phone?
Many thanks.
 
The price of web stuff on orange is terrible... 25MB for £16 a month?!? Isn't that a bit extortionate? I probably get 3/4 a meg of email a day (not including attachments) to my works account so I'd use that every month without any browsing/doc downloads/rss feeds/IM. The £35 didn't sound too bad but when that turns into £51 + for a fairly small web bundle I'll have to think twice.

A huge wedge of functionality on this phone is for web/email and it's not even available on a semi-reasonable data contract. Same for the M600i, wanted that for email and stuff but O2 and Vodaphone are both crap for web, orange are no better if/when it comes out on that and T-Mobile UK don't think it will be available "in the forseeable future".

Was very keen on one or other of these phones but with the current contracts I don't see the point. Suppose I'd better look at one of the plasticy bricks T-Mobile offer on W'n'W...
 
Reezer said:
The price of web stuff on orange is terrible... 25MB for £16 a month?!? Isn't that a bit extortionate? I probably get 3/4 a meg of email a day (not including attachments) to my works account so I'd use that every month without any browsing/doc downloads/rss feeds/IM. The £35 didn't sound too bad but when that turns into £51 + for a fairly small web bundle I'll have to think twice.

A huge wedge of functionality on this phone is for web/email and it's not even available on a semi-reasonable data contract. Same for the M600i, wanted that for email and stuff but O2 and Vodaphone are both crap for web, orange are no better if/when it comes out on that and T-Mobile UK don't think it will be available "in the forseeable future".

Was very keen on one or other of these phones but with the current contracts I don't see the point. Suppose I'd better look at one of the plasticy bricks T-Mobile offer on W'n'W...
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It is! Don't any of the providers offer a 'pay as you go' tarrif for data usage while paying a 'contract' fee for voice/sms?

I presume that to get around the service provider extortionate charges, WiFi use would be free if it were through your own home network. Can you set the phone to only check for and receive data when you want, or is it a permanent feature i.e. once you have configured it to connect to a mail server the connection is 'live' for as long as the phone is on?

My reason for asking is that I'm doing an IT project next year and would like to include mobile data access to a web server. Having seen this phone I'm considering changing my current mobile to a P990i or a M600i so that I can carry out 'real world' testing as part of my project. The other option would be to buy a PDA and connect to the Net through my mobile however, it might be cheaper and more flexible to get one of these 'hybrid' phones.
 
Reezer said:
The price of web stuff on orange is terrible... 25MB for £16 a month?!? Isn't that a bit extortionate? I probably get 3/4 a meg of email a day (not including attachments) to my works account so I'd use that every month without any browsing/doc downloads/rss feeds/IM. The £35 didn't sound too bad but when that turns into £51 + for a fairly small web bundle I'll have to think twice.

A huge wedge of functionality on this phone is for web/email and it's not even available on a semi-reasonable data contract. Same for the M600i, wanted that for email and stuff but O2 and Vodaphone are both crap for web, orange are no better if/when it comes out on that and T-Mobile UK don't think it will be available "in the forseeable future".

Was very keen on one or other of these phones but with the current contracts I don't see the point. Suppose I'd better look at one of the plasticy bricks T-Mobile offer on W'n'W...
Click to expand...

Depending on how you wish to use the net, there are alternative methods, there are unlimited (or rather fair use limited) off peak bundles (free for 2 months on all new connections anyway, then £5 or £6/month) which also result in a capped rate of £1.50 a day for peak time browsing no matter how much you do...
 
Dolph said:
Depending on how you wish to use the net, there are alternative methods, there are unlimited (or rather fair use limited) off peak bundles (free for 2 months on all new connections anyway, then £5 or £6/month) which also result in a capped rate of £1.50 a day for peak time browsing no matter how much you do...
Click to expand...

Are these more reasonable deals with all service providers?
 
Looks like with the Orange basic Dolphin package costing £19/mth you get the P990i for £149.99 plus
  • unlimited free calls to your Magic Number
  • 225 texts - 150 more than our same high street plan
  • unlimited evening and weekend mobile Internet browsing for two months
  • 3G exclusive: your choice of TV content pack for two months - there are 3 to choose from and we think you'll love our Music TV pack
  • 3G exclusive: a 30 minutes Video Calling bundle for two months
Caveats are ...

Fair usage policy: To ensure the fair allocation of network resources for all customers the Offer may not be used for: modem access for computers, internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, Instant Messaging, peer to peer file sharing and non Orange internet based video. .... The Offer is subject at all times to a fair usage policy of 1000MB each month.
Once the Offer is applied to your account you will continue to receive the Offer free of charge for 2 months. After this time you will automatically roll onto a £5 unlimited evening and weekend data subscription which you may cancel at anytime.

It would appear that non off peak times are classified as 7am-7pm Mon - Fri
 
That's the same as the P910i, a few icons down the side of the screen that don't really interfere with anything at all...

Of course, if people feel that strongly about it, they can always get an unsubsidised sim free model ;)
 
frakker said:
Hardly the "logo and welcome to orange when you turn it on and that's about it really" you mention above though! :p
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Well, having used an Orange branded p910i for 12 months I tend to forget that some people whinge about useful buttons down the side of the screen :p
 
mrochester said:
I guess people just want the phone as it was intended, not some butchered version :p
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Then they can buy the phone sim free ;)

Just remember (and this is going to be a point that escapes most people here), the customers for the manufacturers for handsets are not in the vast majority of cases the end use, but the networks providing the phone (certainly in the UK). Phones are bought from the manufacturers and passed on at a heavily subsidised rate by the networks, so the manufacturers will work with the networks to ensure their phone is carried, normally working together to develop branded software...

For the customer Sony Ericsson sells the Orange branded phones to, they are exactly what the customer wants... The customer being Orange. The vast majority of end users will actually take what their network has in stock, or available, so keeping a network on board as a customer is vital to successful business model.

The only way this is likely to change is if more people start buying direct from the manufacturers at full price, but they won't, because they don't want to pay the real costs, so instead they buy a subsidised version then moan about it, without understanding how the business actually works and what they would need to do to change it. At least the Orange branding doesn't affect the functionality (on this phone anyway, I know in the past some branding has disabled functions of the phone), unlike for example Vodaphone's disabling of MP3 ringtones (do they still do this?) in their branded phones, or O2's recent trick of making their phones so you can't change the WAP/MMS settings on them if you want to use them with a different network, which is far more concerning.
 
Its just people always want something for nothing. I've been very luck in that the last 3 phones i've had through the carphonewarehouse have all been sim-free unbranded models, however if they no longer sold sim-free versions, i think i'd just bite the bullet and buy sim free, or at least check very carefully what sort of branding the network has added.

I'll be interested to see how the orange p990i compares to an unbranded one if my mate decides to go ahead and get a p990i through orange.
 
I read somewhere that the new version is fully compatible with all the UIQ3 phones.

Now i have to convince my boss to buy it for me :D

Which version have you tried?
 
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