Expected Q3 2007
8th May 2007

The Sony Ericsson P1 is a 3G Symbian smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard which can be regarded as a replacement for the troubled Sony Ericsson P990i. There are two versions of the P1, the Sony Ericsson P1c for sale in China and the P1i which will be sold in other markets.

The P1i breaks with the tradition of the P800/P900/P910/P900 series and disposes of the characteristic "flip" on the front of the device and it also ditches the QWERTY keyboard for a keypad similar to the M600i

The first thing to note on the Sony Ericsson P1i is the large 2.6" 240x320 pixel TFT display - this is now a transflective panel which means that it can be read more easily outdoors. As with previous models, this is a touchscreen although the Sony Ericsson P1i also has a jog-dial control.

On the back is a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, and there's a secondary video camera on the front of the Sony Ericsson P1i for video calling. There's also a multimedia player and FM radio. The 160MB of internal memory can be expanded by using a Memory Stick Micro card, we understand that the standard sales package will include a 512MB card in the box. Of course the P1i also supports Bluetooth.

Underneath this is a tri-band 900/1800/1900 MHz device with UMTS 2100 MHz and support for 802.11b and 802.11g WiFi. One major drawback is that the Sony Ericsson P1i doesn't support HSDPA, and also the tri-band GSM/single band UMTS network support is a little limiting.

Support for corporate email solutions such as BlackBerry, ActiveSync and other systems will be available through add-on applications. Whether or not P990/M600 applications will run on the P1i without modification is unknown.

The Sony Ericsson P1i is only a little larger and heavier than the M600 at 106 x 55 x 17mm and 124 grams. Battery life is quoted as 10 hours talk/18 days standby on GSM, 3.5 hours talk/14 days standby on 3G. Using Bluetooth and WiFi will eat into the battery life significantly, although hopefully not as quickly as it did on the P990.

The P990 was a bit of a disaster for Sony Ericsson, it was very late to market and extremely buggy to begin with.. although it's a handset we rather like despite all its flaws. Hopefully the Sony Ericsson P1 will be right first time.

Sony Ericsson say that the P1i will be available in some markets in Q3 2007 but have not given any pricing details. Our estimate is that the P1i will cost at least €800 / £500 at launch.

Sony Ericsson Satio

The Sony Ericsson Satio was revealed to the world back in February under the codename "idou". Probably the first 12 megapixel camera phone to market, the Satio hopes to re-establish Sony Ericsson as a force to be reckoned with in the mobile phone business.

Three months after the initial announcement, does the Satio still impress? Even though we have to wait until early Q4 to see this phone, it will probably be the only 12 megapixel camera phone available. The large 3.5" 640 x 360 pixel display is certainly competitive with most of the competition, and as you would expect the Sony Ericsson Satio has GPS, WiFi and HSDPA. It will also be one of the first phones to run the new Symbian Foundation operating system. So yes, it is still quite impressive.. for now.

The Satio is perhaps the true spiritual successor to the Sony Ericsson P990i - perhaps the last phone where Sony Ericsson really tried to include everything they could think of. Sony Ericsson clearly hope that the Satio will help to revive its flagging fortunes, along with two other very oddly name phones announced at the same time - the Aino and the yari.

The 12.1 megapixel camera is certainly one of the most interesting things going on here - it has autofocus, a Xenon flash, face detection, image stabilisation, red-eye reduction and geotagging.

On paper, a 12.1 megapixel camera sounds very impressive, but in practice the real issue is the camera's optics. If your camera is saddled with poor optics, then adding more megapixels is not going to help - it just makes blurry pictures bigger. We don't know how good the optics on the Satio are, but we do know that this handset's success really depends on getting them right.

We mentioned GPS - the Sony Ericsson Satio comes with Advanced GPS plus Google Maps and turn-by-turn navigation. The large 3.5" touchscreen will be ideal for this type ofApplication

The operating system is Symbian S60 5th Edition, similar in capabilities to that found on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It supports handwriting recognition, it automatically adjusts to screen orientation and it will support a wide variety of applications. Some of the bundled apps include a WebKit based web browser, built-in applications for Facebook and YouTube, email integration (including Exchange ActiveSync) and a multimedia player.

On the subject of multimedia, the Sony Ericsson Satio also includes an FM radio, and there's also an 8GB microSD card included in the standard sales package which should provide room for plenty of media clips.

Underneath, the Satio is a quad-band GSM phone with UMTS 2100 and HSDPA support plus WiFi. In the US, a slightly different version called the Sony Ericsson Satio(a) adds tri-band UMTS support.

The Satio measures 112 x 55 x 13mm and weighs 126 grams. Sony Ericsson have not stated how large the battery is, nor how long the Satio will last on a full charge.

Other features include a TV out, plus of course USB and Bluetooth connectivity. The standard sales package has a stereo wired headset, USB cable, an 8GB memory card plus all the usual components. Sony Ericsson can also supply an IM920 viewing stand as an option, allowing the Satio to be used for video playback or on a desk.

There's no doubt that Sony Ericsson badly need the Satio to succeed. But when it comes out in "early Q4", we will have waited 8 months or more from the initial announcement, and Sony Ericsson's competition is not exactly standing still.

We have no guidance on price at the moment, although we assume that the Satio will not exactly be cheap. Three colour combinations should be available: Black, Silver and a red "Bordeaux" colour.