Sony Ericsson’s hugely popular P series has been an evolving line of phones on the Symbian platform. With every passing product, Sony have continuously taken it to the next level. First was the P800, then the P900, then came the P910 and P990i, which was regarded by most of tech critics as the most awaited gadget last year.So welcome the latest addition to the P series, the P1i

Even though it carries a 'P' designation, the new Sony Ericsson P1 shares far more of its physical design with the Sony Ericsson M600 than it does with other P-series devices like the P990. In general, the P1 can be thought of as an M600 that was given an improved keyboard, WiFi, and an auto-focus camera on the back. Indeed, the P1's 106mm x 55mm x 17mm (4.1" x 2.2" x .7") dimensions and 129g (4.5oz) weight make it a very pocketable device in spite of its capabilities.

The screen is a QVGA (240x320 pixels), 2.6" transflective display with touch support. It is easier to use in bright light conditions and the contast and colors can be described as "very good". The screen is touch sensitive so it's more fragile than phones without touch support - a screen protector foil is recommended and will also aid in keeping the display clean as it's susceptible to smears and grease/sweat from fingers and face

Although it is a smartphone, the P1 comes equipped with a good camera that can compare with some of the best cameraphones on the market. Located on the back are the lens with the information on the resolution, the autofocus and the flash, which consists of dual LED. We sorry this is not the Xenon found in Cybershot phones but at least it has auto-focus, which makes great difference on most photos.

The camera's interface is in landscape mode and starts for 3 seconds. It gives information for the settings chosen, and you can change them with the touch screen or the jog-dial. There are four resolutions available (3,2,1,0.3(VGA)MP) with three compression levels. The options for white balance, color effects and frames are nicely present as they were with other camera-oriented Sony Ericsson phones.

The auto-focus locks for a second and another 5 are needed to save the captured image and start shooting another one. The images from the camera are pretty good and are definitely usable, when taken in bright sunlight. Unfortunately, even then there is noise when you preview them in full size, but the detail is also good for a phone. Like the P990, the P1 takes very good macro shots and gives lots of detail from tiny objects. Indoors, the quality decreases due to the lower light amount. More noise appears even if the flash is turned on (it can be on or off, lacks AUTO option) and the latter will be usable to illuminate the object you are capturing if it is nearby.

Standard battery, Li-Ion 1120 mAh
Stand-by Up to 440 h
Talk time Up to 10 h

The Music Player isn’t branded with “Walkman” name but is better than the one used in non-smart-non-Walkman phones. It offers the standard filtering by Artists/Albums/Playlists/Tracks/My recordings but the now playing interface is improved: On the top is the album name, below are the controls which unfortunately are with rather small buttons and you may press a wrong one if not using the stylus. Almost half of the screen is occupied by the album cover and the file name – artist – album and the soft keys. There are 10 equalizers, including Mega Bass, Loudness, Treble boost and others. The player can be left to work in the background and in this case the homescreen will indicate this with a line of the song currently played.

Strangely, the player didn’t show the album cover image of songs we transferred through Windows Media Player from computer with Windows Vista. Later, those songs had an album cover image, but not the one they have in the Windows Media Player but an image stored on the phone’s card memory – image that has nothing in common with the songs.

The sound coming from the phone’s speaker is neither the strongest nor the one with best quality, but could do the job for using a song as a ringtone. Playing music on it, it will suffer from distortion when at maximum level and has typical “phone-speaker sound quality”.

For listening to your favorite music, headphones will be more suitable. The ones from the box are with mediocre quality and average volume, so when you want to replace them you will need an adapter to connect standard ones (with 3.5mm jack) or just use Stereo Bluetooth headphones. As the phone supports A2DP profile, we connected wireless speakers with no problem. They sound with much more power and clearer sound with higher quality.

The Video Player is exactly the same as the one on P990. There is no problem previewing a QVGA video encoded with MPEG4 H.263 but when additional features like changing the volume for example are applied during playback, the video and sound lag. Like with the Music player, we transferred the sound to Bluetooth speakers. The higher quality H.264 compression is not supported.

The P1 also has a FM radio built-in but in order to use it, you must connect the headphones, to be used as antenna. Once started, it will propose you to automatically scan the whole frequency range and save the found stations. You can then transmit the sound to the phone’s speaker or to Bluetooth device, which we did. The supported RDS has options for displaying AF (Alternative Frequency), News announcements and Traffic announcements and once it retrieves information about the station’s name, automatically adds it in the saved list

The P1 has 160 MB of internal storage memory (internal disk for storing user data, email, etc.) and comes with 512 MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) memory card, expandable to 4 GB. The slot (located on the right side of the phone under the protective cover) supports hot swapping. I'd recommend to install most of 3rd party applications and files on the memory card and keep the internal memory free for messaging (beamed files, receiving emails with large attachments) as the messaging folder cannot be moved to the memory card.

The tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900MHz) and UMTS 2100MHz P1 supports only slow GPRS data on GSM networks and basic WCDMA data rates on European 3G networks. The P1 lacks the faster EDGE and HSDPA data rates that many networks are capable of.While the Sony Ericsson P1's jittery signal strength gauge might suggest otherwise, the P1 seems to do a pretty fine job of holding onto a weak GSM signal. In particularly bad signal areas I experienced some breaking up of the audio, but the P1 didn't drop any calls while in the US or Europe, and it never stated that I couldn't make a GPRS data connection when I tried to pick up email or browse the web. When the signal was reasonable, the audio quality of calls on the P1 followed suit.

The Sony Ericsson P1i comes in a silver-grey color package. The noble looking package already represents the P1i. Once the packaging is open, you can see the silver-black P1i. Besides the P1i are still following accessories in the packaging:

Carrying case
Secondary stylus
Battery(BST-40)
Headset (HPM-62)
512MB Memory Stick
Charger (CST-70)
Desktop stand(CDS-65)
USB-cable (DCU-65)
Manuals
CD with Sony Ericsson PC Suite

This delivery is very generous from Sony Ericsson. Other models or other manufacturers don’t even contains a carrying case or schreibtischständer. The headset and the cable are pretty solid but for my taste a little bit to plump. So, the big headphones doesn’t feel good in the ear and spoiled the mood when listening to music or telephoning.