Sony Ericsson P990 is a

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whi ...

and the successor of

Sony Ericsson P910 The Sony Ericsson P910 is a smartphone by Sony Ericsson introduced in 2004 and the successor of the Sony Ericsson P900. The P910 has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back of the flip (the flip can also be removed completely, allowing for a 'tradition ...

. The phone uses the

UIQ UIQ (formerly known as User Interface Quartz) was a software platform based upon Symbian OS, created by UIQ Technology AB. It is a graphical user interface layer that provides additional components to the core operating system, to enable the dev ...

3 software platform, which is based upon

Symbian OS Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

9.1. It was introduced on 11 October 2005, but had a long delayed market release only in August 2006. The P990 has a numeric keypad that flips open to reveal a full

QWERTY keyboard QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden ty ...

below the display, on the phone itself. This is a change from P910, where the keyboard is on the flip. The flip itself can be attached or detached using the screw and screwdriver found in the box. The phone is a

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the In ...

( 3G) and tri-band

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

phone supporting video calls through its front

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the PC industry within three years. The term can now ...

camera. The touchscreen displays 262,114 colours (18-bit colour depth) with a resolution of 240x320

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

s. It also comes with a 2.0

Megapixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

camera featuring

autofocus An autofocus (or AF) optical system uses a sensor, a control system and a motor to focus on an automatically or manually selected point or area. An electronic rangefinder has a display instead of the motor; the adjustment of the optical system ...

and an FM/RDS radio. The P990 runs the

Nexperia Nexperia is a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.It is a subsidiary of the partially state-owned Chinese company Wingtech Technology. It has front-end factories in Hamburg, Germany and Greater Manchester, Engla ...

PNX4008

ARM9 ARM9 is a group of 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings for microcontroller use. The ARM9 core family consists of ARM9TDMI, ARM940T, ARM9E-S, ARM966E-S, ARM920T, ARM922T, ARM946E-S, ARM9EJ-S, ARM926EJ-S, ARM968E-S, ARM99 ...

208 MHz processor from

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

. The screen despite a smaller length (2.8 inch) than its predecessors is actually larger in area because of the increased resolution. The phone also improves over the P910 by including support for

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

, allowing users to connect to 802.11b wireless networks. You can browse the Web using the built in Opera browser. Additional features includes RSS feeds, online video streaming,

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of portable code for embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, TV set-top ...

support and Handwriting recognition.

Popularity

P990 was adopted for business and personal use. Quickoffice comes pre-installed with the firmware itself. New features like Business card scanner and Front Camera attracted many consumers.

Problems

* New interface P990 was the major smartphone device launched after P910. It had the latest UIQ user interface 3, which was completely incompatible with previous device applications, such as those of the P900 and P910, so new applications had to be written. Hence, the device did not have as many applications as older devices had. * Less RAM The major issue of P990 was RAM, which was much less (64 MB), of which device used 48 MB in start up (OS) and only 16 MB was available for the user. This caused the phone to work slowly and crash frequently. Running multiple applications simultaneously was not possible due to lack of sufficient RAM. The latest update increased the available RAM, which solved most of the problems. * Network hang Network hang is the most prominent problem seen on P990. When the phone is kept idle for a certain time, the signal gets dropped. Only restarting the phone solves this problem. During the network hang, the phone seems perfect, but SMS and calls are dropped.

Latest firmware

Sony Ericsson updated the firmware, which made OS reduce its size up to 2 MB and gave the user 17 MB of memory to use. There were improvements seen in the phone after the software update. The phone seems stable after the latest update. The latest firmware is R6E28 of both Generic World 1 and Generic World 2. Lot of issues were addressed since some branded phones were not allowed to update. It was then possible to change the CDA of the phone with the use of third-party software like XS++.

Popularity

Problems

Latest firmware

See also

References

External links