From my experiences with the P800, P900, and P990i, the P model line is a powerful yet pretentious pda phone. Sony Ericsson always insisted on hiding a QWERTY keyboard behind the numeric keypad flip, when it made more sense to just integrate the latter into the former, a la the Treos.

That's what Sony Ericsson has done with the P1, and with the latest version of the UIQ interface, which is a somewhat more straightforward version of its predecessors, perhaps the P1 will prove to be more user-friendly. And the washed metal finish looks to be more resistant against daily wear and tear.

It's too bad though that in the kitchen sink department, Sony Ericsson is losing to Nokia's N95 and E90. Especially with the P990i, which happened to be an unremarkable all-in-one compared the Finn's jaw-dropping specs. The P1 continues the trend, with the glaring lack of high-speed wireless data such as HSDPA for instance. In any case, here are the specs:

• Tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900 Mhz) and UMTS (2100 Mhz) PDA Phone


• Runs on UIQ 3.0, based on Symbian OS 9.1


• 2.6" TFT 256k-color QVGA screen


• 160MB shared memory, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM, bundled 512MB Memory Stick Micro


• Bluetooth 2.0 (A2DP-capable), Wi-Fi 802.11b, IR, and USB connectivity


• Opera web browser installed


• 3.15 megapixel (2048 x 1536) camera, VGA secondary camera


• FM radio with RDS and music (MP3 or AAC) player

Maybe the lack of cutting-edge specs implies a focus on making the phone easy to use? The P1 is expected to come out before the quarter ends.