When Phones Were Fun: Sony Ericsson P910 (2004)

apple released some new iphones this week and at first glance the most i can say about them is well it is green i kid of course the new iphone se in particular if you're shopping the mid-range is just as important as it's ever been but it's still just another variation on something we've seen many times before so for this month's episode of when phones were fun what better time to take a trip back to 2004 when choosing between touchscreen versus stylus track wheel versus keypad even slab phone versus flip phone was no choice at all [Music] [Applause] sony erickson's p910 isn't the first phone of its kind it traces its roots in fact all the way back to 1999 when a then independent ericsson dreamed up one of the first products to bear a now familiar name we call it a smartphone that was followed three years later by the p800 probably the most famous installment in the series as the mobile phone museum points out it was the first sony ericsson phone to run symbian the operating system that would eventually at its peak power two-thirds of all smartphones worldwide the p900 came next a sleeker device so beloved that at least one tech reporter at cult of mac was still carrying it a decade after its release and while the p910 i have here wasn't the last in the series well its successor's disappointing showing suggests that maybe it should have been what attracted me to the p910 was the absurd degree of choice it provided to someone seeking a smartphone in 2004 which you'll start to see as we unbox this device provided by michael mouton the user manual alone is bigger than most of today's phone boxes this user manual is the size of a phone book and underneath it sit all the reasons why free headphones two cd-roms a charger and a charging and sync dock bundled 32 megabyte sony memory stick and a spare stylus in case you lose the first one we've lost all that over the years in the quest to eliminate e-waste and or pad manufacturers pockets now normally i've skipped past this part but i figured why not give you a little peek behind the scenes here getting a phone to work nearly two decades after its release sometimes becomes less tech task more arts and crafts project see some vintage phones refuse even to boot without a sim card installed and since older mini and micro sim cards were much larger than the nano sims of 2022 i need to use ill-fitting plastic adapters that often need tape to keep them together this particular clutch allowed this phone to boot but due to the ceaseless updating of wireless networks it won't register on at t in my home market of brooklyn and even if i could make a call i don't think modern ears would be impressed by its acoustic fidelity so yeah that sim swap substitution happens on pretty much every episode of this series but here's one thing that has never happened before finding a phone that let you choose whether you used it with or without its flip oh the keyboard this is part of the choice that sony ericsson included for the launch price of 500 pounds if you attached or detached this pair of tiny screws yeah you could use the keyboard or forgo it and this wasn't the single sided flip of the p800 and 900 with only numeric keys now this one flipped open to reveal a full qwerty thumb board on the back side the 208 by 320 display reconfigures itself based on whether the flip is open or closed detecting that state with a good old-fashioned physical pin that pushes a button hidden away inside the hinge now let's not let nostalgia paint bad into good here like top gun tom skerritt says i'm not gonna sit here and blow sunshine the reality is this thumb board is more like a pinky board it's tiny it has no backlight it has no cursor keys and typing on it while holding the phone feels even more awkward than it looks it's easy to see why the later p990 moved the keyboard onto the main body but i still like it because it makes some use out of the space that was wasted on earlier phones it snaps open and claps shut with authority and it makes a voice call just a little more ergonomic something that was much more important back in 2004 mostly i like the keyboard because i've never been a fan of that other input method this display is just as finicky as any resistive touchscreen of the time reacting to pinpoint pressure instead of capacitive conductivity and while that works well if you're willing to pop out the stylus writing is another story remember that graffiti input method from the palm pilot yeah this is a similar approach called jot from a company called communication intelligence corporation is still doing business today in fact under the name i sign some said it was faster and easier than graffiti in fact it would later be licensed by palm and called graffiti 2 but personally i never got into graffiti or anything like it even back in 2004 blackberry devices had been on the market for a while proving that pocketable keyboards could also be comfortable ones sony ericsson did take inspiration from the blackberry elsewhere the track wheel on the side just like on a blackberry you can roll it to scroll through lists and press inward to select like a mouse click but notice there's no back button on the p910 that's because you can also click the dial on its z-axis which means you can go back by pressing down or away from you or call up a menu by pulling it toward you it's a really clever take on what was by now a proven input method and it makes one-handed use much easier i've never encountered it on any other phone whether you controlled it with the keyboard touch screen jog dial or stylus the software you were using was something called symbian uiq uiq was basically a user interface layer that made the underlying symbian operating system a little easier to manage on this 2.9 inch display now i can't give you a symbian lesson the many developments that led to its rise and fall form a byzantine history that's frankly best left to someone who actually carried these phones at the time here in the u.s you were far more likely to see and use palm os sidekick or windows mobile devices and uiq bears little resemblance to any of those there's there's no home key there's rarely a back button the home screen is sometimes your launch pad and sometimes it's hidden away in a pop-up menu the camera or communicator and just the perfect example of labored mid-arts portmanteaus uses a red recorder icon for both stills and video which is confusing and don't even think about trying inertial scrolling on the touchscreen we were still three years away from that combine that with no small amount of bugs at least on my unit here and some puzzling hardware decisions and it's easy to see why some reviewers at the time were a little underwhelmed there was no wi-fi that was becoming a thing the phone had gprs data only instead of the newer edge capability that had started its rollout the previous year and that camera was the same 0.3 megapixel unit from the p900 the camera mobile gazette branded as almost unusably bad god it's incredible to think how fast things were moving at this point less than two years later sony ericsson would give us the k800i with a three megapixel camera and a year after that in 2007 nokia would launch the n95 each of which pressaged the eventual end of point-and-shoots so yeah i don't mean to beat up on the p910 or on its particular flavor of symbian for the time it could do incredible things trade phonebook contacts over infrared or bluetooth move fallout boy or 50 cent albums using memory stick and run third party programs years before we started calling them apps there's one particular review from the period that i think is a good place to close us out martin bailey wrote at the time that the p910 packs the maximum amount of functionality into the smallest available form factor that it's still the swiss army knife of phones and that it can sometimes replace the need for a laptop yup 18 years ago some of us were already speculating about the handhelds that would help us kill off the laptop often in the same hopeful tone i use today when i talk about samsung decks or foldable phones after all the smartphone killed the pda it killed the ipod it's nearly killed the point-and-shoot why shouldn't it vanquish the laptop well it hasn't happened yet and maybe it never will but products like the sony ericsson p910 were among the first to try to be something if not everything for everyone back in the days when keyboards were optional and phones were fun [Music] this video was produced with the help of a sony ericsson p910i purchased by mr mobile and as always neither sony nor erickson nor any other manufacturer was given an early preview copy approval or any editorial input into this content special thanks to the mobile phone museum linked in the description and to michael mouton for the device share your own memories of the p910 or devices like it in the comments until next time i'm michael fisher thanks for watching and stay mobile my friends [Music] you

Channel: MrMobile [Michael Fisher]

Views: 176,996

Keywords: p910 review, p900 review, p800 review, p990 review, sony ericsson, p910i, p910a, when phones were fun, retro review, retro tech

Id: drB7GfqHWGs

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/proedross]

Since we're on the subject, here's some photos of my P910: https://imgur.com/a/Fm1wHn4