Mobile phones are evolving with bewildering haste. After years of getting smaller, expect your mobile to get a lot bigger with the addition of features such as cameras and colour touch-screens.
It is only a year since Sony Ericsson launched the T68, the first phone with a colour screen, outside south-east Asia. Now, it launches the delayed P800, a phone-cum-personal digital assistant that features a large colour touch-screen and integrated camera. It is perhaps the most advanced mobile phone around.
Although bulky, it is handsome, with a detachable half clamshell keypad. It is fairly light, intuitive and requires few visits to the manual. It has an MP3 player but precious little memory to make this a realistic feature. Expect an expanded version later this year, says Sony Ericsson.
It can also stream video but can be temperamental, especially when its memory is full. The camera takes good pictures but, unlike Nokia's 7650, it is poor at night. The P800 has decent handwriting recognition by means of a clip-on stylus (although not as good as, say, Motorola's Accompli). You can also view Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat attachments, and there is a decent calendar that can sync with your PC.
One of the nicest and most novel features is the ability to select photographic icons for your nine favourite numbers. Simply touch the icon to call the person. When that person calls you, his picture pops up. The phone's main weakness, ironically, is making voice calls. The microphone is too far from the face and your voice constantly goes weak. I'm not fond of hands-free kits and have had to cradle the half-clamshell keypad with my little finger. Also, your cheek has a habit of triggering the touch screen, terminating a call
Siemens, which is now in second place in the UK market behind Nokia, has come to the picture phone market late with the S55, the first picture phone to come with a flash. And it needs it. The S55 is poor at taking pictures in the dark. You also have to take pictures through a viewfinder that aligns the pictures incorrectly. You end up guessing what picture you are taking. Thankfully, the pictures are far better when viewed on a PC, but they are lousy on screen.
It is small and light, a mere 97g and has 400k memory. It is also Siemens' first phone with a colour screen, but it only has 256 colours. The industry standard is 16 times that. The P800 has 4,096.
