Sony Ericsson stops firmware development on P990, W950, and M600
by Sean Cooper 
posted Jun 27th 2007 at 2:33PM
If you have a misbehaving P990, your last chance at firmware salvation will be in version R6D23 released June 15th. Either Sony Ericsson has decided it really has gotten it right this time, or has decided it just can't be sorted, but either way the aforementioned mobiles development has ceased. There is some clarity available from a developer post at Sony Ericsson's developer forums, and the picture we wrangled is that due to memory limitations, not much more can be done, it's a hardware problem. It's a bit of a shame that the oft delayed, eagerly anticipated upgrade to the venerable P910 seems to have left so many feeling a bit burnt in the end. So if you have a P990 (the others in the list apparently aren't such troubled creatures) and can't get no satisfaction, upgrade it to the newest FW and if that's still a bust, move on to a P1.[Via Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]
Filed under: Handsets, Sony Ericsson
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Inside man @ Jun 27th 2007 3:28PM
Disgusting.
I bought the P990i in good faith, but the lessons learned from the P910i were obviously thrown in the bin when UIQ3 was written.
Its the most buggy phone i have ever owned, Sonyericsson should be ashamed at the way they forced customers to develop a platform and then shut the door as soon as they figure out what the issue was.
Im sure future UIQ devices will be avoided by current owners after this situation.
Nokia E90 here i come.
Matt @ Jun 29th 2007 12:08AM
Great news! Will the freed up resources from these phones be devoted to supporting the plethora (yes, Jefe, a plethora) of HSPA/music/camera/video phones SE will see picked up by AT&T (or any other carrier that likes great phones) in the second half of '07?
I'll bet El Guapo himself could get some devices picked up by a carrier. Sons of motherless goats.
Nestor C. @ Jun 27th 2007 4:28PM
It's the M600, not the W600.
Metin Akbil @ Jun 27th 2007 5:04PM
Unfortunately there are still non memory related and non hardware related bugs in the P990, some even introduced with the new R6 fw, not to mention a useless "today" screen in what should have been a flagship PDA.I'm not really surprised, with SE's incompetent project managers, programmers and non existing testing procedures, I guess this is the best they can do. Unfortunately, the P1 will not be much different since it is based on the same OS as the P990, even if the other bugs can be fixed it will still be plagued by memory leaks.
txmrolf @ Jun 27th 2007 5:55PM
Strengths:
- WIFI,
- Video call,
- 2 Megapixels camera with LED,
- great design,
- 4GB external memory support
- excelent piece of hardware (I take my hat off).
Weekness:
After upgrading to the latest (and apparently the last) FirmWare:
- Customer Support really bad, will leave final users on our own if something fails.
- Memory leakage (depends on the use, but if you are a PDA-heavy-core-user, maybe you would
require to reset it once a day), or else applications would not start, or suddenly slow/stoppage
of the device will be experienced.
- If Speaker mode is used, a buzz is heard, so you would have to reset your call, or press
twice on the Speaker key
- On long emails the application may not work and even more it would crash
- Text files over 400k might not open, and any other open application at that time will close.
- If not a heavy user... then you might experience 1 restart per week "to improve performance"
- Multiple processing not reliable due to a poor memory handling
- Was designed with too little memory to say last (poor memory dimension).
- Randomly (not all times) the alarm buzzes whenever it pleases (or not)... so be prepared to
be late if someday morning the alarm does not buzzes.
- Cannot hold installed application icon's into selected folders, whenever the Memory Stick is
removed and inserted back.
- ..to mention some, plus more to discover.
Experience:
I have had this mobile for 5 months, it was not a cheap phone at all, but previous experiences
(P800, and P910) really well deserved it. At start up I realized this phone was not a stable...at
all! (WIFI could not handle a long time connection, many restarts per week, camera autofocus was
a crap!, etc), I had upgraded twice, and finally had the FirmWare (R6) that would solve most of
the problems.
Some bugs went away, and some new bugs appeared. Now SE decided to stop supporting this mobile
eventhough there are pretty obvious bugs.
Conclusion:
If you have a better option... then take it. Or else prepare yourself to keep your bugs for your own.
It is a shame that a high quality phone, has such poor support as SE is giving. It is supposed that
a high quality phone would have as minimum, a high quality software inside... but this was not the
case... and P990 FirmWare R6 is the base for the latest P1.
BEWARE!!!!
Sean @ Jun 27th 2007 6:23PM
Move on to another phone from SE? let me think about that for a moment... No.
Their customer support is appalling, their software QA is non existent, and their support of application developers seems pretty poor as well.
Every time I buy something with Sony on the label, I regret it. I'll learn one day.
dmcgrath @ Jun 27th 2007 8:52PM
Having owned the p990 for nearly 7 months, I have to admit that I'm still happy I purchased it. Yes, it has its quirks, and yes it has bugs. But it's still more reliable than any windows mobile device I've ever used (yet to try a win mo 6 device...maybe the kaiser?).
I've not seen the "restart to improve performance" message in nearly 4 months. Plus, the phone gets rebooted once a week, at 7PM on sunday night, for its weekly back up...and at no other time. And I've not had memory issues except occasionally. I run TomTom fairly often, at least 1 game every day, take photos, etc. Maybe I'm not hard enough on my phone, but I've not had many in the way of problems. Just lucky?
NAcamper @ Jun 30th 2007 5:24AM
I purchased this phone at a premium price, Why? because it was advertised as the ultimate smartphone with all the bells and whistles by SE. Now 8months later, the price has dropped by %50 percent and they have stopped support for this overpriced, buggy phone.
Well done SE, management has done a tremendous job in bringing down the company! Brilliant.
My prediction for the future, SE will lose many loyal customers and eventually go down in history as a major bone head company to screw up big time.
greenlight @ Jun 28th 2007 2:23AM
Sad, but this seems to be par for the course for Symbian devices, and smartphones in general. My Nokia N73 (which was released around the same time) has a similar crippling lack of memory and retarded bugginess. And I hear nothing but bad things about Windows Mobile.
M Thompson @ Jun 28th 2007 4:41AM
No no no no no NO.... Do NOT move to the latest firmware: you'll probably introduce more problems than solve old ones... and do NOT move to the P1: you will be stung sooner or later by SE's awful arrogance and ineptitude.
Move away from SE completely.....
3rdsun @ Jun 28th 2007 6:31AM
I only hope the Ubuntu for mobile platform gets real. That P990 with the Ubuntu screen was really dope
Leonard Stark @ Jun 28th 2007 2:53PM
I've used the M600i for 6 months and now I use a P990i for 3 months now. Both suffer from the lack of memory. While my M600 was freezing and restarting almost daily, it could hold some 3 apps multitasking them at the same time. Other than that, a nice phone to have but not for heavy users like me. The restarts didn't bother me as it happened while it was on stand by. The lack of memory was shown all the time as my browser would sudently close down when I needed it more. So I sold it. Crap! I bought the P990i which is more stable but can't multitask TWO apps at the same time. For example, I can't listen to music and browse net at the same time, no matter what I do. I did master resets, i did C: formats, i updated in vain. So, I am gonna sell it. After buying only SE starting with SE T 610 I can't trust them no more. My faith in having quality products from SE while paying A LOT of money faded away. Shame on you, SE, you are a bunch of incompetents!
Ryo81 @ Jun 28th 2007 4:20PM
Hello there from Hong Kong.
I've been using W950i for around 2 months and yet I encounter bugs during video viewing and web surfing...(not to mention NO profile support, "useful" today screen...) it's just too disappointing as a "smart" Walkman phone (I have to reboot my device several times a week!!) and far from a good phone! Now that it's going to stop supporting these buggy devices, I really wonder if I'll consider SE anymore if I'm to upgrade my phone next time in a year or 2.
I'm not saying other manufacturers are better than SE, but at least they would support their products until it's accepted by the majority of users. (not only users of specific groups)
koolezt @ Jun 29th 2007 9:47PM
SE mis-sold the top-priced P990 for a business user to "leave their laptop in the office", but it can't successfully multitask routine built-in pda apps. Just start the music player, RSS Feeds, web browser over wi-fi, and try opening a contact and calendar (maybe to check / set an appointment). Guaranteed something will fail. And woe betide you if an incoming phone call gets added to the mix. Mark you, this is not just a phone, this is a SMART (not!) phone. Not to mention sundry oddities and quirks.
Worse, as designed with memory-hungry systems and limited (64 MB) program memory - not data storage - this inadequacy is predictable. DOH! SE's pre-release advertising was misleading on this. Misundertanding caused by incompetence or deliberately misleading? Either way, it seems they now don't give a horse's a**. They're abandoning the white elephant even before the 1-year manufacturer's warranty runs out. Seems like a prime candidate for a global class-action suit.
jaske @ Jul 3rd 2007 12:38PM
Buggy at the beginning. Much redeemed now. I do everything on it, including writing whole manuscripts.
But I do agree, this shouldn't have launched until it was perfect. Shame since with this current set-up, it works just as well as my p800 and p900. If it had come out like this, backlash would have barely been perceptible.
P990i User @ Aug 20th 2007 4:38PM
I've had the p990I for almost 8 months now. At that time it was one of the most expensive phones that money could buy. I have been a loyal customer of SE for over a decade starting with the P800, 910i and now the 990i. I must say that I am utterly disappointed in them for selling a crap phone which should have retailed at under US$300 to start with for the kind of kinks in it and not at over US$1000 (yeah I paid more than a thousand bucks for it!!!). And now they are abandoning the support completely. Not to forget that every firmware upgrade resolved a few bugs and but introduced a larger number of bugs instead.
Anyhow, this is the last SE phone that I or anyone else in my family will buy. And i will proactively tell my woes of how a big company sold me a shit product and then told to bugger off...
I agree with koolezt that this is a prime candidate for a global class-action suit.
An utterly disappointed ex-SE Die Hard Fan...