http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/ Engadget Mobile Comments for Sony Ericsson stops firmware development on P990, W950, and M600 http://www.engadgetmobile.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadgetmobile.com en-us Copyright 2008 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
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.]]>Jun 27th 2007 3:28PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/Jun 27th 2007 4:28PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/Jun 27th 2007 5:04PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/- 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!!!!
]]>Jun 27th 2007 5:55PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
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.]]>Jun 27th 2007 6:23PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
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?


]]>Jun 27th 2007 8:52PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/Jun 28th 2007 2:23AMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
Move away from SE completely.....]]>Jun 28th 2007 4:41AMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/Jun 28th 2007 6:31AMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/Jun 28th 2007 2:53PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
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)]]>Jun 28th 2007 4:20PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
I'll bet El Guapo himself could get some devices picked up by a carrier. Sons of motherless goats.]]>Jun 29th 2007 12:08AMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
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.]]>Jun 29th 2007 9:47PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
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.


]]>Jun 30th 2007 5:24AMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
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. ]]>Jul 3rd 2007 12:38PMhttp://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/06/27/sony-ericsson-stops-firmware-development-on-p990-w950-and-w600/
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... ]]>Aug 20th 2007 4:38PM