Sony Ericsson overhauls flagship business smart phone

SonyEricsson has released the latest in its smart phone portfolio, the P990.

The P990 is based on Symbian 9.1, the latest version of the smartphone operating system. It supports two wireless networking standards — 3G and 802.11b — to help users get high-speed access to the internet via Wi-Fi.

The phone has a high-resolution colour screen and a two megapixel camera. It includes 80MB of memory and comes with a 64MB Memory Stick. In addition, it has a numerical keyboard that can be flipped down to reveal a half-size qwerty keyboard.

With the latest in its business device portfolio, Sony Ericsson has reduced the size of the screen, and also appears to have simplified the user interface.

The P990 was launched at the Symbian Smartphone show in London on Wednesday, where Sony Ericsson officials insisted that there was a place for cameras even on phones aimed at businesspeople.

Rikko Sakaguchi, senior vice-president for product and application planning, defended the P990's form factor.

"People say to us that 'you have stick phones, the world is changing, you need to offer a clamshell', but we will stick with stick phones because they're handy and they're small," said Sakaguchi.

Users keen to get their hands on the P990 will have to be patient, as it doesn't ship until the first half of next year. Sony Ericsson says it has announced the P990 now to give software developers more time to create applications for the phone. It runs on the UIQ 3 software platform, which allows coders to write applications that will run on phones from different manufacturers without needing to be rewritten.

silicon.com's Jo Best contributed to this article