Sony Ericsson unveils the P900 – a flagship multimedia smartphone

October 20, 2003

At simultaneous events in Las Vegas and Beijing today, Sony Ericsson unveiled the much anticipated P900 smartphone, to be available starting next month. Building on the successful P800, the P900 is smaller, faster, simpler and more flexible than ever before. With significant upgrades such as video recording capability, 65K colour touch screen, and increased memory, the P900 is not only a high-quality camera phone, but also provides full PDA/organizer functions as well as a good gaming experience.

Persistent rumours of a follow-up to the successful P800 have preceded the launch, proving the strong interest for Sony Ericsson’s Symbian-based smartphone offering among application and content developers, corporations and consumers alike. The wide range of applications available for download turn the P900 into a device that can do much more than making voice calls, thereby increasing its value for both consumers and operators. The P900 is based on Symbian OS v7.0 and the established UIQ user interface. Symbian is the largest-selling operating system for smartphones.

The inclusion of a video recorder is a significant addition to the multimedia facilities of the P900. It is a VGA still camera and can also record video clips as long as the memory allows. It uses the QCIF picture size with MPEG4 video compression which is the standard supported by 3GPP. A video clip is approximately 1 MB per minute and can be inserted into MMS messages; also video which has been streamed to the P900 from elsewhere can be inserted into an MMS message. The P900 is a QuickShare™ product, incorporating the ease of use principle that Sony Ericsson first introduced in the T610. QuickShare™ has won consumer praise for being the smartest way for mobile imaging on the market. Not only can a picture be taken with only two clicks, it is also easy and intuitive to share pictures between the phone, a PC and other consumer devices - either locally over Bluetooth, Infrared or cable, or across the mobile phone networks with MMS or e-mail.

The P900 will start shipping to EMEA and APAC markets in Q4, for US in Q1, and the P908 will start shipping in China in Q1.

Viewing images and video on the P900 is a pleasure; the P900 screen has improved colour depth, i.e. 65,536 colours compared to 4,096 colours in the P800, and images can be viewed across the full size of the screen and in wide screen mode. This of course makes the P900 a highly apt device when relaxing. There is a wide range of downloadable Java and Mophun games for the phone, and included on the CD is the very popular racing game V-Rally1, in a 3D edition which is taking mobile gaming to a new level not seen before. The JogDial™ is used for accelerating and together with the polyphonic sound, stereo headphones and 3D landscape details; the game play is getting closer to a console-type gaming experience.

The flash memory has been increased from 32 MB to 48 MB ram and this has increased the available user memory up to 16 MB. Additional storage space is available by using Memory Stick Duo. A 32 MB Memory Stick Duo is included with the P900 and Memory Sticks up to 128 MB capacity are supported, which makes it easy to create a music or video library, on several Memory Sticks. Private home videos can be scaled down using Packet Video recorder on PC so that you can show friends and relatives snapshots from your holiday break. The P900 features a complete MP3 music player and also comes with a selection of innovative MP3 ring signals.

The P900 browser supports HTML, WAP and cHTML content types within one single browser. The much praised Opera browser, which is designed to display practically all Web pages on the Internet, comes on a CD with the P900, or is available for download on www.sonyericsson.com. When viewing Internet content through this browser, pages are reformatted to fit inside the screen width and eliminate the need for horizontal scrolling, providing a fast and pleasant mobile browsing experience.

Starting today, there are also on-line phone update services available from sonyericsson.com. They allow consumers to download the latest version of the phone software directly to the phone without having to visit a service centre. The CD-ROM enclosed with the P900 provides a generous selection of software and applications for productivity, connectivity and entertainment.

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB offers mobile communications products for people who appreciate the possibilities of powerful technology. Established in 2001 by Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and Sony Corporation, the joint venture continues to build on the success of its two innovative parent companies. Sony Ericsson creates value for its operator customers by bringing new ways of using multimedia communications while mobile. The company’s management is based in London, and has 4,000 employees across the globe working on research, development, design, sales, marketing, distribution and support.

For further information, please visit: www.SonyEricsson.com

Any product features, specifications or statements in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual product features, specifications or forward-looking statements are subject to change.

P900 Key Features

Large TFT touchscreen with 65K colours
5-way Jog Dial for rapid selection of many of the functions
Office Handsfree (speaker phone) function
Voice dial, voice answer, and ‘magic word’ activation
Integrated Digital Camera for still pictures and video clip recording
Video and audio players (including an MP3 Music Player)
Multimedia Messaging (MMS), SMS, EMS and E-Mail
Combined Web and WAP browser
High speed data communications using GPRS
Memory Stick® Duo™ Slot for up to 128 MB removable memory
Personal Organizer with Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Written and Sound recorder
Calculator
Document viewers for E-mail attachments and downloaded files
Games with widescreen and sound capabilities
Built-in stylus for touchscreen operation
Support for TTY devices
BluetoothTM, Infrared, and USB connectivity
PC and remote synchronisation (SyncML) Outlook and Lotus v2
Easy personalization of appearance and tones using Themes
M-Services & MeT (Mobile electronic Transactions)
Corporate Telephony
Flight mode
Tri-band communication giving international operation
Symbian OS 7.0 Platform: C++ and JavaTM SDKs