vB Easy Archive - Sony Ericsson P900 Questions

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Sony Ericsson P900 Questions
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Posted by: Kycleung

Hey evry1, im planning to get this phone next month, ive just got a few questions, thanxs to any1 who can help:

1) Does the P900 allow for multitasking, such as writing SMS, while listening to MP3's?

2) Is the Battery Life any good?

3) Can you transfer MP3's to the phone using the cable included in the box?

4) Is the MP3 Player quality good?

5) What bitrate can the MP3's play at?

Many thanxs, Kycleung

Posted by: jmufarrige

Hi Kycleung, I'll do my best to answer your questions:

1) Does the P900 allow for multitasking, such as writing SMS, while listening to MP3's?
Some multitasking is allowed, and in particular you can do basically anything else while listening to MP3s (the track is paused while making/receiving a call, while a track is playing you will hear a tone to indicate an incoming call or message).

2) Is the Battery Life any good?
The battery life is excellent, approx. 2-3 days of frequent calls/sms between charges. If you are listening to MP3s or watching videos or browsing the web constantly then the battery life will drop dramatically, which makes sense as those are all processor- and memory-intensive applications. In addition to normal phone duties, I would play MP3s for approx. an hour each day (while walking to and from lunch), watch a couple short (<30 second) videos, check email and do some basic surfing and still get 2 full days out of a charge. If you're going to listen to MP3s for 3-4 hours or watch feature-length films then that will likely drain most of your battery.

3) Can you transfer MP3's to the phone using the cable included in the box?
You can transfer any file you want using the SyncStation, just realize that even though it plugs into a USB port, the actual transfer rate is old-school serial, so plan for a single MP3 to take a couple minutes to transfer. It took 2+ hours to transfer a 92MB .avi using the SyncStation. If you're going to transfer a lot of files to your phone, I would HIGHLY recommend picking up a USB Memory Stick reader and transferring from PC to Memory Stick directly (soooo much faster), and then if you need to you can pop the Memory Stick into your phone and transfer to internal memory.

4) Is the MP3 Player quality good?
Quality is as good as any dedicated MP3 player I've ever used or listened to, especially when you consider that you will be listening to MP3s through either the speaker on the back of the phone or the headphones. Unless you are playing crap-quality MP3s (<64kbps), you will never be able to get enough volume out of the speaker or headphones to notice any decrease in quality compared to a home stereo. Don't get me wrong, you can get plenty of volume out of either, and the P900 makes a great personal MP3 player for walking or on an airplane, but it's still nothing compared to a component stereo with magnetic-driven cone speakers like you would have in your car or at home. Basically don't expect monster bass or electrifying highs from your P900, but it's otherwise quite enjoyable, unless you're a hardcore audiophile who insists on listening to Original Recordings of Bach on $500 headphones.

5) What bitrate can the MP3's play at?
I think the specs say it will play anything up to 320kbps. Because of the volume issue I mentioned in (4) above, I have personally found that encoding my MP3s at 96kbps is a good comprise between sound quality and filesize (same bitrate I use on my Nex IIe CF MP3 player when working out).

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Posted by: Seabiscuit

"just realize that even though it plugs into a USB port, the actual transfer rate is old-school serial, so plan for a single MP3 to take a couple minutes to transfer. It took 2+ hours to transfer a 92MB .avi using the SyncStation."

I took the liberty of buying a USB2 Memory Stick reader/writer for transfers. It slashes the time to transfer files from PC to phone. Well worth the £10 cost. I can transfer a whole album of .ogg files to my memstick in 20 secs.

Posted by: Kycleung

Thanxs jmufarrige and Seabiscuit, you've been a great help. I just want to know a few more things, like about the reception, camera. How good and efficient are these in the P900?

Many thanxs, Kycleung