Seems like SE has finally put an end to the Symbian UIQ platform, at least according to Patrick Olson from Sony Ericsson at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London this week.

The reason cited was that it failed to attract a steady fanbase as well as not being able to be rubberstamped by network providers as the 'platform of choice' for business users. In his own words...

Or rather it didn't make it. Another oxbow lake in the mobile industry story. Sad.

The other shareholder in the UIQ platform, Motorola, abstained from making any comments.

Now that it's "official", I suppose all support from SE for these platforms will cease quite soon. Perhaps we won't ever see another firmware update for the G900/G700 and the P1?

Source: GSMArena

The link is finally out! After waiting for months and months - since the start of this year in fact - it's finally released! Click here to go to the Opera Mobile Products page; the download link is halfway down the page.

I haven't downloaded yet, but I will do so as soon as I'm freer from work.



Note: Some strangeness abound: it's only the 18th of October, 2008 - but if you look at the first picture of this post, it says "Last Updated: 20.10.2008". But who cares...as long as we've got Opera Mobile 9.5 to download.

With the impending release of Nokia's first touchscreen S60 phone, the 5800 XpressMusic (otherwise known as the 'Tube' further in this post), it just seems like the phone that will blow the P1i completely out of the water. Here's a dissection/analysis based on first impressions from various Youtube videos, pictures and reviews from the last month.

On paper, it's definitely as good as SE's P1 ex-flagship - with the Xperia X1 now taking over as SE's flagship phone - if not even better. A 3.2" 16 Million colour screen, 3.2 Megapixel Camera, Quad-band GSM, Support for HSDPA, WiFi (b/g), Built-in GPS, 3.5mm headphone support, OFFICIAL support for Flash...the list can go on. Oh yes, and it's only going for 279 Euros (before subsidies or taxes).

Technically, both phones target different segments of the market - the Tube cutting it for the music fans looking for a cheap and all-in-one music playing device, whilst the P1 is definitely for the business segment, with a QWERTY keyboard and support for Blackberry Connect. No matter how hard you try, a physical QWERTY keyboard is definitely more appealing than a touch screen solution, simply because by being able to feel it, you can always type with much more accuracy and speed.

But above all the desirable hardware, it runs Symbian S60 - and this probably won't cut it for many others, who have had a bad experience with S60 in the past (me included). This brings us to the OS discussion; S60 vs UIQ. The UIQ has been around for quite a while, optimised for touch screen phones (since the days of the P800) while this is S60's first attempt for touchscreen smartphones. Granted, some users may be willing to overlook some of the poorly implemented elements in the Tube's OS because it's the first S60 touch platform, but most users just want it to work out of the box.

With UIQ now part of the Symbian Foundation, I hope some of S60's best aspects rub off on it - i.e. the S60 browser, the customisation, etc. If Nokia puts this new UIQ on the Tube, I think I'm sold.

What do you readers think?

Sorry about the lack of updates, it's been quite hectic here getting everything ready for my studies.

Anyways, back to the main story - turns out the Xperia X1 product manager Magnus Andersson has said something important:

"The brand is not tied into any specific technical platform,"

This is definitely good news for all users who prefer the UIQ platform over Windows Mobile. After all, now that UIQ is part of the Symbian Foundation of which Sony Ericsson is a committed member of, it opens up the possibility of a UIQ version of the Xperia X1, or future models in the Xperia series.

The Reuters news report also the date of release in Europe as well:

Sony Ericsson, which denied earlier this month the X1 would miss the key Christmas sales period, reiterated on Monday that the phone would start shipping to Britain, Germany and Sweden on September 30. It declined to give prices.

Yes, and also for interested users living in America - here's a piece of information that you may wish to keep in mind.

An announcement about North America -- a market Sony Ericsson has said it would make a top priority this year -- will be made on November 3, a spokeswoman said.

Source: Reuters

Thank you to all my loyal readers - the Sony Ericsson P1i Blog is now (finally!) 1 year old. The blog has gone a long way from just being updated during my Computer Science class when my teacher wasn't looking to getting around 100,000 pageviews a month, with over 1000 subscribers following the blog daily according to Feedburner. It's gone over 2 major redesigns, 1 extremely believable April Fools Joke, lots and lots of emails, 2 major hiatuses (I apologise to all readers for that) - but it's still going on, because you readers still want it around. Also a big thank you to asri and ares from UIQBlog for the news and tips on the Symbian UIQ platform.

And yes, just to reaffirm things, I have no intention of closing this blog or stopping the updates even though I will be having a change of scenary (from Hong Kong to UK as I will be attending university there). I will try to keep to the schedule of getting at least a few posts up every week, so stay tuned on the blog.

Drop me an email if you've got any suggestions on how I should improve the blog or if you want me to analyse and discuss particular news/features regarding the P1.