News

You have another six months to enjoy your Sony Ericsson P900

According to the Gizmodo news site, that's when the phone's replacement arrives: Third Quarter.

According to another news source at Mobile Burn, it's likely that the main change will not be the obvious one - the redesigned keyboard. Rather, says Michael Oryl, it will be the new user interface, which has now appeared on the K700i phone.

The key hardware change is to a much smaller keyboard, which is the one feature of the current P900 cellphone which displeased the typical user (as indeed with the original P800).

The early reports suggest that Sony Ericsson is following the trend to producing two versions, one for world markets using just one US band (1900 MHz) and two for the rest of the planet (900 MHz and 1800MHz) - and another design which has both US bands but only 1800 MHz for roaming when the owner ventures outside North America.

The date is speculative, of course, and the term "3Q04" is widely used to imply "the very last day of the year" which qualifies as still being third quarter, so it isn't even certain it will make the Xmas season.

According to Gizmodo, the phone is code-named "Layla" - and it says the photo it has published isn't final, either.

The report says "the ergonomics are being evaluated" which suggests that there may be hardware changes before it ships. On the other hand, it may be no more than the reference to a programme of user testing on the keyboard, which flips down (as on previous models) but becomes a full mini-qwerty keyboard when you do this, rather like the one the Palm Treo 600 has.