Sony's P900 means Symbian, Windows Mobile head to head

NEWS SEEPING out from Asia says that O2's updated wireless PDA, the xDA II, is finally shipping in volume. That will allow the British based operator to start selling it on November 1st. Again, it's made by Via's sister company HTC.

By a happy co-incidence, while O2 is showing what Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition can do, Sony Ericsson decided to launch its revised Symbian Smartphone, the P900, in Beijing and Las Vegas.

The xDA II ranks as the best upgrade since it fixes several serious holes in the original offering. It boasts an Intel XScale 400 MHz, PXA263 processor plus 128MB of memory.

Crucially it also sports a built-in camera (VGA resolution), support for Bluetooth and SD Card interface (for input/output so you can add Wi-Fi support) and last but not least, a removable battery.

That should help users overcome the xDA's notorious battery life problems. Both devices are Tri-band GSM so they'll work in North America although the P900 probably won't be in US stores until after the festive season.

While the P900 is running the latest version of the Symbian OS plus the UIQ user interface, the biggest improvements are to its video capabilities.

The touch sensitive screen now boast 65K colours compared to the previous 4K and usable memory has been upped from 32Mb to 48 Mb . Probably the most useful improvement is its digital camera which supports VGA for stills and QCIF or MPEG4 for videos.

It's also interesting to note that the P900's browser can support cHTML for i-mode services but the device should also be shipped with an optional Opera browser too.

In terms of games, the P900 supports both Java and Mophun. Which would you prefer? A cellular enabled PDA or a PDA enabled mobile phone? That's the essential difference. µ