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Announced way back in October, it's been a long wait for Sony Ericsson's P990i, the follow up to the most popular Symbian-based UIQ smartphone, the P910. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) offered some hope that the spec-heavy P990i could land stateside soon when the agency approved it for American release recently. Unfortunately, Sony Ericsson representatives indicated to PDAStreet not too long ago that the P990i, nor another hot new UIQ smartphone model from the company, the M600, wouldn't make it Stateside at all; at least through traditional channels.

This may change, of course, as the FCC okay implies. Then again, not all devices given the thumbs up by the governmental arbitrator gets released in this country.

So if you really want one these Sony Ericsson smartphones, you can - in the meantime - buy an unlocked M600 through importer eXpansys for a pricy $569.95 and pre-order an unlocked P990i for a staggering $1,064.95, if you're so inclined.

The P990i runs on version 3 of the UIQ interface and is the first smartphone to leverage the latest version of the Symbian operating system, 9.1. It measures 4.4 x 2.2 x 1.0 inches (114 x 57 x 26 millimeters).

Sony Ericsson's newest P900 series model looks quite similar to its predecessor, the P910, but with its QWERTY thumb-keyboard no longer on the reverse side of the numeric keypad flap. Instead, when you flip the flap down, the keyboard is integrated right into the smartphone.

P990i's 2.8-inch display runs at a 240 x 320 pixel resolution with 262k colors, higher than the 208 x 208 pixels available when the P910's flap is up and 208 x 320 pixels when it's down. The screen is smaller than the earlier model's because of the P990's keyboard placement, however. As with all UIQ phones, the P990i's display is a touch screen; unlike most advanced handsets built on the Symbian, which run on the Nokia's S60 interface.


                   P990i Flap Flipped Down

There's a 2-megapixel camera (up from 1.2 megapixels in the earlier model) with digital zoom and auto-focus plus 80 MB of RAM and a bundled 64 MB Memory Stick. That's far less storage than the 1GB mentioned in rumors, but more than 64 MB of RAM and 32 MB memory card present with the P910. The P990's memory slot can handle 4 GB Memory Stick PRO Duo cards.

The GSM/GPRS (900/1800/1900) smartphone supports UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), a WCDMA 3G broadband technology that delivers 400 to 700 Kbps data transfers. There's also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

There's business card scanning software as well for take a picture of a card and have its contents added to your contacts database.

As with the P990i, the M600 is built on Symbian 9.1 and the UIQ 3.0 interface. It also offers a touch screen, handwriting recognition, UMTS, and Bluetooth. Unlike the P990, the M660 doesn't deliver Wi-Fi, and has a slightly smaller 2.6-inch display with 262K color and 240 x 320 pixels.

Rather than leveraging a flip-design to integrate both a QWERTY keyboard and numberpad, the M600 has a dual-function keyboard for text and number input. The keypad/keyboard is a hybrid of sorts between a full QWERTY and number-pad layout. Blue numbers are embedded on the keys, which serve multiple letter and character functions as well.

Spell checking and word completion software takes care of the rest when messaging. There's also a 3-way jog dial.


                                             M600

Inside, the tri-band GSM smartphone bundles 80 MB of memory with an added 64 MB Memory Stick Micro, which goes up to 2GB, thrown in for good measure.

The M600 supports the range of Microsoft Office document formats and bundles Opera 8 for Web browser, RSS for news feeds, VPN software, and a PDF viewer, and features a speakerphone, flight mode, plus an external antenna connector.

Its media player supports MP3, AAC, ACC+, E-AAC+ and m4a audio formats and it can stream both audio and video: Video playback is 30 frames per second. Surprisingly, there's no integrated camera, which puts it in league with RIM's BlackBerry handhelds, and gears it directly at security-conscious enterprises.

Both the M600 and P990i support a number of e-mail and groupware applications, including AlteXia, iAnywhere OneBridge, Intellisync, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, RIM BlackBerry Connect, Seven, and Visto.