Sony Ericsson has announced its next generation smartphone, the P990. The device will be the first commercially available smartphone to adopt the enhanced Symbian OS version 9.1 and UIQ 3 software platform. It is Wi-Fi enabled, has a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and features a new hardware keyboard beneath the flip-down keypad. Availability is from the first quarter of next year.
"The technical capability of the P990 will be brought to full life by applications from the third party developer community," said Philippe Kubbinga, Sales Director of Sony Ericsson Southern Africa.
"There has been a very high demand for applications on the P800, P900 and P910. Our smartphones have been recognised as the most advanced on the market, and we intend to maintain this reputation with the P990 by ensuring a rich supply of top applications for enterprise and productivity, as well as, leisure and gaming when users make their first visit to the Sony Ericsson Application Shop."
The smartphone offers all of the expected benefits of UMTS including video calling, high-bandwidth multi-media downloads and the ability to browse the Internet with full HTML pages. It uses the new Opera 8 browser, and has multiple text input methods. Developers among us will be pleased to hear that one can use C++ or Java to create professional and personal productivity tools for the P990.