I have always been more into computers than mobile phones. To me a phone was a just a phone. I simply used it to make phone calls and could not care less whether it could take pictures or play MP3s as all my funds really were going into improving my computer skills. About 3 years ago, I decided to change that habit and got myself a K750i. Best phone I have ever owned. Played music rather well, was adequately loud, the pictures from the camera were pretty good as well. Overall, I certainly had no complaints. I recently decided to get myself a new one. I had two phones in mind. The P1i and the HTC Tytn II. I went for the P1i purely and simply because for the price. Although the HTC Tytn II (also known as The Kaiser) had HSDPA, a faster WiFi and several other features, I could not pay £400+ for a phone. (Yes, I hate contracts and being tied into anything). The P1i cost me about £269 and that was thebest deal I could find at Play.com. Another site I looked at was selling the same phone at £377. What a rip-off!

Anyway, I got my P1i a couple of days. This phone is robust, feels well built and is small enough to fit into your pocket.

Setting up the P1i was pretty straightforward. Took about 3 minutes to start up, from boot to initial configuration but once all this was done, I was ready to start making good use of this phone. First stop, I decided to try out the WiFi. This was probably the easiest thing to set up. I had read several reviews where people complained that the WiFi was pretty hard to setup. WiFi on the phone is initially enabled. All that needed to be done here was to click on the WiFi icon in the Status Bar and get it to scan for any wireless networks. I have a NetGear router and the phone had no problems detecting it as well detecting other wireless networks in my area.

The keyboard on the phone did take a bit of getting used to. I would have preferred indvidual keys on the phone but I got used to the half-qwerty quickly. If you feel you cant get used to it, well there is the stylus and the on-screen keyboard. But remember, practice makes perfect.

For the 2 days I have had this phone, I have installed Opera Mini, Fring (which so far I can't get working), a DIvXplayer as well as transferred about 442 songs to the brand new 4GB card I bought along with the phone. Currently feel its not enough !!! So I have my eye on an 8GB card, but I am not sure if the P1i will work with it. Can anyone who is usingan 8GB card with the P1i let me know!?

The P1i in my opinion is a superb phone. Small, light and fast and certainly very stylish. The Media Player canplay your music files pretty loud and with the right application can handle video playback with ease. The main problem I do have with it is that Sony did not include drivers for Windows XP 64-Bit. At the moment, I am having to resort to dual-booting with Windows XP 32-Bit to use the SE PC Suite. So fingers crossed Sony resolve this matter very soon.