P800 Review

I recently bought the P800 smartphone by Sony Ericsson. After using it for about a week, I'd like to give my impressions and opinions on it for the sake of anyone here who might be interested in getting one. Just be advised that your mileage may vary, for I will most likely be a different user than you, you will be a different user than someone else.

Anyway, despite some negative feedback from members of the board (David, mostly), I wanted a phone like the P800, so I decided to risk the possibly negative points raised and take a chance on the phone. These comments aren't totally unjustified, however, and I'll comment on them later.

First of all, I really like the phone. It's comfortable in my hands, the flip is much less flimsy than I expected it to be (though still somewhat flimsy), and the screen is much easier to clean than I thought, though much harder to keep clean than I anticipated. With the flip up, the buttons reacted better than I thought they would, though the buttons on the side are tough to depress. I happen to be a fan of the jog dial, and I'm glad they included one on the phone. The rolling motion could be better, but I like the 5-way aspect, which makes you feel like you have more hard buttons on the phone than you actually do.

As for the software on the phone, I agree that this needs a lot of work. Right out of the box, there is plenty missing from the phone that makes its UI atrocious. However, most of this can be solved by third-party software. The indispensable bits of software, IMO, are:
The Opera browser:
It seems SE decided that their own browser is so bad that they supply Opera on their installation CD.
Tracker:
The program adds a desktop screen where you can place shortcuts to commonly used applications as well as time and date info, and you can customize the backround with whatever image you want. The program also includes a schedule overview page, a file system viewer, and a task manager. I don't use the shedule page, but the other two are absolutely essential. The phone its self does not come with a manager for the files. Each application somewhat deals with files it finds in premade folders which gets a bit annoying. The task manager is also important. Many of the programs on the P800 (third-party and included) provide no way for you to actually close them. You can have 15 programs running (not great with 4MB of memory, over 600 of which is taken up by the phone application its self) and not have any way to close them. The task manager makes it easy to run down the open applications and close them. You can also use Tracker to assign a "close program" command to one of the jog dial directions. I chose to have another of my directions open up the task manager.


The operating system of the P800 is not that tough to get used to, though I can see how some people may not like it much. It has some design flaws that make it difficult to use, but I almost see Tracker as a way around that. It helps that much.

Now, I'm not saying that David is wrong in his impressions on the phone, but I'd like to give my reactions to them now that I have tried the phone for myself:

The camera doesn't have loads of dead pixels unlike the 7650, but the overall quality is lower, plus no low-light mode

It is true that the camera quality is fairly poor. I wish it were better, but I think it's good enough for quick captures to send to friends from my phone.

The Opera browser is very good and reformats complex pages very well, but the platform is a little slow to manage it quickly and resizing then displaying JPEGs takes time

It does take some time, and unfortunately Opera does not format all pages well. It has some difficulty with WAP sites (look up a map on Mapquest, and the zoom controls are not there). However, like you said it does reformat most pages to a very usable format for such a small screen. Some pages even look better

The email client supports scheduling

It's great to get a little buzz every once and a while to notify me of new email

The device isn't really designed for one-handed use and even if you do use it that way, it is akward to keep one finger on the scrollwheel and your thumb on the keypad/screen unless you have very big hands. The Nokia's 'nipple' control is far more useable and intuitive than the multi-way wheel, which is narrow, sharp-edged, fiddly to use and feels cheap

Well, I would agree with that for the most part. With the flip open, it really is impossible to use the phone with one hand. With the flip up, however, I have no difficulties. I can dial a number, scroll through menus with the jog dial, and take pictures with the camera button all with one hand.

Aesthetically and usability-wise, the UIQ interface sucks. It feels like the UI was designed by programmers more interested in cramming in features than usability or good interface design

I agree. It's the biggest shortcoming of the phone. I believe the second itteration of UIQ is out, but there's no word on whether SE will allow P800 users to upgrade to it.

The docking station is cheap and nasty and is fiddly to place the phone on

Agreed. I have no clue why they didn't make it slide into something with a real back to it. Sure, I suppose the phone looks cool in the station, which sort of makes it look like it's standing on its own, but when you try to tap the screen with no back support, the phone keeps bobbing back, which gets really annoying.

No profile support - you can set different ringtones for car, headset, etc, but it isn't enough

It's certainly enough for me. I don't need different levels of ringers. Plus, you can do some very cool stuff with the two profiles (more later on).

Lastly, you disliked that it had no predictive text. I don't miss that at all. My old phone had predictive (T9) text, and I hated it. It would only recognize the word about 60% of the time, and when it didn't you had to erase the word and enter it like normal, basically making it take twice as long as usual. I'm not an SMS-crazed phone user (like most of Europe and Japan ), so it doesn't matter much to me. Sure, it takes a while to write an email, but it would if I had T9 in there too. There is no substitute so far for a good old keyboard.

The last thing I want to talk about is the community for the P800. It is so sad that I will never find a community quite like the empeg community for any other product I will buy. There are several message boards for the P800 (Howard Forums, My-Symbian, and more), but most of them are filled with...well...less than the bright and helpful people at this community. If this phone had the same set of people owning it, there would be a perfect operating system on it, there would be T9 (for those who wanted it ), we would have the coolest programs written for it, and someone would probably be making some crazy hardware accessories

That said, there are a few programs that I quite enjoy:
MiniGPS:
No, it's not a mapping program, but one that determines cell information. It detects the ID of the cell you are in, and you can program events to coincide with certain cells. For example, if you enter your work cell, you can have the phone set to turn the volume off. If you enter the cell where your hospital or airport is, you can automatically set the phone in flight mode. Very cool, IMO.
SMSPlus:
Mmmmm, Sega Master System and Game Gear games on my cell phone... delicious It still needs work, but just to see these games like this...wow. There are also emulators for Game Boy (normal and color), Commodore 64, early Sierra Online adventure games, and even a MAME port.
IM+:
Basically just an IM client. Works with ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, and MSN.
VNC:
There is a VNC client that works with various versions of the VNC servers (I'm currently running TightVNC).

I also like that there is a large online website with many program downloads and trials and a message board at www.my-symbian.com


To wrap it up, I have to say that I like the phone very much. It's everything I expected it to be and one of the coolest toys I've ever owned (#3 behind the empeg and Tivo ). I am a different user than many, though. I don't write much on my PDAs, so viewing is the important thing for me. In the first week of owning the phone, I've only made about 5 phone calls, but I've browsed the internet like crazy, downloaded tons of programs, chatted on AIM, and checked lots of emails. It's just so very cool.

I'm sorry for the long review, and I'm even more sorry it wasn't very well written. I just wanted to put my thoughts down on paper. It doesn't form a cohesive (or even coherent) review, but it may give some impressions on the phone for those who are looking Thanks for your time

early Sierra Online adventure games

How early? Leisure Suit Larry & Space Quest, i hope!

Well, according to here, it'll run:

Leisure suit Larry 1

Policequest 1

Space quest 1

Space quest 2

Manhunter 1

Manhunter 2

Goldrush

Donaldducks playground

Black couldron

Kingsquest 1

Kingsquest 2

Kingsquest 3

-------------

There is also a Lucas Arts emulator, and I played a bit of Monkey Island on it. Very cool stuff

*edit*
oh, but so far I've only tried Links Awakening on the Gameboy emulator, and Penguin Land on SMS

That's pretty much a comprehensive list of the only Sierra games worth playing (though it is missing Colonel's Bequest and Heroes Quest I.) Once they abandoned the typing interface, Sierra games lost their appeal to me.

Come to think of it, Police Quest 2 isn't listed there, and I don't remember its requirements being any higher than, say, KQ3.

Once they abandoned the typing interface, Sierra games lost their appeal to me.

Exactly. I was so upset when they did that I just stopped playing. I didn't mind the “point-and-click to move” use of the mouse when they added it, but taking out the idea of having to think about what do to with what objects just killed the games for me. (in addition to the loss of being able to type in swear words to see what it would spit back out at you; or commands like “take off your clothes” in Police Quest and having the character do it and lose the game). In fact, I don't think I've played an "adventure" game of any type since.

I actually didn't even *have* a mouse on my computer when I finished all those games. You can only imagine my frustration when I found out that if I had a mouse, I could have just click-click-clicked my way through crap like this:



Instead of the way I had to do it:

up arrow
save game
up arrow
save game
up arrow
fall of cliff
load game
right arrow
save game
right arrow
fall off cliff
load game
down arrow

etc.

It was at this point that I realized I could probably benefit from having a mouse at my disposal.

It's been a while, but I'm not sure if that one even had a mouse option. Still when it was added, they still made you pick your path carefully, IIRC.

One amazing story is that I had a friend with one of the games (KQ3 I believe) who didn't realize he could save his game. So every time he played he went all the way through without saving at all. Can you believe he finally beat it after a few months?

You might be right about KQ3 not supporting the mouse. But there was definitely a similar scenario in one of the first Sierra games which supported the mouse where keyboard users had to walk gingerly through some kind of cliff/obstacle scenario, while mouse users could just click on where they wanted to go.

I just picked the one from KQ3 above because it's the one that really pissed me off when I played it.

And no, I don't believe your story about your friend who didn't know about saving the game... Not because I don't think it can be played all the way through in one shot, but because I don't believe anyone who's that stupid could play it all the way through in one shot.

I hated most of those Sierra games, with the exception of SQ and LSL, not because of any of the things you mention, which are valid problems, but because Roberta Williams was the worst game designer ever. All of her games were dull, even the supposedly horriffic and titillating Phantasmagoria, which I managed to finish in about 6 hours, despite the fact that it was on, like, seven CDs.

I've played fairly few adventures games that I thought were excellent sing Infocom went out of business. Even the ones commonly referred to as the best, like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, were merely good. Oh, for the days of Trinity again.

All of her games were dull

Well then, would you mind sharing your list of more exciting adventure games from that era? I certainly don't remember any...

I just picked the one from KQ3 above because it's the one that really pissed me off when I played it.

Yea, "Falling Death" was a pet peeve of mine in video games. I always thought that “navigation exercises” (and the closely related “jumping exercises”) were just cheap tricks to extend the "life" of a game. Man I hated those.

And no, I don't believe your story about your friend who didn't know about saving the game...

Well it's true as far as I know. I saw him restart the game about a hundred times. He told me there was no save option and I hadn't ever played one at that time so I believed him. (When I got the game, however, I quickly discovered his error). He finally told me he beat it and that’s when I thought to tell him about how to save. He seemed genuinely surprised (though I am supremely gullible).

I don't believe anyone who's that stupid could play it all the way through in one shot.

Never underestimate the power of persistence, especially when combined with ignorance.

Oh wow, Phantasmagoria was such a let-down. What a dull game. It was so incredibly easy to get through. 7th Guest was far more interesting and scary.

All of her games were dull

Didn’t play LSL, but the SQ games were always quirky and fun (at least the ones I played). I did think KG1 was pretty lame, but I enjoyed the rest. Keep in mind I was pretty young at the time, so that probably made a difference.

even the supposedly horriffic and titillating Phantasmagoria

which was awful. I didn't actually play much of it, but I remember being bored, non-shocked, and completely unimpressed. That's the one with a rape scene right? I never got that far, but my sister finished it.

wow. i really dug mystery house and the wizard and the princess back in the day, but i will never get over my disappointment with sierra's "time zone". $99.95, and six double-sided (flippy) floppies of pure boredom.

--dan.

SQ was not Roberta Williams, and I enjoyed them quite a bit. LSL was fun, too, and I believe she wrote one of the later ones.

As for other games during that same time period that were fun, I'll just point out that there were still Infocom games being produced during that period. The KQ-style graphics were pretty good at the time, but I always saw them as being distracting more than anything else. You gotta wait for your guy to cross the screen, etc, without having any game element that was really part of the graphics. Heck. even the often lambasted Z6 Infocom games that had graphics (like Zork Zero and Shogun and Arthur) did a better job incorporating the graphics than RW did.

As for actual other games, The Hobbit was pretty well done. Some of the early LucasArts games were during that time, I think. Like the first Indiana Jones adventure game. It's so hard to remember the relative times of things that far back....

Yeah, the 7th guest was a pretty scary game. It's sequel, the 11th hour wasn't that bad also, though the first game was (as mostly always) better.
Hmmm...this made me think : wasn't the 7th guest the first game ever released on CD-ROM ? Can anybody confirm this ? (so I can file that one under the "confirmed useless knowledge section" of my brain!)

It was definitely not that one, although what I believe to be the first CDROM game was published by the same folks. I think. Not that I can remember any names at all.

You gotta wait for your guy to cross the screen, etc, without having any game element that was really part of the graphics.

I'm not sure how anyone who's played the games can say that. The graphics were very integrated with gameplay. You actually had to find items on the screen, instead of depending on the game to tell you "there is a pitchfork here." You had to navigate obstacles (as mentioned above) and deal with characters that actually moved around. KQ1 came out in *1984*. That predates even the horrid Zork Zero by 4 years.

Also, the first Indy game that could be called an adventure game (The Last Crusade) didn't come out until 1989, by which time there were already 4 titles in the King's Quest series. The previous Indy games were platform games.

I'm not saying that by today's standards the *.Quest games are riveting and spellbinding.. But you seem to be mish-mashing all of the mid-to-late eighties into one big ball, and unfairly trying to compare the early Quest games (particularly the Roberta WIlliams ones) with the next generation stuff. There really was no comparison between the early Sierra titles and anything else that was out there, which is why they sold so well.

Trilobyte, which was a team from Virgin Ineractive Entertainment.

That game actually did scare me a few times. I also liked the theme song which was on this promotional video I received for the game.

Here's a link on the game.

Oh, and you're kind of correct, but rather I believe it was the first game to have live action video.


*edit*
Info on Trilobyte - I have no idea how old this is:
"Creators of The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, Trilobyte Inc. is a developer of entertainment products. Founded in 1991, Trilobyte identified a strong market for advanced entertainment titles that combine the interactivity of a CD-ROM with a story line.

Trilobyte's debut release, The 7th Guest sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide. The 11th Hour, the company's follow-up effort, shipped with one of the highest number of pre-orders ever for a CD-ROM game.
While Trilobyte's first two titles - the aforementioned The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour were published and distributed by Virgin Interactive Entertainment, the company's ensuing titles; Clandestiny and Uncle Henry's Playhouse were developed and published solely by Trilobyte.

Trilobyte has successfully hurdled technology limitations with the development of proprietary tools and technologies. To overcome barriers in PC technology like sparse color palette, poor video playback, marginal sound quality and limited speed of CD-ROM drives, Trilobyte developed a proprietary system called GROOVIE, which enables the company to fully integrate full-motion video and multi-layered sound into its products. Trilobyte's proprietary development tools allow the company to simultaneously produce its products for all emerging platforms, an approach that represents a tremendous market opportunity."

I played most of them, but mostly only because they were there. Now that you mention it, there was a lot of ``find the invisible object'' stuff, which seems to me to be part of what you don't like about the games past the command line parser stage -- that sort of random wandering about.

Zork Zero was certainly on the declining end of Infocom, but it was far from horrid. KQ was, IMO, neat to see, but not much to play. Even at the time, when I was eleven, I recognized that I was amazed by the graphics, but bored by the gameplay.

So, since you've cleared up my timeline some, I would much rather have been (and be) playing any of the Infocom games than any Robta. Williams game. Again, I quite enjoyed most of the SQ and LSL games. It wasn't until much after the fact that I realized what tied all those dull games together, honestly. Otherwise, I'd have stopped getting hers, but Sierra, who also produced games I did like, always really pushed hers. I wonder why?

Oh, and you're kind of correct, but rather I believe it was the first game to have live action video.

That sounds familiar. I'm still racking my brains trying to remember that first CDROM game. I can see the ads for it in my head. Damn you.

And, honestly, I didn't really like The 7th Guest, either. It was just a series of unrelated parlor puzzles. It was pretty to look at, though. But Myst was released about the same time, IIRC, and it was a lot better, IMO, even if it didn't have much in the way of animation.

Actually, I think Myst was release 1 to 2 years later. One year later on Mac and 2 on PC. I thought it was merely okay. The whole thing kind of bored me, though. It was just a series of screens and every once and a while someone would talk to you. 7th Guest was more interesting as a story, IMO. You're right, though, it was a series of parlor games. I thought they were pretty good, except that one of them was very nearly impossible to finish.

I though Myst was boring, and 7th guest was great. No real reason why, I just had tons more fun playing 7th guest.

Did you have any trouble with that board game? The one with the "cells"?

Ho man, it's been way too long! In fact, of the puzzles I can remember, I forget which were in 7th guest and which were in 11th hour (which I never got a chance to finish). I do remember we played 7th guest with a big group of people who were doing some kind of video project that had lots of dead time and we basically all congregated around the computer to solve the puzzles. It was a weekend of great fun and we solved the thing in probably record time.

So, since you've cleared up my timeline some, I would much rather have been (and be) playing any of the Infocom games than any Robta. Williams game.

Nothing wrong with that, you like what you like. I just wanted to clear up the timeline issues, because the distorted timeline was the only thing holding up the "graphics don't tie in to gameplay" argument. You can say all you want about the Sierra games (Roberta-written and otherwise) but they really took adventure games to the next level, and the tight integration of graphics and gameplay (again, for the time, not by today's standards) is really what made them stand out. I loved the Zork trilogy myself, but the Sierra games added a new dimension to the gameplay that you just couldn't get from a text-based dungeon game, no matter how inventive.

I'd agree if I thought I'd ever seen it done well, and I don't think I have. That's not to say that there aren't a good number of graphical adventure games that are entertaining, but I think that the Infocom games are more ... immersive. I understand what you're saying about them telling you ``there's a pitchfork here'' -- I was more impressed with the ones that hid their objects better -- but it always annoyed me that the graphical ones required you to click on everything to find what it was. And then, later on, that was often all you had to do; once you had the pitchfork, the game would do whatever was necessary with it. In Zork and the early SQ games, for example, you had to figure out what to do with the pitchfork once you had it.

I'm not saying that the graphical element added by KQ wasn't highly influential. What I am saying is that that influence may not have been positive, and that Roberta games in particular were neither well plotted nor well written.

In Zork and the early SQ games, for example, you had to figure out what to do with the pitchfork once you had it.

I believe this was the origional point, though. That the early Quest games (RW and others) didn't have the "click" interface. Once it was added the games lost their thrill.

but it always annoyed me that the graphical ones required you to click on everything to find what it was.

I always typed "look pitchfork" "get pitchfork" and "use pitchfork." The clicky stuff didn't come along until later, and as I said, I despise that crap as much as you do. Also, as for the pitchfork automatically doing what it's supposed to, that was very rare. Yeah, there were certain times that if you wore a certain thing it protected you, or if you had a certain item on you it was automatically used. But more often than not (until they switched to the 100% mouse-driven interface) you had to actually type in the action and the item.

What I am saying is that that influence may not have been positive

Okay, but with the evolution of any science/art, you need intermediate steps. If not for the innovations found in King's Quest, Space Quest (released two years later) would be a well written game, but would be text-based, or have crappy graphics that didn't tie into the gameplay.

Incidentally, did Roberta Williams back over your puppy or something? This seems to be less about the games and more about the author.

That game actually did scare me a few times.

That said, did you ever play "Alone in the dark" ? That one probably scared me the most up 'till now.

Actually I can still vividly remember the first time a game spooked me. It wasn't so much because of the game but because of the sound of the game.
See, I was playing "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and I had borrowed a Sounblaster card from a friend. At that time those cards were still pretty costly and I couldn't afford one myself. This was the first time I ever played a game with more or less "realistic" sound instead of the beeps and bleeps my computer normally would make.
So I enjoyed the game AND enjoyed the sound. And because of the novelty of the great sound quality I had the speakers cranked up pretty loud.

Then I came to the scene in which Indy opened up the coffin of the dead knight (in which he found the stone tablet)
That scene was accompanied by a *very* creepy sound and because I've turned the volume up so loud I got quite a scare.
I jumped up, the chair I was sitting on flipped over backwards, I lost my balance and landed with the back of my head against the border of a closet that was standing behind me. Blood everywhere, not pretty.

I'll never forget the thing my dad said about it : "so that's progress then?" (what did he know? )

My head hurt like hell for three days. Ouch.

That sounds familiar. I'm still racking my brains trying to remember that first CDROM game. I can see the ads for it in my head. Damn you.

Take your time, no rush

I googled a bit for this one. Turns out it was also a project of Roberta Williams.

King's Quest V - Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder changed the graphical adventure game in a major way. Although criticized by old adventure game fans who claimed the removal of the parser interface "dumbed down" the game, this new interface prevailed and became the new standard for adventure games. The gameplay of King's Quest V had some flaws, but with its hand-drawn 256-color graphics King's Quest V looked far better than any competing game on the market. It was the first Sierra game to sell more than 500,000 copies and it won several awards.

Constantly thriving to lead the way in utilizing the latest technology, Sierra decided to produce the first game ever on CD-ROM, supporting the Microsoft Windows multimedia features. This game was to be Mixed-Up Mother Goose, in an enhanced version with 256 colors and real speech instead of text. The voices in the game were performed by Sierra employees, including Roberta Williams herself. Due to little or no acting experience the end result didn't sound very professional, but it did the job. The game was a technological nightmare to complete, but its release in 1990 earned it the Best Early Education Award from the Software Publishers Association. Sierra went on to release an enhanced multimedia version of King's Quest V on CD too.

Incidentally, did Roberta Williams back over your puppy or something? This seems to be less about the games and more about the author.

Nah, but she did take a bunch of my money as a kid promising fun games and never delivering. She also has a huge ego about her ``excellent'' games which bothers me a lot. Other folks made bad games now and then, but I can't think of a single games she made that wasn't, IMO, lousy. She's just my prime example of poor adventure gaming, and the ego part just pushes it over the top.

Fair enough. I guess I never followed the gaming press closely enough to notice her ego. Of Roberta's games, I've only played KQ I-IV and The Colonel's Bequest to any great degree, and thought that they were on average no better or worse than the rest of the Sierra lineup of that time.

Although criticized by old adventure game fans who claimed the removal of the parser interface "dumbed down" the game, this new interface prevailed and became the new standard for adventure games.

It was the first Sierra game to sell more than 500,000 copies and it won several awards.

And so quality gaming (IMO) lost out to survival of the fittest.

And so quality gaming (IMO) lost out to survival of the fittest.

Quality pales in comparison to the almighty dollar? Say it ain't so!

Here's another Williams bio. For some reason or another, I enjoyed the one Quest for Glory game that I played. I think it was the 3rd one. It was pretty interesting.

Hmm... Probably not a good idea to admit this but I actually quite liked the mouse interface adventure games...
I still played all of the old text parser graphical/text ones as well but every so often I would get stuck even though I knew exactly what it wanted me to do. I just couldn't get the exact command word or wording right for it to do it.
Weird how before you couldn't get anything but adventure games but now it's all sports sims and FPS style games.

I really liked Monkey Island 1 to 3 and the Indy games. Wasn't that keen on Monkey Island 4 because the 3D system annoyed me. I still haven't actually completed it even though I bought it.

- Trevor

every so often I would get stuck even though I knew exactly what it wanted me to do

That was a problem every once in a while on an Infocom game. I usually considered those to be design flaws. The point of the game is not to argue with the command parser.

One I remember in particular had to do with playing a life-size game of chess. Most of the pieces were easy to move, but you had to figure out just the right syntax for the knights. It wasn't "n.n.e", but "n then n then e". Very annoying.