[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] vijay555:
UIQ is alright, but it's the hardware and software combination that make the px00 work well. The rocker switch, and optionally the keypad are a good combination. I imagine at some point sony will move to a landscape keyboard like the wizard anyway to compete with blackberry.

The cpu was an issue. I used sman, installed the default p800 theme and then used Tracker all the time. Like that it was nice and fast. But loading more than a few apps always took you too close to the edge on the p900. p910 is better, but they all need more ram and a faster cpu.

However, I can now use my magician perfectly well with one hand. I miss the 5 way switch, and managed to emulate it fairly well with buttonmax and the record and camera button with the volume slider on the magician, but now I just use SmallMenu plus assigned to one hardware button, and ProgramMenu assigned to another. That way, I can launch most apps etc with one hand and the direction pad very easily.

But, the px00s are a different technology; they are fine as phones, but don't have the cpu to do stuff like watching highres videos in native formats. First, Memory stick is too expensive, and second, the conversion of the high res/bitrate video to a smaller size is just not worth the effort. You might get away with it, but not without dropping some frames.

So, it depends what you want. If interface is the problem, I'd still get an MS based phone and work on the interface. Complaining about out of the box experience is a little short sighted: the whole point of the MS phones (as far as I'm concerned) is that the out of the box phone is minimal, and I can doctor it to my heart's content. Not everyone will do that, but shame on them :)

I use my ToggleToday and VJDialer on my Today screen all the time. I can dial and see appointments etc no problem. SmallMenu means I can do full task management and launching without ever touching the start menu or program menu. It's less intuitive then the rocker on px00, but that will always be the case until someone sticks a 5 way rocker into an HTC phone. And that's not going to happen, so we have to live with it.

I'm planning/working on a considerable number of new UI developments going forward, so for me I'll get the phone working how I want it to, one way or the other. But again, not everyone wants to do that, but for them, Wisbar Advance Desktop should meet most needs.

The Sony's cpu etc will be a limitation going forward because they make it a phone first. Hermione might be faster, and needs to be really (I find all symbian stuff too slow), and it'll be nice hardware, but if it's the same cpu, :(

Whether WM5 is stable enough? That's a relative question. I've never had WM5 crash or hang or go slow, but although I hack mine up a lot etc, I haven't overloaded it with o2 interface etc. It works as expected, or better. But then, my Magician has always been sound as well, only hangs when I do something dodgy. It's not like the old days with the SPV, where bugs made some things entirely unusable. The OS is now stable and developed enough to "work": whether that is enough is down to preference and your propensity to tinker.

Phew. That took some typing!

Oh, and I never used my p900 with the keypad. Although hardware keys and feedback are nice, it made it too chunky. Personal taste though.

V