line of site

Sony Ericsson P910i works with HandsFreeLink

because this is somewhat big news, i'm crossposting from my other weblog

Many readers have been writing to ask if the P910 would support the Handsfree Blutooth profile, and thus work with the Acura TL HandsFreeLink.

The answer is, it DOES support the Handsfree profile, and does work with the Acura TL, with a few caveats:

• after pairing, you have to turn bluetooth on the P910 on and off to get it to connect
• i had to manually connect to HFL as in the pictures above - it didn't seem to connect automatically when i got in the car
• when making a phone call, the P910 did automatically connect and prompted me to transfer to HFL as in the screenshot above
• the P910 DOES NOT send battery strength and signal strength to the instrument panel

i know the next question from many folks will be "Is Sony Ericsson going to provide an upgrade for my P900?" and my answer is "I have no idea, but they don't seem to look back, so I doubt it."

Other than that - a few notes on the phone - it's not terribly different from the P900. the only differences i see are

• a more complete Java MIDP 2.0 implementation


• some new icons in the default theme


• memory stick PRO - you cann now expand to 1GIG of memory


• oh, yeah, the keyboard. I mostly didn't know it was there. can you hold the phone by the keypad with two hands and type? not really. you can. it's sturday enough - but the keyboard is small. i was more successful one hand typing with my thumb like traditional texting. it was hard when i had to use the Shift key, which was often.