Sony Ericsson flexes muscle with P1

Sony Ericsson launched a flock of new shinies on Wednesday, including a variety of Java-based low cost handsets as well as a new flagship smartphone.

The S500 is a small slider based on EDGE, while the T650 is a candybar UMTS device that includes a photo blogging application. There was also an extra slim basic GSM/GPRS device, the T250, in the line up.

But the smartphone, known as the P1, with a similar form factor to the T650, packs in a huge range of features, including the UIQ 3 interface running in Symbian 9.1, UMTS and WLAN radios, 512MB of removable memory, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and a large selection of Java APIs. And despite being presented as a business-focused device, it is the first mobile to support hardware-accelerated 3D vector graphics.

But the device raised eyebrows with in an application shipping aboard the phones that uses the camera as a scanner to read business cards into the contacts manager and integrates with RIM and Microsoft Exchange push email applications.

The P1 is also Sony Ericsson’s first device to ship with a SIP-based VoIP client as standard. On paper, it looks like a formidable competitor for the Nokia super phones, Windows Mobile 6 devices and Apple’s iPhone.