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The Internet rumor mill indicated last week that Sony Ericsson would soon announce the follow up to the most popular Symbian-based UIQ smartphone, the P910. It did so today.

As expected, the P990 looks quite similar to its predecessor, but with its QWERTY thumb-keyboard no longer on the reverse side of the numeric keypad flap. Instead, when you flip the flap down, the keyboard is integrated right into the smartphone.

P990's 2.8-inch display runs at a 240 x 320 pixel resolution, higher than the 208 x 208 pixels available when the P910's flap is up and 208 x 320 pixels when it's down. The screen seems to be quite bit smaller than the earlier model's because of the P990's keyboard placement, however.

The device runs on version 3 of the UIQ interface and is the first smartphone to leverage the latest version of the Symbian operating system, 9.1. It measures 4.4 x 2.2 x 1.0 inches (114 x 57 x 26 millimeters).


                          Flap Flipped Down

There's a 2-megapixel camera (up from 1.2 megapixels in the earlier model) with digital zoom and auto-focus plus 80 MB of RAM and a bundled 64 MB Memory Stick. That's far less storage than the 1GB mentioned in rumors, but more than 64 MB of RAM and 32 MB memory card present with the P910. The P990's memory slot can handle 4 GB Memory Stick PRO Duo cards.

The GSM/GPRS smartphone supports UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), a WCDMA 3G broadband technology that delivers 400 to 700 Kbps data transfers. There's also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Sony Ericsson plans to ship the P990 in Europe during Q1 2006 and later on in China: when that country's 3G network is ready. It will be available in four keyboard variants: QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY and Russian.

American availability hasn't been announced yet.

The company says it announced the P990 months in advance of availability to ensure a large number of applications are available when it does go on sale—by giving developers time to create and certify as much software as possible.

Sony Ericsson executive VP Jan Wäreby asserts, "The technical prowess of the P990 will be brought to full life by applications from the third party developer community."

Operator feedback and download statistics from the Sony Ericsson Application Shop have shown that Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) can be as high as 4 to 5 times that of more traditional voice-centric mobile phones with its Symbian UIQ smartphones.

"Demand for applications on the P800, P900 and P910 has been very high...We want to maintain this reputation with the P990 by ensuring there's a rich supply of top applications for enterprise, productivity, leisure and gaming when users make their first visit to the Sony Ericsson Application Shop," states Wäreby.