The Sony Ericsson A200 is seen as the primary software platform intended for massive scale use in SE phones up to the beginning of 2009; a great many of SE phones utilize this platform, its two characteristic features being the availability of dedicated response and reject buttons (which weren’t present on the A100 platform) and support for QVGA screens. The only A200 phone to feature an older 176x220 screen is Sony Ericsson K630i (and its V640 Vodaphone) The Back button disappeared, passing its function on to the navigation button. A good deal of evolutionary changes separate A200 from A200, the following features may be pointed out to indicate the most significant changes and additions:

• Revamped media gallery
• Music player updated to 3.0 + DRM 2.0
• Smart Search
• Java Platform 8 (JP-8)
• Phonebook capacity increased to 5000 entries
• Updated NetFront 3.4 browser with Flash technology support
• Support for ActiveSync and MTP (Media Transfer Protocol)

A number of less significant changes have also been introduced; considering the evolutionary character of the platform’s development, we can expect even deeper changes in the upcoming A300 revision.

Connectivity

In this section we’ll have only a brief overview of the Bluetooth functionality, for the list of supported Bluetooth profiles is nearly the same for all modern handsets supporting this technology. Bluetooth can still be used even during the Flight Mode, a feature missing from the previous revision of the platform. Flight Mode is rendered inaccessible if you remove the SIM card; the phone retains a partial functionality without a SIM-card, yet such GSM-unrelated features as camera and player are blocked. This issue plagues SE smartphones as well, being an essence one of the manufacturer’s weak spots.

The following Bluetooth profiles are supported:

• Basic Imaging
• Dial-up Networking
• File Transfer
• Generic Access
• Generic Object Exchange
• Handsfree
• Headset
• HID
• JSR-82 Java API
• Object Push
• Personal Area Networking
• Serial Port
• Synchronization
• SyncML OBEX binding
• Audio/Video Remote Control
• Phonebook Access

The firmware slot is used for plugging the cable – the manufacturer claims it’s real USB 2.0 but in fact it works like it weren’t anywhere near 2.0 – the speed is much lower. Modem connection, Mass Storage and PictBridge modes are supported, you can select the mode in the appropriate menu. The Mass Storage connection worked quite all right for us, both storage arrays were correctly detected and available for data exchange – the user memory of the phone itself and the memory expansion card. The Sony Ericssson PC Suite software allows for phone-to-PC synchronization, the program comes on the bundled CD.

User Interface & Quick Menu

Various themes are available for interface customizations; each has a distinctive style and color palette, leaving no-one untouched. A custom image or an .svf animation can be set as the wallpaper or screensaver. The majority of the latest SE products (especially the Walkman series) offer a variety of Flash themes.

A quick menu comprising four tabs is also available:

• New Events
• Running apps
• My shortcuts
• Internet

The first one lists all the events: reminders, calls and messages. The second one shows the list of currently running applications, in fact it's a task manager that allows switching between currently running Java tasks. This, for instance, allows playing your favorite game and talking to people over ICQ at the same time with no need to interrupt either process. This feature is one of the cornerstones of the platform. The third tab of the quick menu stores user shortcuts. The fourth is for keeping bookmarks and links to frequently used resources.

The quick menu is conjured up with the help of a dedicated button present in every Sony Ericsson phone basing off this platform. Samsung have taken a similar path, adding the same sort of button into their models starting from SGH-G800. The implementation is far from ideal, yet certain improvements are observable.

Main menu

The main menu looks in the traditional way of most SE products: a total of four rows of bright, neat looking animated icons which can be optionally replaced with a fascinating flash-theme with a lot of customizable aspects including the icon order, size, animation, color and so on. Moving the selection from one icon to another is accompanied with a slight vibration if the selected them has this feature turned on. Five themes come preinstalled on the device. The twelve icons make up the main menu:

• PlayNow
• Internet
• Entertainment
• Camera
• Messaging
• Media
• Radio
• Contacts
• Walkman
• Calls
• Organizer
• Settings

The menu can be navigated through by pressing the numeric buttons in a desired sequence, each key corresponding to a menu item with the same number that should be activated. Besides the vertically arranged menu items, some menus contain horizontal sub-tabs, e.g. the File manager of Call log menus, such tabs can be opened or minimized by pressing the navigation button left or right.

The menu enjoys a sound implementation, the only drawback being the lack of an option to customize the order in which the menu items follow – Nokia and Motorola have been offering such functionality for quite a while by now. For instance, there’s the PlayNow 4.0 service icon, giving quick access to games, ringtones and music catalogues by Sony BMG. This feature is scarcely handy in everyday usage, and most users would gladly replace it with something more close to life, e.g. a profiles menu shortcut or something of the kind but not on this platform, alas!

Call Service

The phonebook can store up to 5000 records (in contrary to the old value of 1000), up to 7 numbers associated with each record (the number was five in earlier models), namely being home number, three types of mobile numbers – common, personal and work, the work number, fax and a misc number. Upon adding a new number to an existing record the user is asked to specify the type of the number, duplicate types are not allowed – only one number per type is the rule, e.g. you can't store three home numbers or two work numbers associated assigned to the same phonebook record. You don't to open a record each time you want to list all the numbers since you can browse through them by pressing the navigation button sideways right in the contact list. Any of the numbers associated with a contact record can be selected as the default one (it will be automatically dialed, if not purposely specified otherwise, each time you call that person).

Miscellaneous field of a phonebook record include e-mail address, IM number, Web address, regular mail address, work position, company, home and work addresses and the date of birth, which is synchronized with the corresponding calendar event.

Contact records can be distributed between various user groups however you can't distinguish a group by giving it a unique icon or ringtone – which for sure is a sad thing. Though that doesn't keep you from giving unique ringtone and icon to each individual record – you can even select one of your voice records for that.

The contact list is split between the people whose records are stored in the phone memory and those unlucky outcasts who happened to reside on the SIM card – the thing is that in full accordance with the weird SE tradition you can't put the both kinds on the same list – the only option that is left to the user is switching between the phone and SIM contact lists. Also you can specify which one will be used as the default phonebook. You can also check an option that would automatically save all the new phonebook records to the SIM card, not quite sure what's the trick here and why one would want to use the SIM card as their primary phonebook. But the most important option is the one that makes a backup of the whole contact book and writes it to the memory expansion card. Unfortunately, SonyEricsson didn't provide us with any blacklisting functionality (e.g. similar to the Samsung blacklisting option) so you either have to drop unwanted calls or look for a 3rd party Java application that would add blacklisting to the rest of vanilla features. You can only sort records either by first name or by last name, there's no option to use other fields as search criteria.

Smart Search is a phone number filter that pretends to be smart. If you begin typing a number in standby, the phone reacts by displaying a pop-up with all the numbers beginning with the initial digits you just typed put on a list to pick the one whom you want to call or send a message. The system is practically identical with the same stuff found with Samsung and WM-based phones.

The number of voice marks you can leave for further usage with the voice dial option is limited to 40 – that's an outdated system they're using, no changes can be traced from the days of T610i, we wouldn't say it's too comfortable (well, telling the truth, it in fact isn't). Motorola phones for instance sport a much better realization of this feature.

PhotoID and VideoID services are well-implemented, the image used as the call icon is large enough. The font in which the phone numbers are displayed during dialup is big enough to see from a distance. Numeric keys from 2 to 9 can be used as quick dial shortcuts, the only thing you need is to associate a phone number with a particular keypad button.

The call log shares a common SE design – received, dialed and missed calls are shown on the same list, each call type distinguished with a corresponding icon, but you can also switch between separate logs for each specific call type by pressing the navigation button left and right.

Messaging System

Sony Ericsson are known for the efficiency of the messaging system they're putting in their phones – up to 1000 SMS can be stored in the user memory (plus the SIM card SMS storage), the MMS service also enjoys on the best implementations ever. Besides you can read RSS feeds, just specify the address and title of the feed and you're done, no specific settings are required for that. Messages can be categorized, but seemingly no other differences from the traditional messaging system widely found with other SE devices. Upon creating a new message the user is prompted to select one of the following types: Text message, Picture message, Voice message or E-mail.

A fast symbol line prompts when to expect the needed symbol while you're typing - s very helpful aid to those who seldom compose messages. The maximum message length is limited to 1900, up to eight lines of text fall into the field of view simultaneously. The Copy & Paste function is a very helpful addition that allows either for the whole text or for selected fragments of it to be copied. Besides a limited number of Nokia models, no analogous functionality is known to exist on the market. The function can be called through the context menu, then you have to mark the beginning and the ending of the fragment you want to select. Additional messaging features include T9 input, emoticons, chat support. During text input, the screen can contain up to 8 lines of symbols, the maximum message size is 1900 symbols.

You can select one of the 7 stock signals for the incoming message sound or choose a custom audio file. Options include the so-called 'reading notice' – if activated, the recipient of the message will be asked for a acknowledgement that the message was read that he can confirm – it really makes sense for messages of extreme urgency when it's vital to know that the message was read by the recipient.

The E-Mail client is not bad yet it could use a little bit more functionality. Attachments are supported, they can be saved to memory no matter if it can be correctly recognized by the application. There's no support for viewing Office files. E-mail messages can be sorted by size, date and time or by the content of the message itself. Three font sizes are available for the messages: small, medium and large. The message can be displayed in fullscreen mode, the copy/paste functionality is supported.

The following code tables are supported:

The overall client characteristics are as follows:

OTA	+
Push email protocols	POP3 and IMAP4 IMAP Idle (IMAP4Rev1 extensions), OMA Email Notification 1.0 and scheduled delivery
Security	SSL/TLS, POPS/IMAPS and STARTTLS
Remote control	OMA Client Provisioning и Nokia Smart Messaging
HTML mail	+ (tagless)
Inline images	+
Message management	The latest 50 headers or a fixed amount of symbols
ESMTP	+
Background delivery	+

Let's have a closer look at MMS implementation, since the A300 platform provides for a number of interesting multimedia solutions. To make an MMS attachment, you can select multimedia objects right from the camera or from the File Manager, Contacts, Calendar, Task, Note, Browser (vBookmark). The following audio formats are supported:

AAC, AMR, MPEG Layer 3, Real 8, AWB, WAV, MP4, MIDI, iMelody, 3GPP, XMF, M4A, RHZ, WMA.

video:

MPG4, 3GPP, SDP, Real8, WMV.

graphics:

JPEG, GIF87, GIF89A, PNG, SVG, WBMP, BMP.

An attached image can either be kept at its original size or scaled to 640x480, 320x240 or 120x160 pixels. The miscellaneous options include auto message delivery, delivery notice, message size limit reminder (strict limitation or simple reminder).

PIM

The calendar supports viewing by month or week, in the latter case the days are divided into a hourly schedule each, also you can quickly skip to a specified year, day and month. It's possible to specify the type of event, duration, place and alert. A reminder can start playing even if the phone is switched off as long as the corresponding option is checked. Events can be automatically repeated at a specified interval, and also any event can be set to expire after a certain period of time.

A meeting can be set for any date. It's possible to specify the subject, the start time and the duration, the reminder interval and a short description. The tasklist suffers from a rather poor implementation with just a couple of event types available: a task or a phone call. Expired or completed tasks can be automatically purged; task records can be sorted by a number of criteria. A note can be pinned to the desktop to be visible during standby.

The Birthday field can be synchronized with the PIM, so you would never forget about your beloved grandmother's birthday because the phone is bound to remind you about that. The reminder can be set to play in advance, exact on the date of the event, or at any custom interval you want.

The alarm clock can be set to be activated only once or on a scheduled basis. There are a total of 5 independently configured alarm clocks available, so it's even possible wake up the dead. Any audio file can be used as a ringtone.

The reminders, timer, stopwatch and calculator are quite standard. The password manager application is used for keeping all sorts of user passwords.

Multimedia Capabilities & the Media Menu

Sony Ericsson products keep traditionally strong positions in this area, including format compatibility. The K770i model supports quite a number of audio formats: MP4 (AAC, AAC+, eAAC+), MP3 (up to 192 kb/s officially, though out tests revealed practical compatibility with higher bitrates), M4A, 3GPP (AAC, AMR), AMR-NB, AMR-WB, WAV, G-MIDI, RealAudio 8, eMelody, iMelody, RHZ, XMF, WMA, and video: MP4 (MPEG4+AAC/AMR), 3GPP (MPEG4/H.263/H.264+3gp/AAC/AMR), RealVideo 8, WMV ASF, graphics: JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, SVG, WBMP. All the more or less common formats are supported.

Let's start with the most interesting aspect, the Media menu. It appears like some conventional viewer, but with an interface strongly reminiscent of Sony PSP; it also makes use of the motion sensor (in case there's one, like in K850i or W910i, while some other models don't have one). A corresponding option provides for an automatic screen aspect change, which sometimes proves more annoying than handy. The sole supported screen rotation direction is to the left. If the handset rests on its right edge or is turned upside down, the screen aspect will not change. Moreover, if you are lying on your left side, the screen will stupidly rotate to the horizontal position, leaving you no other way than going to the menu and turning the option off.

Sony Ericsson weren't the first to fail with it. After a few experiments gone wrong, Samsung decided to cease the further use of motion sensors in their products. Sony Ericsson haven't made a wide use of this feature, only utilizing it for automatic screen orientation change and miscellaneous actions in a very limited number of games like MarbleMadness. Getting back to the media gallery, let's have a detailed examination of its functional structure. The following menu items are available: Photo, Music, Video and Settings, names saying for themselves. The interface enjoys a very pleasing graphics style; menu actions are animated, activating menu items and entering the corresponding submenus works without the slightest lag, thanks to the platform's high performance. The interface design doesn't depend on a product's market positioning or model, even the new UIQ-based smartphones sport the very same kind of interface – Sony Ericsson's signature feature.

Let's now see how each individual menu item works.
Photo. This function displays either the latest taken shot or the whole album. In the photo album, a number of subgroups are available: the camera album (segmented into monthly portions according to the date on which a shot was taken), the latest taken photos album, the misc graphics album and the above-mentioned tagged photos album. In the camera album, each monthly entry is accompanied by a thumbnail and an indication of the total number of photos in the sub-album.

Tags are a feature pretty new to SE phones, being one of the most characteristic features of the A200 platform. Just like in Nokia S60 FP2, the user is free to create his own tags containing brief text notes; photos with the same tags are grouped into corresponding categories, e.g. all photos tagged 'dawn by the lake' will be accessible from the album of the same name in the Tags submenu. Thus you don't have to browse through all the photos in the gallery when you're looking for something specific.

The X-Pict function is effectively the good old slideshow; it sports an unusual implementation, though the settings are few and it's impossible to set a custom time interval between the frames; the variable frame transition effects and the background music are hard-coded into each of the four available themes, or so-called Moods. You can neither customize the existing themes nor create new ones.

Music. This menu subitem gives access to the playlists, albums, tracks, podcasts and audio books. The player itself is a nice thing sporting all the basic necessary functions, but offering nothing on top of that. A more detailed review of this application will follow in a later section of the article.

Video. Here are the video player, the clip library and the podcasts. Video can be viewed in full-screen mode or in the portrait orientation; progressive clip rewinding is supported. The bottom part of the screen shows the playbar.

Settings. This submenu contains settings for the gallery, which are very scarce in number… merely being one setting: the motion sensor activation status. You can manually enforce the portrait or landscape orientations in case you don't want to rely on the sensor, the third option being the already mentioned auto-rotation.

Some time ago Open Mobile Alliance organization prepared a packet of research documents describing methods of digital content distribution, interaction protocols for mobile phones and other DRM devices. OMA DRM standard provides the ability to control mobile content usage. This occurs by means of attaching special copyright signatures to the distributed content. The signatures define the end user usage policy, which may include time limits or a fixed number of launches, and other kinds of protection. Different combinations of these parameters are also available.

What does the second revision of the platform bring on? Back in 2001, methods like Forward Lock, Combined Delivery, Separate Delivery were on the OMA DRM 1.0 specifications list. In comparison with it, the newer specifications also define a set of functional extensions, such as Domains, combined object rights etc. – something of a logical continuation, but little else.

The Walkman music player was updated to the third revision. The controls became even more convenient; the player settings include repeated and random playback, sorting by performer, genre; enhanced stereo mode (which doesn't give any perceptible advantage if turned on) Progressive track rewinding is supported. The track data are shown in the player window during playback. There are no themes available, so the latest Nokia player looks better in comparison with this one.

The playlist organization system is a rather smart feature; tracks can be added to a playlist either one by one or a group (or all) of them with a single action (a checkbox is shown by the title of each track). The set of equalizers varies depending on the individual model. The non-music Z770i totally lacks any kind of an equalizer while W890i has a whole six of them: from the typical Rock and Pop to the brand Mega Bass mode. Unlike UIQ-based smartophones (e.g. G700/G900, W960i), A200 devices lack the Auto Playlists functionality which would normally include a rating system listing the latest added, the last played and the most and least frequently played tracks, also allowing for sorting by time (Time Machine)

The player interface can be switched between the portrait and landscape orientations; a corresponding setting is available in the menu. A currently played track can be instantly set as the default ringtone or a person's unique call melody, or set it as the signal for the alarm clock; delete it, add to a playlist or open in the file manager, or send it using one of the available wireless protocols. There are but a couple of playback settings available: looped and randomized playback.

Meanwhile the Walkman family of products sports a much more interesting player interface. One of the three available visualization sequences can be selected to replace the traditional Album Art image on the screen; the overall design is not so ascetic, the screen animation shown during playback is more interesting.

The TrackID service enjoys a fair implementation. Using it you can record a fragment from the currently played song (on radio or in the player) and upload it to the web for identification. If the sample is recognized as belonging to one of the track stored in the database, the song title and performer name are sent back in a message; all identified (and hence found in the database) songs are available for purchase. The service should prove interesting for a youth audience, especially combined with the FM tuner functionality: an unfamiliar song can be 'captured', 'probed ' and downloaded in a matter of minutes.

The three available mobile media editors are PhotoDJ, VideoDJ and Music DJ. The PhotoDJ application allows to apply a variety of effects and editing actions to image files, offering the following features:

The remaining two are less interesting, used for editing midi files and piecing together short clips with a variety of standard effects. These two will hardly ever be used by anybody.

The voice recorder can record phone talks, however it remains necessary to enter the corresponding menu every time you want to activate it. A maximum record length is only limited by the remaining amount of free memory. A completed record can instantly be sent via Bluetooth, e-mail or MMS. All in all, the voice recorder interface is quite simple, no extra options are available.

Internet, Java, File Manager, Google Maps

In addition to all the multimedia applications mentioned above, the phone also sports a number of preinstalled applications including a decent web browser powered by the SmartFit technology (that allows rearranging and resizing page elements so a regular page would fit the small screen, which is achieved by turning it into a single column of text). The options include Save Picture, Change View Aspect and Zoom. Well, if you are in a real need of extensive web browsing, you'd rather want the OperaMini browser instead.

Java implementation left us glad:

We would especially note out the Java Platform 8 (JP-8) update. On par with the rest of new, A200-based products released this summer, the W910i model was the world's first phone to have this update installed. Without going deep into the detail, we'd just mention that this feature literally unties the software developers' hands, allowing for functionality like instant messaging / chatting, currency transactions, secure identification and a lot of other features which will certainly prove useful in new Java applications.

A very basic file manager is available; unlike the phonebook manager, it equally allows for separate viewing of files stored in the onboard memory and on the expansion card or displaying those on a single list.

You only have to get a jar file over Bluetooth in order to install a Java application. Just like in other SE phones, Java multitasking is supported. The number of simultaneously running applications can be really large, for the Java machine performance rate is excellent. A running application window can be minimized, which will not terminate the process; the application will keep running in the background. The list of running processes is shown in the corresponding tab of the Activity menu; you can switch between tasks, terminate unneeded processes and so on, everything's very user friendly.

Google Maps

Google Maps is one of the standard components of the A200 platform; a full-fledged GPS receiver stands for precise hardware GPS navigation. Models lacking such a unit (like Z770i or W890i) have to do the positioning by processing the acquired coordinates of the closest carrier stations. Google Maps is free; the program comes fully configured and has a number of extra settings in addition to the standard functionality of the base version. You can choose the preferred system of measures, to precise map scaling, add chosen locations to your favorites list, customize the route calculation routine and search by locations and bookmarks. The application interface is rather handy; the downsides are a lack of possibility to recalculate the route or save it. Nokia Maps 2.0 available to most existing smartphones offers a much better functionality and comfort of operation, remaining the market's leading solution.

Settings

The five traditional setting tabs are:

The first tab is for picking a profile (Normal, Meeting, In car, Outdoors, Handsfree, Home, Office), though no user presets are available: you can modify an existing profile and save the changes, but can't create a new profile.

The same menu is used for setting the date and time, select a language, gain access to software updates, configure the voice.

You have to make your own voice marks in order to use the voice control, there's no such functionality that is now found with the latest generation of Nokia and Motorola handsets. The voice response is also possible, the contact's name can be pronounced automatically upon receiving an incoming call, the 'magic word' function is available as well - a voice command that enable voice control over additional accessories when they're plugged in - a mini headset or the car speakerphone…

The incoming message reminder can be configured in this menu (two options – a pop-up window or a reminder in the event menu); the actions associated with the different directions of the navigation button or the joystick are customizable here as well. The same menu item includes the Settings Wizard, the security management options and a feature that allows to reset all the user settings to their default values.
The Flight Mode is also accessible form this menu, however the phone will only retain a full functionality with a SIM card inserted. This looks like a rather weak point in comparison to Nokia products, for example.

The second tab serves to select a ringtone and set the volume, activate features like increasing melody, vibro signal, configure keyboard sounds, backlight effects and so on.

The third tab allows to pick a theme or a custom wallpaper, welcome phrase, standby splash screen, screen brightness level (100% by default) and the screen clock size (large or normal)

The fourth tab contains call settings and stats (seed dial, time & cost, show/hide my No.), accompanied by the Smart Search feature.

Finally, the last tab offers Bluetooth and USB settings, a number of synchronization options are available, here you can also configure your web connection and data transfer settings.

Conclusion

Sony Ericsson A200 is one of the most powerful mobile software platforms up to day. Through gradual evolution, it keeps a stable position among the market's leading solutions. The availability of a unified platform utilized in different products allows establishing a continuity of features inherited by the emerging models from the earlier ones; this helps to shorten and simplify the development cycle, application compatibility and so on. The LG company, for instance, totally lacks these advantages in their approach to mobile device design; Samsung products are also known to sport substantial differences depending on their native development center (Suwon or Gumi). The closest thing to SE's new platform is the Series 40 platform by Nokia which keeps developing at a comparably steady pace, in some aspects sailing ahead of the brainchild of SE: e.g. full customization of the main menu, the active standby mode, customizable player skins) However S40 doesn't display great achievements when it comes down to Java functionality – it lacks the multitasking feature available to A200. In the future, the two software platforms will retain the primary influence on the development of the whole market of cell phone (yet not smartphones), it's hard to tell an absolute leader from the two.

Over a short period of time, less than a full year actually, a number of products utilizing the A300 platform are going to enter the market; we yet have to discover the full potential of the upcoming platform. The next update to Series 40 is estimated to appear within a similar time bracket; the anticipated new features are the above-mentioned Java multitasking, support for new Java profiles, customizability for the dedicated buttons which will work outside their native applications as configured by the user; this also applies to 3rd party applications which don't come as preinstalled components of the phone's software package.

From now on, every individual review of an A200-based mobile gadget will largely focus on features independent from the basic platform functionality (connectivity, multimedia features, camera capabilities) while readdressing to this article for detail on the native A200 features.

Author: Anton Spiridonov, editor@smape.com

SMAPE.com

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