It isn’t often when I call something perfect- but with the case of the Ericsson P1i, I may just break that tradition.

I acquired all manner of Nokia and Samsung almost every month for the past year. They were good, but none give me the drools as much as the P1i - successor to the P990i . P1 is a 3G Symbian smartphone sorting a QWERTY keyboard. There are two flavors of the P1, the Sony Ericsson P1c for consumption in China and the P1i which attacks other markets.

The exciting P1i sidesteps the P800/P900/P910/P990 form factor and disposes of the famous “flip” on the front of the device. It further disposes the QWERTY keyboard for a keypad reminiscent to the M600i. The device drops weight from 150g P990i - weighing in at 124 g.

Out of the box, the Sony Ericsson P1i brags off its the sweeping 2.6″ 240×320 pixel TFT display - a transflective panel that shines readily outdoors. Like with the fat P990, this is a touchscreen although the Sony Ericsson P1i also has a jog-dial control.

Flip the phone and observe a demoure is a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash. Up front, you get a secondary video camera perfect for video calling. Radioheads will appreciate the multimedia player and FM radio. Memory goes around with 160MB of internal memory can be expanded by using a Memory Stick Micro card. The sales package include a 1GB Sandisk card in the box. Of course the P1i also supports Bluetooth and infrared for those snappy phone to phone mating.

Peek beneath the hood for a tri-band 900/1800/1900 MHz device with UMTS 2100 MHz and support for 802.11b and 802.11g WiFi. One major drawback is that the Sony Ericsson P1i doesn’t support 3.5G HSDPA. The tri-band GSM/single band UMTS network support can be a tad constricting.

Sony Ericsson P1i offers the version Symbian 9.1 OS with the UIQ 3.1 interface running on top. Those who love 3rd party software can enjoy applications from the P990i including a web browser, RSS aggregator, email software and a range of PIMS. The P1i supports VOIP too.

Support for corporate email solutions such as BlackBerry, ActiveSync and other systems will be available through add-on applications. I tried installing software like Worldmate and Handysafe from the P990i. They worked great!

The Sony Ericsson P1i comes in fatter and bulkier than the M600 at 106 x 55 x 17mm and 124 grams. Battery life lasted me 3 week standby on GSM. This must come from the beefed up 1170ma BT-40 powercells.

Definitely a phone to put the N95 to shame!