I've got an early contender for the top of my Christmas list. Sony Ericsson last week announced its latest smart phone/converged device, the P910 smart phone. The P910, the successor to Sony Ericsson's P800 and P900 smart phones, is a combination phone, PDA, e-mail and Web browser device that includes a QWERTY-style keyboard for text input (handwriting and T9 predictive text input is included). The device operates on three different GSM/GPRS bands, giving users global coverage on the phone wherever they go, Sony Ericsson said.

The P910 can be part of a corporate IT network, or used by individuals for personal e-mail. The company said it would collaborate with several e-mail providers, including support for IBM, Extended Systems One Bridge Mobile, Visto Mobile, SEVEN and the Intellisync Mobile Suite.

The device now has 64M bytes of internal memory (earlier versions had only 16M bytes), and will include a 32M-byte Memory Stick Duo card. The device can support cards up to 1G byte on the Memory Stick Duo Pro format, the company added. It also includes a digital video and still camera, and other entertainment features. It sports a 262,000-color display, offers up to 400 hours of standby time (up to 13 hours of talk time) and weighs about 5 ounces.

It uses the Symbian OS v7.0 operating system, and can run Symbian OS-based applications (Sony Ericsson says there are currently more than 600 applications that are compatible with the P800, P900 and P910). Applications that will be bundled with the device include AvantGo, Media Viewer (direct news access) and Promyzer (real-time stock trading and quotes).

The embedded Bluetooth will be able to print e-mails, pictures, calendar and contact data to any Bluetooth-enabled HP printer through the Mobile Printing Application. When connected to a Bluetooth GPS receiver, the P910 includes a Mobile Navigator software application that offers turn-by-turn driving directions. For Internet browsing, the P910 includes with the Opera browser, which can reformat a Web site's screen to present it better than a standard phone display.

Sony Ericsson said the P910 will ship globally in the third quarter of 2004. In North America (and Latin America), the phone will include the 850-, 1800- and 1900-MHz bands (model number P910a). Final pricing hasn't been announced and will likely be set when the carriers launch the phone.