Sony Ericsson PC Suite tested with M600i

Website support and software version

I am going to test the Sony Ericsson PC Suite with a Sony Ericsson M600i phone, the mobile PC Suite is used to synchronize mobile phone system and data, can be used to update the phone software. SE M600i is a touch screen PDA phone, released in year 2006 Q1. M600i system run Symbian OS 9.1 + UIQ 3, it is compatible with P990, but different with P910. P910 use UIQ 2.0, M600i use UIQ 3.0.

I downloaded SE PC Suite version 6 from Sony Ericsson support website.The previous version I used is version 1.3. That means Sony Ericsson still continue to develop and improve their mobile desktop software, but the PC Suite just available on Windows and not Mac OS or linux platform.

There are two ways to connect the phone with SE PC Suite, by bluetooth or usb cable. For data synchronization use bluetooth or usb cable. To update the mobile phone firmware need usb cable. Is important to check the phone is supported by the Windows system, simply connect the phone by plugging in the usb port will do. For my case here, the Windows system doesn’t recognized the M600i.

This could be a Windows problem, but I don’t find much problem with Nokia phone and Nokia PC Suite.

Installation

According to SE support website (and some other forum) the driver already included in the SE PC Suite. There is a usb driver software for all SE phone, available for download from here. If you just need to update the mobile phone software, you can try this.

Sony Ericsson PC Suite 6 looks much different from earlier version.

I have downloaded the SE PC Suite version 6, is much smaller, about 18Mb (compare with version 1.3, close to 60Mb). The installation (and uninstallation) process is much faster. Unfortunately SE PC Suite v6 doesn’t support M600i, I have to go back to SE support website, choose M600i phone, download version 1.6 which suggested by the website.

The SE PC Suite v1.6 fail to recognized M600i through usb, may be I have already mess up my Windows driver. I have used PC Suite 1.3 to synchronize with SE M600i before, it works. I have tried v1.3 this time, but I am still having USB connection problem. Even bluetooth connection can not be established.

If everything going just fine, congratulation. If anything go wrong, I need to uninstalled the existing software before I re-install a newer software. Uninstall the software (for v1.3 and v1.6) is troublesome, it can not be done from Control Panel - Add/Remove software. I must remove the software by re-install it again. I must use the same installation file that I used earlier. I have tried to use version 1.3.33 to remove version 1.3.11, it doesn’t work.

Problem to pair with phone using bluetooth
display show paired even I have deleted from the phone.

I can not find an easy solution when I encounter problems with the SE PC Suite, I have tried version 6, 1.6 and 1.3, it doesn’t work with SE M600i, for both bluetooth and USB connection. May be is easier for other non Symbian phone.

Backup and synchronization

If paring or USB connection with the phone has no problem, the backup and synchronization is just easy. SE PC Suite doesn’t have its own PIM management, it can sync to Microsoft Outlook. I don’t really want to go through the detail here. The backup and restore don’t have much problem.

Firmware update

It need an external program call Sony Ericsson Update Service, if it was not installed, it can be downloaded separately with from website. The program doesn’t backup the data, I need to backup the phone before I update the firmware. Otherwise the update program doesn’t gave me much problem.

Conclusion:

Sony Ericsson did improved their PC Suite from time to time, but SE does not have an unified PC Suite to support all their phones, which will be quite troublesome for the users. As usual the PC Suite is available on Windows only. The installation and configuration (mainly the driver support) should be improved as well.