It was beautiful, but now it’s over. For over five years, products from Sony Ericsson have been my constant companions, through thick and thin, in fair weather and… okay, only in fair weather. But I think our time together is coming to an end.

I’ve always been a serious sucker for handheld gadgetry. I was one of those kids in high school with a calculator/alarm/data watch. I had a Sharp Wizard in college when most people had barely heard of PDA devices. I tried really hard to make my Newton useful. I owned a Pilot before they were called Palms, and had progressed to a ludicrously expensive Palm VII by the time I took a serious look at the first generation of GSM phones available in the US.

The T68i was, and is, a brilliant gadget. I bought one because I was intrigued by international roaming—which, at a dollar a minute, was never quite the boon I thought it might be. The features I ended up using the most were the ones I thought would be frivolous. Who would have thought that PDA functionality on a 120×75 screen could be worthwhile? But add in Bluetooth wireless synchronization, make storing data on the phone nearly painless, and it turns out that having your schedule on your hip can be quite useful.

When the P900 was announced, I was hooked from the first day I read the website. The idea of the convenience I’d had with the T68i, plus full PDA functionality, blinded me to the ridiculously high cost and the near-total lack of support I’d get in the US. I held out for a few months, but when a buddy of mine was selling his, and said buddy joined me on a particularly good night playing video poker in Atlantic City, that was all she wrote.

So I found myself with a new hiptop computer, running its own quirky operating system, with a built-in phone to boot. Sure, no one else I knew was running Symbian. That’s okay—I was a Mac user when John Sculley was CEO. I managed. I played movies on my phone, just because I could. It was my iPod, my Palm, my link to the outside world on those rare times I couldn’t pull out a laptop. And it was the main reason I switched to T-Mobile and its all-you-can-eat GPRS Internet. Can’t have an Internet-ready phone when I’m counting the measly bytes that AT&T was willing to ship me.

Sure, there were a few problems. I had a phone that talked to my Mac flawlessly, but if I wanted to upgrade its firmware, I needed to switch to Windows. I had a phone that could host a web server, but it was difficult to peel back the closed OS to actually get to the computer underneath. This is not a comfortable position when you’ve gotten used to running Unix.

But what’s caused the love affair to end has nothing to do with the phone, but rather with corporate idiocy at Sony Ericsson. First came the rumors that my P900 is crippled so it won’t work with the larger-capacity, higher-speed memory cards that Sony makes. I’d be quite happy to drop the cash on a 1 gig chip, but SE wants me to buy a P910 to use it.

The big problem arose when my stereo headset died. Phone calls aren’t so important to get in stereo—but since my expensive little friend was sold to me as a multimedia device, this was an issue. The aftermarket is not quite flooded with 2.5mm headsets with microphones and cell phone integration, so I thought it would be a simple matter to call Sony Ericsson and buy a new one.

Rude surprise. They still make my headset and ship one with every P910. They just won’t sell me a new one. Goodbye, iPod and movie functionality; for the want of a nail the kingdom was lost.

I’ve now owned four Sony Ericsson phones, total cost somewhere in the $1,500 range, and there was once a time when I was as solid a booster of their hardware as I am of Macs. They burned up all of that goodwill when they wouldn’t let me buy a headset from them.

(For that matter, T-Mobile has gone down the same path. It used to be nearly impossible to call in and reach someone who was clueless. Now, it’s par for the course that I have to talk to four people to reach the fifth guy who I know will help me. I know I need to talk to Tier 3 Data, people. Why are you wasting your time and mine? And I’m tired of watching the competition—including my former supplier—roll out Internet connections that smoke the one you’re selling.)

So I think that my current Sony Ericsson is going to be my last. And it’s quite possible I’ll be jumping ship on my provider sometime soon. Current game plan:

1. It’s time to head back to the Palm to see what it’s been up to over the years. I have some really useful software that won’t talk to my P900 at gunpoint, which chats happily with Palm devices.
2. If that works out nicely, then I’m not quite enough of a geek to carry around two separate PDA devices—and as I mentioned, the T68i is still a really sweet phone. So the old warhorse will be pressed back into service, and my beloved P900 is going to find itself sitting on the eBay shelves.
3. And someday soon, I’ll probably find myself looking at a phone with EVDO (really, all that’s stopping me now is that word “Verizon” stamped on the cover). GPRS is nice, but I still have to hoof it over to Starbucks when I want to get any work done. Real cellular broadband, that’d be a kick.

But I’ll admit—there’s some irrational sentimentality at work here. I’d like to stick with the gadgets I use daily, and the companies I know. I’m hoping they come up with something better (which in some cases just means a better attitude). But I’m not holding my breath.