Sony Ericsson C905

Sony Ericsson C905 is the new Cyber-shot phone which offers full 8 megapixel, geotagging, face detection and plenty of other goodies that make it very competitive.

Introduction:
Sony Ericsson had some great cameraphones but recently the company slowed down a bit. The new high-end Sony Ericsson C905 is to bring the company products back to the limelight. Indeed, the phone has plenty of multimedia features packed in a relatively small, well designed body so it might be a good idea to have a closer look at it.


Sony Ericsson C905 pros:
+ 8.1 MP autofocus camera with Xenon flash and lens cover
+ Dedicated camera mode switch, two camera keys above the display
+ Face and Smile detection, smart contrast, image stabilizer, geotagging, red-eye reduction
+ Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and HSDPA (3.6 Mb)
+ Scratch resistant mineral glass 2.4″ TFT 256K-color display
+ Built-in GPS with A-GPS function, Wayfinder Navigator software
+ Very good connectivity
+ Improved user interface with basic multi-tasking
+ FM radio with RDS and TrackID
+ 160 MB built-in memory, M2 card support, 2GB included in the box

Sony Ericsson C905 cons:
- Relatively small display for a high-end device
- Video recording only in QVGA resolution at 30fps
- No office document viewer
- Rigid D-pad
- Sliding lens cover of questionable durability
- Unprotected connectivity port
- Fiddly battery cover


The design:
Sony Ericsson C905 measures 104 x 49 x 18 mm and weighs 136 grams. The phone is made primarily of plastic with chorme-colored controls. The back of the phone is rubbery which makes it easy to handle and not likely to get fingerprints. The front of the phone houses the 2.4” TFT display which might seem a bit small for a high-end cameraphone, but it does its job really great. The direct sunlight legibility is excellent, the colors are vivid and well saturated and the display is quite resistant to scratches. Above it you will find two keys which from the main screen may direct you to your gallery or open the latest image. Whereas when you are in the camera mode they help adjust focus mode, exposure, white balance or effects, so they are really handy.below the display is the D-pad, which unfortunately is not the most responsive. When you slide he phone you will see a very comfortable and evenly lit keypad. On the left side of the phone there is only the M2 memory card slot and the Fast Port. Of the right side you will find the volume rocker, shutter key, as well as the dedicated camera switch and gallery buttons. While the top of the phone has no keys or buttons, on the bottom you will find the loudspeaker grill and the lanyard eyelet. The rubbery back of the Sony Ericsson C905 houses, of course, the camera lens hidden under a protective cover. The overall build quality of Sony Ericsson C905 is very good and thanks to the dedicated camera keys the phone is very easy and comfortable to use.

Performance:
Sony Ericsson C905 will not cause any troubles making or receiving phone calls. The sound quality is always very good, as is the reception. Thanks to the 930 mAh Li-Po battery the phone is also durable. The manufacturer claims it can run up to 380 hours in stand-by or 9 hours of talk time. Of course if you decide to use the Sony Ericsson C905 mainly as a camera or a GPS navigator the phone won’t run so long.


The camera in Sony Ericsson C905 offers hitherto unprecedented resolution in a cell phone. The 3264 x 2448 photos look surprisingly good so the Sony Ericsson engineers must have tampered with the image processing. The phone has plenty of features to improve the quality of your photos such as: exposure metering, face detection, smart contrast, macro mode, red-eye reduction. On the top of that Sony Ericsson C905 has also geotagging and Xenon flash. And although some other phones might also have such features the overall quality of photos taken with Sony Ericsson C905 is unparalleled.
Sony Ericsson C905 has also excellent multimedia player. You can of course listen to music in numerous formats and sound quality almost like in Sony’s Walkman series. You also get a simple video player and radio with RDS and TrackID.

Menus / ease of use:
Thanks to the new, refreshed interface the Sony Ericsson C905 is easy and pleasant to use and of course customizable. As a standard you can choose from three different main menu views. The phonebook can store up to 1000 contacts with several fields for each of them. So you can save up to 7 phone numbers for each contact, a note, birthday and of course you can group your contacts and add photos and custom ringtones to either individual contacts or groups. As all the information about a contact is divided into five tabs it is easy to quickly find the info you are looking for at a given time.
The call log is also divided into several tabs to make it easier to make use of it. There is one thing I didn’t like about it, however. When a few calls are made to a single contact only the last one is recorded. The Sony Ericsson C905 has an organizer with several useful applications: Notes, Calendar, Timer, File Manager, Calculator, but unfortunately it does not support any document files.
As with the very good cameraphone you get plenty of other features, such as GPS navigation, music and video player and a few games for a reasonable price the Sony Ericsson C905 will most probably be a very successful phone.


Selected Sony Ericsson C905 features and specifications:
GENERAL
2G Network
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network
HSDPA 2100 - C905
HSDPA 850 / 2100 / 900 - C905a
Announced
2008, June
Status
Available. Released 2008, October
SIZE
Dimensions
104 x 49 x 18-19.5 mm
Weight
136 g
DISPLAY
Type
TFT, 256K colors
Size
240 x 320 pixels, 2.4 inches
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
RINGTONES
Type
Polyphonic, MP3
Customization
Download
Vibration
Yes
MEMORY
Phonebook
1000 x 20 fields, Photo call
Call records
30 received, dialed and missed calls
Card slot
Memory Stick Micro (M2), 2 GB card included
- 160 MB internal memory
DATA
GPRS
Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD
No
EDGE
Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G
HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps
WLAN
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, DLNA
Bluetooth
Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port
No
USB
Yes, v2.0
FEATURES
Messaging
SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser
WAP 2.0/HTML (NetFront), RSS reader
Games
Yes + downloadable, order now
Colors
Night Black, Ice Silver, Copper Gold
Camera
8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, face detection, smart contrast, video(QVGA 30fps), xenon flash
- Built-in GPS receiver
- A-GPS function
- Google maps
- Wayfinder Navigator 7
- Camera images geo-tagging
- Java MIDP 2.0
- FM radio with RDS
- MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player
- TrackID music recognition
- Picture editor/blogging
- TV out
- Organiser
- Built-in handsfree
- Voice memo/dial
- T9

Other recently reviewed Sony Ericsson cell phones:

Sony Ericsson T700, Sony Ericsson W980, Sony Ericsson G502, Sony Ericsson W350i Walkman, Sony Ericsson G900, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1.