Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Excellent
Durability & Robustness	Strong
Battery standby time	Good
Value for money	Excellent
Range of features	Large selection

Advantages:	Great camera, easy to use
Disadvantages:	No 3 . 5mm headphone jack

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

After recently getting the Blackberry Bold and sending it back I decided to get the Sony Ericsson C905 but this time I had no 14 day returns policy so I had to be sure that it was going to be a good one!

Sony Ericsson are a long established name in making mobile phones. Back in the day when they were separate entities the phones made by these companies were regarded to be very good for the time. More recently they have focused on varying ranges in their mobile phones. The two main types of rages are the 'C' range which is called the Cybershot range and has the main selling point of its camera and the 'W' range which is the Walkman range. There are numerous other ranges such as 'R', 'S' and 'T'. The Sony Ericsson C905 is therefore a Cybershot phone and its main selling point is its 8.1 Megapixel camera.

Design

Looking at the phone from the outside it certainly looks very attractive. It is a slide phone with the keypad being hidden underneath. On the front you are presented with a 2.4" screen which is big enough for the phone. Below that on the left hand side of the phone are three buttons; shortcut menu, call and a shortcut button. On the right hand side of the phone is the cancel button, end call button and another shortcut button. In between these button is the main menu button surrounded by 4 more shortcut keys. On the top of the phone are two buttons as well. One is used to take you to the latest picture taken and the other takes you to the photo gallery which is sorted by month. The screen on the phone is brilliant. It is very bright and crisp which makes it look even nicer.

Turning the phone to the left (so you are looking at the right side of it) you are presented with the camera button. At the top is the zoom in and out buttons, followed by the shortcut key to the camera / video recorder slightly further down, and finally the 'shoot' button about a quarter of the way from the bottom.

Turning the phone the right now, there is only the charger / PC connection and the memory stick connection.

On the back of the phone is the camera housed in a lovely silver case which slides to one side so you can use the camera. The lens cover is also very good in the fact that it is made not to open in your pocket.

The keypad itself is very satisfactory. Each row of button is separated with a silver divider which helps to guide your fingers. The buttons are all easy to press and I have no complaints about the keypad.

The phone itself is larger than normal with its measurements at 104 x 49 x 18 mm and weighs in at 136g. To put it in to context, the new Nokia N96 is 103 x 55 x 18 and weights 124g so there is not a great deal of difference between the two. When you hold it in your hand though, it feels very comfortable and somehow doesn't feel like it weighs as much as it actually does.

Camera

As I previously said, the C905 has an 8.1 Megapixel camera which is at the very top end of the market at the moment. Now I'm not a big phone camera fan but I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. It has numerous different features such as a Xenon Flash, Auto focus, face detection, image stabilizer, red-eye reduction, and smart contrast. There is no optical zoom unfortunately but there is a 16x digital zoom which is adequate enough. Everything is kept quite simple and it is all easily accessible at the touch of a button. The actual camera pics are very good quality. To be honest I'm no camera expert and a 5MP camera and an 8MP camera would probably look very similar to me but I have been told and read reviews that the pictures are great and even in low light, they still come out well.

Connectivity

Now I may be wrong but I believe that the C905 is one of the first phones by SE to have wi-fi included. Because of this you should have no problem getting a connection in most places. It also has the standard Bluetooth connection which I don't really know what its used for other than for making calls via headsets.

The C905 also has 3G available which means that the internet connection should always be fast if 3G is available where you are. The internet browser on the phone is also very good. A small mouse pointer is used to navigate round the page you are looking at. By pressing the '#' key also brings up panning mode where you can choose which part of the page to zoom into. Web pages have loaded without a problem and due to the brilliant screen, look really good for a mobile device.

Applications

Well the first thing I have to mention is the built in GPS. It's a fully functioning GPS for 3 months after which you need to buy a licence. After having used it briefly the other day I can say it is only ok at best. It is a bit slow in keeping up with where you are and tries to take you through some very strange routes but I guess this proves why I have a TomTom! Also on the phone is Google Maps which is another very handy feature to have. I was found within 20 seconds of asking it to find my location which is a lot better than the iPhone where I have sometimes been waiting 5 minutes. Being inside does not seem to make too much of a difference either with my location being found quickly. The photo DJ and video DJ functions are also there from previous SE phones which let you add your own spin to any pictures of videos you have taken.

There are also the usual array of games on the phone. In this case there is a chess game, driving game and a tennis game. They're not great but its only a mobile I guess.

Media

The phones comes loaded with a whopping 160mb of internal memory which will get you around 40 songs before its full. Fortunately SE included a 2GB memory card which makes storage less of a problem.

The media menu is very similar to that of the Walkman phones (a black background with some blue twirly bits and a list of each type of media in a list for you to choose from). The loudspeaker on the phone is ok but you get a much better sound if you use the supplied headphones. Unfortunately there is no 3.5mm jack for your own headphones so you are stuck with the ones they give you. There is also an FM radio available as well as the very good Track ID feature which lets you play a bit of a song and it tells you what it is by connecting to the internet.

Battery

I always worry about the battery of a phone. I cant help but think that companies spend too much time worrying about the features and not spending enough time on the actual battery. When you get the phone, the first charge is supposed to be about 2.5 hours but I let mine charge for 4 just to be sure. When it was done I turned it on and played with it more or less solidly for about 2 hours. Over the next day I played with it less but far more than I would normally. That evening the battery died. I then put it charging again and hoped that with normal use it would be ok. When it had finished charging, I turned it on and the first thing I did was to turn 3G and wi-fi off as well as reducing the screen brightness. This obviously means you are only using GSM to look on the net but I found it to be just as fast as 3G. If it is running slow, 3G can always be switched on again. By doing this and with normal usage (about 30 mins worth of calls in a day, 10-15 sms a day and other little bits of camera usage and web browsing) the phone has lasted me 2.5 days which is good enough for me. Funnily enough, my battery has got better the more I have used it so my initial worry turned out to be nothing.

Call Quality

No problems at all here. I have no complaints about hearing other people and no one has complained about not being able to hear me.

Other Bits and Bobs

A useful feature is that within the message menu, there is an email client which means you can connect up you phone to your email account and you are informed when you get a new email.
The organiser menu is pretty standard and includes such items as calendar, alarm, stopwatch, code memo tasks. Nothing new to report here really.
It is worth pointing out that while you can make a video call on the phone, it is not the easiest thing in the world due to the fact that there is no camera on the front of the phone so you will need to turn the phone round so they can see you.
One thing I really like is the way that you don't need to go to the phonebook to call someone. Instead, all you need to do is press the corresponding numbers on the keypad and it brings up all the entries where it is included. For example, if you wanted to call someone called David, you'd go to the main screen and press 32842. On the screen would be the numbers but below it would be David from your phonebook. Its all very clever!
It has a very clever feature which is becoming more and more common (I believe it first was introduced on the iPhone) these days which is a screen that rotates depending on how you have the phone. For example, if you hold the phone normally the screen on the internet is as you would expect but if you turn the phone 90 degrees then the screen turns aswell meaning it is much wider but not as long.

Problems

To be honest there have been very few problems even worth mentioning. The only one thing I would say is that sometimes if I click on an item in the menu (normally if I change between 3G and GSM) the phone will reset itself. Its more frustrating than anything else but its all working fine again in a few seconds.

Conclusion

I am very glad I got this phone. Not only does it look very attractive but it is very easy to use. I was slightly worried that the actual software might be too similar to the old SE phones and would be nothing spectacular. While this was true to an extent, the additional services make it much better and a much more attractive phone over other SE phones. I was also slightly worries about its size but I have found it to be no problem at all. I have quickly got used to it and one handed operation is perfectly doable.
The one thing I would change is that there is no 3.5mm jack for headphones but then again I don't listen to music on my mobile too much so its not much of an issue for me.

I certainly think this one of the better phones on the market at the moment. It is easy to use and offers a huge amount of features to keep you interested in it. Even if I could take it back, I wouldn't!

The C905 is available for around £400 sim free but O2 are doing it for £100 based on a £35 per month contract.

Thanks for reading.