Jun
19
The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot has managed to create a real stir in the mobile community. It’s the first GSM handset that ships with the whopping 8 megapixels worth of camera goodies and such things simply cannot go unnoticed.
You’ve probably already gone through the news scoop and you know the sweet details - face detection, smart contrast, both a xenon flash and a photo flash, as well as geotagging complete the camera feature set. A 2.4-inch QVGA TFT display with scratch-resistant mineral glass cover will serve you as a viewfinder.
The Sony Ericsson C905 seems like an excellent high-end cameraphone - our old trustworthy 8 megapixel Canon EOS-1D Mark II N is already starting to feel a wee bit threatened. Will it keep its job?
The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot also comes with a built-in accelerometer for screen auto rotation, TV-out port, GPS and, wait for it … Wi-Fi support. Yes, that’s true wireless networking on a regular feature phone.
And did we also mention the quad-band GSM/EDGE connectivity, the UMTS and HSDPA support, stereo Bluetooth (that’s A2DP for the nerd group), USB and FM radio with RDS? Well, it is a nice feature combo by all standards. And it so happens, that we managed to sneak it for a quick hands-on.
Truth be told, the Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot has obviously never heard of diets and healthy food. With a thickness of 18mm (up to 19.5 in its thickest part), it’s a seriously fat fella - at least by feature phone standards. There are other really popular smartphones that take the thickness problem even further, but the C905 Cyber-shot is not a smartphone.
Now that being said, some of you are probably going to so hate us for saying this but… the C905 actually looks nice. Some high-quality materials have been used for creating its overweight body and it’s crafted flawlessly. We knew we like it as soon as we laid our eyes on it for the first time.
But see what it’s worth, a first look is never enough. Hit this small bump on the way to getting to know the Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot a little bit better.
Sony Ericsson C905 360-degree spin
The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot measures 104 x 49 x 18mm. Those quoted 18mm are actually the thinnest portion of the device. The area around the camera lens reaches up to 19.5 mm.
Design and construction
The C905 weighs 136 g and size-wise it’s almost identical to the Nokia N81. We had an N81 8GB lying around the office and we took some comparison shots so you can see how they stack up size-wise.
The matt black plastic that dominates the Sony Ericsson C905 body is extra nice to touch. It doesn’t catch any fingerprints and looks like the ideal choice - it reminds much of a pocket digital camera. Speaking of a digital camera comparison, here is how the Sony Ericsson C905 looks along the Casio Exilim EX-S10, which stands at 14.9mm of thickness.
Here are also some live photos of the silver-colored version of the Sony Ericsson C905, curtesy of our friends at MobilMania.
Now back to the C905, the front panel design follows the latest Sony Ericsson trend seen in both low-end and high-end devices. All the keys are comfortable to use and with nice tactility. Above the display there are two additional shortcut keys - the left one shows you the last photo that was taken, while the right one opens the image gallery. Those two serve additional purposes, when the camera is on. The left one opens the Shooting mode menu, while the right one starts the Scene mode menu. But we’ll say more about the camera later on.
The keypad of the C905 is almost totally even, but it’s enjoyable to type with - we didn’t expect that, so it was a pleasant surprise. Flat keypads usually look good but suck at real-life typing - well this is not the case with C905. The keypad offers excellent tactility and touch orientation.
The left side of the C905 features only the proprietary Fast port and the M2 memory card slot. The right-hand side features a volume rocker, a camera shutter key and two additional camera function keys. The first one opens the last photo taken, and the second one switches between still camera and camcorder.
You can also start the camera with a longer press on the camera shutter key, but then you have to slide down the protective cover over the lens. Sliding the cover down starts the camera by itself, so we guess that would be the preferred way to take snapshots… or better yet, 8 megapixel photos.
The lens cover sports an excellent mechanism - it consists of two parts - when you slide the upper one down top reveal the camera lens, the lower piece sinks in to make room for the sliding piece. Both parts are made out for some fine brushed metal and really give the C905 a more refined look. Did we mention that we totally dig the C905 design?
Once the camera cover is slid down, the camera lens and all of its entourage gets revealed - there’s the xenon flash, the self-portrait mirror, the video light and the video microphone. The video flash is also used as a focus assist beam in darker environment.
The battery cover goes away with a slide. Under it hides the Sony Ericsson BST-38 Li-Po battery, which offers a capacity of 930 mAh. The BST-38 is a standard battery for many Sony Ericsson handsets, so you won’t have problems finding a spare one should you need it. Sony Ericsson promise a battery life of up to 380h of stand-by time and up to 9h of talk time.
Unfortunately we can’t comment on the real-life performance of the battery, but you can bet that with some intensive use of GPS and Wi-Fi, you may as well get a second battery to go along.
Well, that’s about all of the hardware part of our account of our hands-on experience. In case you are interested in things such as camera interface, GPS navigation and Wi-Fi networking, then follow the lead to the next page.
The user interface
The Sony Ericsson C905 features the graphically updated Sony Ericsson user interface that’s been used on all recent Sony Ericsson handsets. And just to mention this again - the C905 is not a smartphone despite the presence of GPS and Wi-Fi connectivity.
The Media Center is present of course to give you access to all the stored multimedia content. It features automatic screen rotation thanks to the built-in accelerometer and a TV-out port. Music player sports the MegaBass audio equalizer preset for die-hard Walkman fans.
Embedded GPS receiver
The Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot offers the full range of Location services that we’ve already seen in some of the recent Sony Ericsson devices such as the W760 and the C702.
The Location services pack makes use of the built-in GPS receiver and application-wise offers Google Maps for Mobile, the Wayfinder Navigator 7, a GPS Status application and a GPS Log application. Google Maps is an excellent application and best of all it’s free, however it doesn’t offer turn-by-turn navigation.
The Wayfinder Navigator 7 is the real deal navigation software but in previous Sony Ericsson models it offered time-limited trial turn-by-turn navigation and then required a paid monthly subscription. We guess the situation with the C905 won’t be much different.
Connectivity and Wi-Fi
Probably the most intriguing feature of the Sony Ericsson C905 (after its 8 megapixel camera, of course) is its Wi-Fi connectivity. It’s implemented rather well in the user interface and it’s located rather logically. Once you turn the Wi-Fi on, you get a list of the available wireless hot spots. Connecting is a matter of single click - it’s that easy. The web browser and all other data traffic is re-routed through the Wi-Fi connection by default, when you are connected.
Additional settings allows you to search hidden networks by their SSID, check your connection status, MAC address (you cannot change that), as well as setup auto connection and WLAN network priorities.
The wireless capabilities of the C905 are further enhanced by the presence of SIP support (VoIP) and Network sharing. Those were a pleasant surprise.
The C905 comes with the NetFront 4.5 web browser, which is an amazingly capable browser (for a feature phone that is). We’ve already reviewed the NetFront web browsing capabilities in previous reviews so we are not going to get into detail now. The only other thing that’s worth noting is that the web browser also benefits from the built-in accelerometer and rotates its screen automatically.
8 megapixel camera sounds sweet
Well, the all-important feature of any cameraphone is its camera performance. The Sony Ericsson C905 is armed with an 8 megapixel shooter that is capable of producing a maximum image resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels.
Other camera features include digital stabilization, special Smart Contrast shooting mode, as well as the traditional BestPic and Panorama. Several preset scenes are also available, as well as face detection. Thanks to the built-in GPS, geotagging is also on-board.
As far as video is concerned, the C905 is still not capable of competing with the market leaders in this respect. The C905 maxes out at QVGA resolution at 30 fps. That is enough for an enjoyable video but there’s still a lot to be desired from a high-end cameraphone.
Unfortunately, our beta unit used for this preview doesn’t produce photos that are worth publishing. Instead we chose to publish several photos taken by our partners over at MobilMania.cz. You should bear in mind though that their unit was also a beta one and those images are here just for demonstration purposes.
The Sony Ericsson C905 also offers several interesting additional applications - there’s a rich choice but we’ll just mention two of the more interesting. The CamPlus Java application adds some special shooting modes to the camera. The Timer camera allows automating shooting at predefined intervals, while the Motion camera automatically shoots images when motion is detected.
The other interesting application is not new as it has been pre-installed on previous Cyber-shot handsets. However that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. The Photo Mate application is a sort of a photography handbook offering advice and tips for getting the best shot in different environments.
Conclusion
Well, this was our report on the brief hands-on experience we had with the 8 megapixel Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber-shot. We are highly excited by it even at this pre-release stage and we just can’t wait to get our hands on a final unit. For now we are left with good impressions that we hope will be reaffirmed when we start a full featured review some time in the future.
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