Sony Ericsson C905 / C905i Review

March 18th, 2009 by Sandeep

The last super camera phone from SE, the K850i didn’t impress many. And here they have another one now C905, that looks much more promising to us. Believed to be one of the best camera phones around, the C905 has an 8 megapixel camera under the hood.

Here is a quick look at the specs:

• 8.1 Megapixel Cyber-Shot™ Camera with 16 x Zoom (digital)
• xenon flash & geo-tagging
• Camera Image Stabilizer & Red Eye Reduction
• Wi-Fi
• 2.4″ TFT 256K-color display
• AGPS + turn-by-turn voice guided navigation
• 2G HSDPA Technology
• Bluetooth (with A2DP)
• Exchange ActiveSync®
• Media Player With Album Art Display
• 360 Hours 3G Standby
• FM radio with RDS and TrackID
• 160 MB built-in memory, M2 card support, 2GB included (though I got 8GB in the box)

Design:

The C905 is a slider weighing 136 grams. There are 6 buttons below the display along with a 5 way D Pad. And 2 buttons above the display, which are somewhat hidden and are used for picture slideshow and timeline picture album in normal mode but buttons are named as Game A and Game B (thought we didn’t find games using those as yet) I would love to map them with other application after few days that would let you do almost anything that doesn’t require a keypad.

Sliding the lcd will reveal a standard keypad. The key pad is flat and contrary to other mobile flat keypads, this really does its job well, even the top rowed keys are easy to press for my fingers and also loved even backlit which is separately controlled row by row.

The Headset / Data / charging port is on the left side along with the M2 memory socket, where as the right side features zoom/volume control, and album (picture review) or camera mode (still or video). And not to forget the camera click button.

The camera has a protective lens cover (metal slider) similar to what we had in K750i. (It’s different btw, more complicated with at least 2 moving pieces and I doubt it might not be as strong as my previous K750), Majority body is plastic with chrome finish buttons and edges/sides. Initially I was scared that it looks so delicate but yeah found it to be very strong, perhaps weakest part is camera cover.

SE C905 features a 2.4″ 256K-color TFT display with QVGA resolution. The Mineral glass coating ensures scratch resistance. And really works against scratches and what I like the most is ‘no reflection’, even in direct sunlight it looks great.

User Interface:

Famous Sony Ericsson grid style (with added option for single icon and rotating menu, and yes flash menus: D) lot of small enhancement which might not sound great but collectively making my mobile experience happy.

Full multitasking is supported so you can run multiple applications in background (only one java app was supported in my old k750, I don’t know how many C905 supports, but I ran 7-8 applications at a time).

Features:

The phonebook lets you store 1000 diff names and a total of 7000 numbers. Though you cannot see SIM and Phone contacts together (Though you can access SIM contact by pressing any number and # key, it takes to that numbered contact in SIM with list). We feel this needs an upgrade my contact list already has 900 entries and I need to add more almost every day. Though this is not a business phone contacts should be more!

Entering the birthday for a contact automatically sets an alarm in your calendar. Now that’s really handy. The smart search looks up contact whose number contains the digits that you start typing and also lists the names that start with the letters corresponding to the digits. This is the same feature that the PalmPRE has worked on to bring in facebook contacts, apps and more. However what C905 offers satisfies us.

Media:

C905 does not have a dedicated music button as walkman series, even the old K750 had it.

First time I thought I would be in music player after pressing the media button as in other SE phones but takes us to 5 categories with subcategories for each- photo, music, video, games and Web Feeds (I still sees it’s weird, might be because I never used web feeds other than news), and photo feeds, video feeds (or podcast) are placed in each category.. Anyways it’s organized great; media can be placed in any folder on memory stick and will be scanned and neatly placed in media manager… Auto rotate is supported as well as TV out (A/V cable is provided but still haven’t tried with TV: D)

Sound quality is as good as latest walkman 3 (but album art is too smallL)

Camera:

People say C905 is a phone with built-in camera but fact is its digital camera with built in phone lol, yeah nearly all features one can find in digicam are supported (except optical zoom)

Shoot modes (normal, smart contrast, best pic, panaroma and frames )

Presets scenes (like snow/beach etc)

Face Detection works great (one update, firmware is out last month on 13th, still not available for middle east but SMILE SHUTTER is added) I am dying to test it but still need to wait. Would try the Smile Shutter as soon as we have it!

Normal and Spot photometry metering mode are supported like high end cameras.  And photo comes great in darkest environment (it uses AF light for focusing in dark, hope in future phones it will be replaced by infrared light

Update: Note after Firmware update (camera):

Smile Shutter added: Tested today only and works great and that too fast. I think as a extension to the face detection, it detects the moment person in focus smiles and clicks automatically at that moment

Web browser and apps:

Browser is good but I do use modded opera, mostly because I like tabbed browsing, opening multiple windows in wap browser is still not possible or I do not know how to do. Default browser works great, I used it on Wi-Fi only and seems speedy (flash websites are also supported, though many website prompts me to update my adobe flash version lol), I mostly use to download large files, as it can download in background and can resume (have tried with one 800 mb file and worked as it should be with PC download manager).

Comes preinstalled with GoogleMap for location service, and also Wayfinder navigator. I guess the WayFinder is limited for 3 months; would require a license after that.

Others:

Wi-Fi: Exceptionally easy to connect to Wireless lan, just switch it on and list is populated, just select network (put a WPA/WEP key if required and start browsing) by default, all traffic is diverted to Wi-Fi if connected so I don’t need to worry about 3g/3.5g/edge cost. Receiver is strong enough (way better than BlackBerry Bold that I used on the same network).

GPS: works great but initially takes time to lock the satellites (2-4 minutes) may be because I do not use assisted mode, but once connected works like charm. GoogleMap is default location aware application, data is logged each minute (position is logged for each minute when connected to GPS)

Network Sharing: I can see my phone in network neighborhood as a computer and can access files as I would be accessing over computers (just needs to set up user name/ password and workgroup). And it also listed as media devices in network, though I don’t know how to stream media across and between my laptop)

SIP: Searched a lot but I couldn’t find how to make a call through this SIP client, as even manual does not contain any information, looks like draft feature added in haste but would be useful in voip calls (I heard SkyPe is going to support this for VOIP calls over wi-fi waiting for the announcement.

And phone when connected to computer, it can be configure as another computer instead of phone, even it installed one more network interface (LAN Card) for access, impressed but I didn’t try it much.

I upgraded the firmware recently and got YouTube app with auto rotate feature that C05 houses. The firmware upgrade also updated Network Sharing. It has removed the option for specifying User Name/ Password/Domain instead we can just select wireless network where   we want to enable network sharing. Like we are provided less control over who can access my phone

Battery

C905 is powered by BST-38 Li-Po 930 mAh battery that gives satisfactory or more than good, I use it 2-3 days without charging and does not go below 50-60%, Though I don’t make too many calls, I sleep listening music whole night sometimes by mistake and battery shows hardly 8-10% consumption. (BTW I am on 3G/3.5G (i.e. HSDPA) network here)

But yeah GPS uses battery too much, perhaps wont long for 6-7 hours in travelling (but I guess even dedicated GPS might need spare batteries when used for long, just guess, never used any J)

Sum up – Pros and Cons:

Pros:

1. Exceptional Camera (and now with smile shutter as well )
2. Good connectivity options to call it just as mobile (not just wi-fi but also talking about Network File sharing, and VOIP capability and direct connection to printers, I forgot to mention that above but…)
3. Good Bundled applications (PC Suite impressed me a lot on first time, improved a lot than old I used with K750 or W810) I might not need MyPhoneExplorer now.

Cons:

1. I am not that confident about Camera Cover (particularly about its mechanical part which stays below cover)

No complains as such, this one is surely a winner!

The C905 is priced in India at Approx Rs 27000 (@CafeGadgets); In US the C905 is seen on eBay for approx $400-450 (New and Unlocked).

Sony Ericsson C905, C905a, C905c and C905i are the same except for different network bands in different countries! So don’t get confused.

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Categories: Reviews, sony ericsson | Tags: 905 review, c905 review, c905i, review, se c905, sony ericsson c905