We have attended Sony Ericsson's press conference, which had the Cyber-Shot series as its topic, focusing on the manufacturer's top 8 megapixel phone, and the C702, that we have already reviewed. The venue was well chosen, at the Hamarits Photo studio all press members had the opportunity of testing the new phones in a professional environment. Besides the camera phones the manufacturer has also announced some useful accessories and three other phones, about which we will be reporting in separate articles.
Before trying the new phones we have attended a surprisingly interesting and apt presentation from Viktor Németh, the commercial president of Sony Ericsson Hungary. Since Mobile World Congress we know that the manufacturer would like to separate its camera phones from all the others. At this presentation we got to know that they have successfully accomplished this, camera phones will still be named with C (for Cyber-Shot), which probably also means that there will be no phones with outstanding cameras in the Walkman series. Many were delighted to hear what does water resistance mean in the case of cell phones: these handsets are sprinkled for ten minutes with water, and if they survive this, then they are named water resistant.
This is how water-resistant phones are tested.
At the end of the presentation - as the peak of the event - anyone could take some pictures with C702 of a beautiful model, but this didn't turn out very well. Many have been joking with the SE guys, telling that how much better the whole thing would be, if there would be no clothes on the girl - specific for the national press. What I found odd was that why we were testing a phone made for extreme environments, in laboratory conditions.
After this we have taken a look at the newcomers. The greatest hit, the phone announced in Singapore, was C905. This is the first slider of the manufacturer, which by the way has an 8 megapixel camera, but it unfortunately lacks optical zoom. The press kit included the phone's specs, have a look at it:
- Size: 104 x 49 x 18 mm (19,5 mm over the lens), 136 grams
- Available colors: black, silver, gold
- Technology: GSM/UMTS (GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA)
- Talk time: 9 hours (GSM) / 4 hours (UMTS)
- Display: 2.4" diagonal, 240 x 320 pixels resolution
- Memory: 160 MB + 2 GB M2 card included
- Data transfer: Bluetooth 2.0 (A2DP too), WiFi, DLNA
- Built-in aGPS-compatible GPS receiver
- Extras: TV-out, gyroscope
- Camera: 8.1 megapixels, autofocus, Xenon flash, face recognition, intelligent contrast (=high dynamics range), BestPic image sequencing, software picture stabilizer at video recording (max QVGA resolution)
As you can see the phone has no lack of features, but when reading the last line, probably something else will shock most of you: QVGA resolution video at a camera with an 8 megapixel image sensor - this is rather weak, to say the least. At the end of the presentation many have asked when does the manufacturer want to introduce a higher resolution. The answer was stunning: they are not planning to introduce VGA resolution video recording, as the main profile of the Cyber-Shot series is photography. It's interesting, however, that in spite of this the flagship of the series knows only two types of light metering methods: spot and matrix.
I have personally not been astonished by the phone. It's basically well assembled, it doesn't crack and creak, but I would expect metal instead of silky plastics of a device in such a price category. The sliding mechanics looks good, the lens' cover's sliding is spectacular, but besides this there is no extra, although the design is rather unique. It's hard to tell anything about picture quality, but I could review the photos only on the QVGA display, and evidently an 8 megapixel image looks good there. The menu system seems fast, but I can only confirm this 100% when we receive the phone for testing. It is not yet known when will this happen, but it's almost sure that the handset will be available by the end of October. It's price is expected to be around €410 - €450 EUR.
Translated by Szaszati
