Sony Ericsson Cyber-Shot C905a – Superb Picture Quality
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Superb 8.1 MP camera, good music player and good call quality.
Thumbs Down:
No 3.5 mm phone jack, no Wi-Fi.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Radio Data Service (RDS), EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates For Global Evolution), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), JAVA
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The phone has a 2.4 inch TFT LCD display with resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and 18-bit, 262000 Colors. The phone has a slide out numeric keypad.
The handset can play video formats of H.264, H.263 video and AMR audio, MPEG-4 RealVideo and RealAudio (RealMedia). The music player can play formats of Real Audio, MP3, WAV, AAC. The phone doesn’t have 3.5 mm phone jack.
Downloadable content Games, Ring tones, Audio files, Screensavers, Calendar notes, themes, wallpapers, video files, business cards.
The phone has 8.1 mega pixel camera with flash, the lens is covered by a metal sheet.
The battery of the phone gives talk time of 540 minutes and stand by time of 380 hours.
Razzle Dazzle:
Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C905a is sleek and has a sharp style which really lives up to the Cyber-shot name. The precious 8.1 MP lens is covered at the back by a lens cover. The phone is 0.7 inch thick, 1.9 inches wide, 4.1 inches long and weighs 4.9 ounces which is a bit heavy. The phone has a slider interface which is quite smooth.
Inside Dope:
Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones are rare in US to be supplied by a US carrier, they mostly come unlocked which makes the price really high. And hence we were glad to finally get a Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C905a from AT&T. Cyber shot means that this phone is camera centered and the W series phones from Sony Ericsson stand are walkman series which is music centered. Now, 8+ MP of camera phones are rare and mostly manufacturers proudly boast that this phone will replace their digital cameras and we find that to be quite true. Other than the superb camera, the phone also has other features like GPS, music player and Bluetooth. This version doesn’t have Wi-Fi that the US version has.
The display of the phone is 2.4 inch big and it looks really gorgeous. You get a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels which is gives you enough space on the screen to work around with applications. It supports 262,000 colors and watching images and videos on this screen is a treat for your eyes. You can change the menu interface from grid, single icon or rotating view. You cannot adjust the backlight time but you can fiddle around with the clock size on the home screen and display brightness.
There are a few buttons below the display like 2 soft keys, activity menu button, send and end key, square navigation button with an OK button in the center and clear button. We are familiar with the activity button; it brings up four tabs for currently running applications, new events, internet shortcuts and application shortcuts. The four way navigation button gives you programmable buttons for shortcuts to your favorite application in the standby mode and the middle OK key is the short cut to the browser. The four way buttons are also very use full in camera mode.
There are two buttons above the screen; one key relates to the last video or picture in the album and the other key is short cut to the camera album itself. These keys again are use full in the camera mode.
The keypad is revealed when you slide up the phone. The keypad is very much roomy and dialing and typing text messages was easy but there are the side walls of the keypad are sometimes obstructive.
On the left side of the phone there is a memory card slot and headset/charger jack. We were disappointed to see that there was no 3.5 mm phone jack on a high end phone like this. Also the presence of proprietary jack means that you can use only one peripheral (adapter or head set) at a time.
Other than these two buttons, there is also a volume control buttons which can be used as zoom buttons while in camera mode, camera key, camera album key and another camera key that toggles between video and camera. We were glad to see the lens was covered by a metal sheet in order to avoid it from accidents.
You will probably never run out of phone book memory with the 1000 limit for storing contacts. Remember that the SIM card stores additional 250 contacts. A single entry can take 7 phone numbers, job title and company name, 3 e-mail IDs, web URL, two postal addresses, notes and birth date. You can make groups of your friends and assign ring tone to the groups, create photo caller ID, etc.
Basic features on the phone include multimedia and text messaging, vibrate mode, speaker phone, timer, calculator, calendar, stopwatch, task list, password saver, voice recorder and notepad.
Talking about the biggest feature of the phone is the 8.1 MP beast hidden behind. It has two settings for quality, 4 different resolutions, five white balance and five effects for color. There other settings like self-timer, spot metering, macro mode, red-eye reduction, infinite focus mode (which will disable autofocus when you put it up for taking long distance photos), four shutter sounds, auto rotate and image stabilizer. The flash is very power full and it can also be used as flash light in the dark.
The camera phone has face detection feature which is quite rare in camera phones. The feature gives a green square and it automatically focuses on the face of the subject. The BestPic features takes up to seven pictures and you can keep what you think is the best. There are scene modes like landscape, twilight, portrait, snow/beach, sports and macro shot mode for taking pictures of documents.
The photo quality of the camera completely lived up to our expectations and justifies the 8 MP rated tag. The camera also lets you shoot videos but you cannot shoot more than 20 seconds for MMS clips. Video quality wasn’t as good as photo but still impressive as compared to standard camera phones.
We tested the phone for call quality and it was quite good. Our friends could hear what we were saying but there was a bit of ambient noise when we were in quiet surroundings such as office or home. Voice quality is not as good as landline but you can hear people clearly. Speaker phone calls were good and it was just like a handset call. It didn’t attract any background noise what so ever (which is very uncommon in speakerphones) while on calls.
The battery life of the Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C905a is about 9 hours for talk time and 16 days for standby time.
Nitty Gritty:
Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C905a is one of the best when it comes to camera phones. Buy it if you want a phone and good camera in one set. If photo enthusiasts are looking for good camera phones it is hard to get something better than this.
