Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C902 cameraphone
Happy snapping
Review It's clear that the design of Sony Ericsson's C902 is far more conventional than the likes of the K810 or K850. Gone is the 'small key' design, the keypad now being a sort of cross between that of a W960 and a K800.
The new look works without any major drama, but hardly pushes back the boundary of design and we certainly prefer the 850/810 keyboard style for texting. Still, it's a smart looking lump, measuring 108 x 49 x 10.5mm and weighing in at 118g. It's a little lighter and substantially thinner than the either the K850 or the K810.
Sony Ericsson's Cyber-shot C902: smart looking
Did we say 108mm tall? Well, sometimes. To activate the camera on the C902 you need to take a firm hold on the top and pull open the 8mm slot that covers the lens. Luckily, the slider feels well engineered and likely to hold up to repeated use without starting to slide shut under its own weight or wobble as time and repeated use takes its toll on the mounting.
Technically, the C902 is very close to the K850i. What you get for your money is – deep breath – 160MB of on-board memory and a Memory Stick Micro expansion slot; quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge and 3.6Mb/s HSDPA; a 2in, 240 x 320 screen with ; an accelerometer-driven auto-rotate system; an FM radio with RDS; TrackID song recognition; Bluetooth with A2DP wireless stereo; a five-megapixel autofocus camera with 30f/s QVGA video recording; the Video, Photo and MusicDJ applications that are now common on most mid-range and above Sony Ericsson handsets; an RSS hub; voice recorder; picture blogging application; three games and support for MP3, AAC and MPEG 4 media. You also get Google Maps pre-loaded and the PlayNow music ringtone purchase web application.
One glaring difference between the C902 and the K850 is the removal of support for Micro SDHC cards. At a recent Sony Ericsson press event, we tried to get to the reasoning behind this, especially as it looks as though the new Cyber-shot C905 handset will also only come with M2 expansion. The best answer we got was that at the the time of the K850i's release, M2 cards only went up to 4GB, so building in support for 8GB Micro SDHC was the obvious move.
COMMENTS
SE C902
I have had a C902 for about a week now. I had a K750i and 'upgraded it to a Motorola Rzr then changed back because it was so awful. I then 'upgraded' to a Nokia 6500 Classic because you could increase the text size but I couldn't get the hang of the different keyboard for text and the buttons were not easy to use (and I don't have sausages for fingers). So I went back to SE and got the C902 because of the camera and the keyboard (which looked normal). So far, I have no complaints. Camera seems to work fine, I put a 2Gb card in it and it's working ok and I can browse it with Bluetooth. I don't listen to music on it - prefer not to walk around with headphones hanging - I like to hear the world around me and at home there are better options. My only complaint is the text size which wish was a bit bigger or that it could be adjusted. The penalty of getting older but frustrating all the same.
Oh, and the penguin because not many people choose it and I'm halfway to getting an Asus eee PC soon (maybe).
Companies. Are. Stupid.
How to make a great phone:
Take a K800i and add..
- 2 memory slots so when you upgrade you don't have to just replace the old one.
- A Male USB pull-out cord thing so you can interface with computers without carrying extra gubbins
- A less annoying "I didn't have a dictionary reference for the thing you just tried to type in"
- Wi-Fi
- Ability to share Phone internet with a computer (reading on a small screen is hard)
- A laser keyboard so you can prop it up and bash a text out instantly. Maybe.
- GPS (optional)
Any thing that doesn't have at least 4 of those things added on from prior models is a waste of money. If I'm upgrading I want it to be WORTH THE HASSLE. After reading the 950 horror stories and seeing 2 N95s fall apart I'm sticking to my K800i for now.
Sony Ericsson, I love your phones, just make them good rather than slightly-different-with-a-new-quirk.
@Zech Lim
Nice rant but you are wrong.
Memory != RAM
SRAM, DRAM, Flash, hard disk, floppy, tape... they are all memory, ie they save state, the main differentiator being access time (although tape is far from random access).
Yes, with a phone they are talking storage not RAM. But it is not claimed that memory=RAM and storage is still memory. And this makes sense for the average consumer...
Memory vs. Storage - Mass Confusion
Dear Reg, as a respectable IT rag, er, publication, PLEASE...do not join the clueless marketing dolts who market to the equally (un)schooled masses that a "phone has 160mb MEMORY". IT HAS 160MB MASS STORAGE. It is like the hard disk on a PC. For reasons best left to the creators of the school system, even in this e-day and e-age, the masses have never really gotten round to distinguishing between ROM, RAM and a DASD..far less SRAM, cache, registers....
Look, it really gripes me when a phone marketeer tries to tell that a phone has x amount of MEMORY and it's expandable with a MEMORY CARD to xGb. IT'S F'ING STORAGE. If I could add MEMORY (as in RAM) to my phone I'd be a seriously happy camper. And what of all the marketing that "Your phone is your computer" crap......where are the specs!!!!!!!!! WTF is the CPU type, speed, bus speeds etc.... these are all buried probably among the phonegeek sites and even then serious phone review sites RARELY mention this stuff. All we ever hear is that the phone has got MORE MEMORY so you can STORE MORE SONGS...MORE PICS...ad nauseam. Look at the eee...a low power cpu etc..yet RAM, SSD, USD expansion is all clearly stated. And I thought the phone is a computer+radio chip? I own a symbian 9.2 nokia, and you have to use a $$ 3rd party utility like Handy Taskman to tell how much free RAM and FLASH you have, there is no way to even see this information using the built in tools and apps.
Despite having very little love for M$...at least their phone boys got it right and state CPU speed, RAM, ROM, and USER STORAGE + expandable STORAGE. Perhaps that's why Nokia isn't marketing successfully to the US.
Perhaps El Reg can whisper to the phoneboys regarding architecture vs. marchitecture. Hell they are not even marchitecting correctly.
Paris coz I forgive her for not distinguishing between a RAM and a Hard Diks.
Unreliable
The phone looks great but failed completely after just 2 days.
I have tried to sync the phone with my outlook contacts and calendar but to no avail. Have been told to get a replacement handset (3rd time lucky??????)
