We were accosted by a further sense of foreboding when we saw that the C902 has an LED “flash”. Images of breasts on bulls sprang to mind unbidden as we are of the opinion that one of the defining elements of a high-end Cyber-shot phone should be the presence of a Xenon flash that can at least make a half decent fist of low-light photography.
Thankfully, screen shrinking camera UI and useless LED flash aside, the C902 is every bit as good a daylight camera as the K850i. This shouldn't really come as a shock as all the important bits of the cameras in the two devices are, as far as we can gather, identical.
A little lighter and a little thinner
A few quick and dirty full-auto snaps underlined this. In the shot of our favourite accident black spot, the K850i rendered the more realistic colours, but only by a small margin, while a snap of a pasta pot merely served to underline that LED flashes don't chuck out enough light and what they do tends to mess up the colour balance.
The only important camera firmware addition to the C902 is the inclusion of a face-recognition setting that prioritises the autofocus on the most significant facial image in-frame. However, in the spirit of give with one hand, take with the other, the C902 has to make do without the K850i's manual ISO settings.
Time between shots was a tiny bit slower with the C902 than the K850i – with the latter we could get a picture every 6-7 seconds as opposed to closer to every 8-9 with the former.
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??????)
