Indoors shooting is impressive too, with the xenon flash adding some welcome punch to illumination. It’s powerful, capable of working over a room-sized area and providing better-defined shots than an LED photo lamp. The result is possibly the best low-light shooting ability we’ve seen in a cameraphone.
Not exactly skinny
Images can be given a spruce up after shooting, using Photo Fix or PhotoDJ, while pics and videos can be uploaded straight to a Blogger account or another website. The Wi-Fi option is a big plus for this sort of thing, speeding uploads and potentially reducing costs too.
Video capture hasn’t had the same upgrade treatment as the photo facilities, and doesn’t match the Renoir or Pixon. Like the C902, it shoots at maximum 320 x 240 resolution at 30f/s, so produces average cameraphone quality, but it does look OK on the phone's screen.
The C905 arrives with a 2GB Memory Stick Micro card, so there’s sufficient room for large image files, music and other content even with the phone’s 160MB of internal storage. Usefully, a USB card reader is supplied too, providing another alternative for copying content.
Although this isn’t a Walkman-branded phone, the handset does have a decent quality music player on board. The user interface is as neat and tidy as the one on mid-tier Walkman phones, albeit with fewer listing categories. Unfortunately, the earphones are average mobile phone fare, and not a patch on the ones you get with up-range Walkman handsets.
Groan - another side-mounted multi-connector...
Sony Ericsson still hasn’t grasped that a standard 3.5mm headphone socket on the bodywork is best - the C905’s earphones plug straight into a standard Sony Ericsson multi-connector on the side. The typical Sony Ericsson plug positioning means its standard squat connector is awkward in the pocket and can get easily caught up - it would’ve been better on the top or bottom. There’s no 3.5mm headphone adaptor cable supplied with the headset either.
COMMENTS
Return to form after the K850i excuse for a camera phone
I've had this phone for a couple of months and it's excellent. Infinitely better than the K850i as a camera phone.
Good points:-
- Fast and slick user interface.
- Brilliant call sound quality and from external speaker.
- Did I mention the excellent camera?
Bad points:-
- Eats battery with wi-fi enabled. Even in power saving mode. Even when not actively used.
- No manual lock. You have to open and close slider again, or wait for auto lock timeout.
- Texting is very tricky. The T9 software is very good, but I still haven't got used to the spongey feel of the number keys.
I recommend it, unless you're one of those people that sends tens of texts a day then I'd look at something else.
Also as another point, Orange seem to let me send MMS's with 2MP pictures included. What's the maximum now, or do they scale it down on their MMS server for the recipient?
Re: Meaningless megapixels
I wholeheartedly agree, I had a conversation with someone at an airport who said that their 8mp cameraphone produces "almost identical" pictures to my 10mp Canon 400d (and I had my 70-200 F2.8L hanging off it at the time, cheeky get), but he really was convinced.
How about a proper review? take the same photo with several cameraphones over a range of lighting conditions (with/without built in lights) then add these pictures to the article, with some zoomed areas, both native digital zoom and "post production", would take a couple of days to do but it would be worth it.
got one for the missus.
... all piks come out a bit yellow unless you turn on the auto levelly wossit thingamibob.
Paris. Cos she's yellow too.
Poor review of the most superior phone on the market.
I'm sorry this review, whilst highlighting some of the features of the SE C905 does fail to show just how good it is. SE's sensors and camera pedegree has been well established now for some time and SE will always have the better Camera capabilities, that's not in doubt at all. I have a Nikon DSLR and a Panasonic FZ-8 as a backup and let me just say that side by side the C905 not only equal's the FZ-8 but rival's my (admittedly old) Nikon in basic shooting modes. (If you want to see pictures taken with it I'd be glad to post a link to some if asked)
As for the GPS, there are 3rd party mapping softwares that mean you don't pay a penny for usage of the GPS (Trekbuddy for one). Using this software side by side with a standard GPS unit it is obvious that the phone is not as sensitive but this is because it never seems to pick up all the available satellite signals...not sure why. Either way the SE is good enough for hikers as a backup.
As for touch screen....anyone who owned, as I did the K850 will have seen that the touch area was not brilliant. Personally I think SE did the right thing by pulling out of the idiotic touch screen market with this phone. I was one of those who complained because I don't want touch screen on my phone. Quite frankly after toying with the iPhone I can't see why anyone would want it either.
My only real problem with the C905 is the slider. I HATE slidy phones and would have preferred a K900 candybar style myself. The other thing I worry about is that on other SE phones I've got (I've had K 700, 750, 800, 850 and have used for a good portion of time Z530) where they have tried something new there it does take a couple of batches to get everything prefect. My advice with ALL new SE phones is to ensure you wait about 3 months and get a later batch...you'll save yourself the repair later down the line. In the above case it has been the K700 (mouse/nav button), K850 (Touch area), and Z530 (Microphone failure).
In any case SE's tend to be the better phones by a mile. K700, K750, K800 and K850's all lasted about a year as the best camera phones on the market. I have no doubt it'll be that long before the C905 is superceeded, and my prediction is it'll SE who superceed it.
Great phone, annoying butons
I've had a C905 for a few months and am quite happy with it. It takes great pictures in all sorts of conditions and the connectivity options are great (even if they do suck battery life!). Only issue I have so far is a couple of the buttons have lost their 'click' so need to be pressed quite hard to function - annoying when texting.
