The
Sony Ericsson C905 is the first camera phone for the global market to
offer resolution greater than 5 megapixels. There have been a few crazy
zillion-megapixel phones for Korea, but the C905 is for everyone with
its quad-band GSM and tri-band HSDPA (including 850/1900, ideal for
AT&T's 3G network.) Sony Ericsson didn't just go a little over 5
megapixels, either. They truly leapfrogged the competition by stuffing
a full 8-megapixel sensor into the C905.
The C905 is impressively small for what it is. It is a
tad larger than many slider phones. However, past phones that pushed
the limit on camera resolution often felt truly oversize (such as the
K800;) the C905 does not have that too-bulky feeling. To fit such
optics into a phone this pocket-friendly is impressive.
Handling the C905, I came away impressed. The buttons
feel good and the fit and finish are high-quality. It's mostly plastic,
but matte finish gives it a nice feel (and resists ugly smudges to
boot.) The moving parts - the main slide and the lens cover - fit
together like a Swiss watch. I can't recall ever seeing a slider phone
with so little gap or play between its halves as the C905. What we
handled was a prototype, of course, but these are things that usually
only get better in final versions. Small chrome accents on the sides
add a touch of class, without obviously aping the iPhone's chrome trim
like so many other phones this year.
The lens cover on the C905 is one of its best features.
After getting it right on the W800, Sony Ericsson proceeded to screw up
the lens cover on subsequent flagship camera phones... until now. The
K800 had a lens cover that protruded from the back quite a bit, making
it tougher to slip in and out of your pocket and easy to slide by
accident. The K850 had a useless internal cover that didn't actually
protect the glass window from scratches or smudges at all.
For the C905, Sony Ericsson has developed a unique two-part sliding
metal lens cover that forms a smooth, flush back surface when closed,
yet opens easily to reveal the lens and activate the camera. Both metal
panels lock in place when the cover is fully closed. The mechanism
feels a little delicate when sliding it, but when fully open or closed,
it feels rock-solid. This clever design is both stylish and highly
functional. Although the C905 still has a "camera bulge", the slick
lens cover design is quite effective in making the bulge less
noticeable and bothersome.
The C905 contains the latest iteration of Sony
Ericsson's great camera interface. The easy-to-use options pop up over
the active viewfinder, and offer simple four-way navigation, putting
the most common options just a few clicks away. Nearly every feature
you could hope to find in a standalone digital camera is present,
including scene modes, red-eye reduction, panorama mode, image
stabilizer, and face detection.
As for the camera's hardware specs, the 8 megapixel sensor is
accompanied by an auto-focus lens and a xenon flash (the serious kind.)
A rotation sensor and GPS for geo-tagging are also included. An optical
zoom is the only feature you would find on a standalone digital camera
that you won't find here, but the laws of physics dictate that an
optical zoom would add quite a bit to the size.
Another neat feature of the C905 is support for DLNA. This nifty
technology standard lets you stream photo and video content to your TV
using the C905's built-in WiFi. You'll need a DLNA-compatible TV or
set-top box of some kind to receive this content. Sony Ericsson reps
were predictably quick to point out that the Sony PlayStation 3
includes this functionality.
The C905 for Europe and Asia will not support US 3G networks, but
the C905a for North America will. Both versions are currently planned
to ship in Q4 2008.
Here's a quick video tour of the C905:
NOKIA Finally! Nokia finally got around to announcing the E71 and the
E66, both of which have been floating around the Internet for the
better part of six months. Both devices are updates to other models,
the E71 being the progeny of the E61/62, and the E66 being the
offspring of the E65. While these new E series devices bear a certain
amount of resemblance to their forebears, they take Nokia's business
line in a new direction.
The E71 is simply gorgeous. It is probably the most
attractive QWERTY device out there. It is sleek, slender, light weight,
and sets a new bar with its fine fit and finish. Materials are quality
metals, and plastics made to resemble metal. The overall size is nearly
that of the iPhone (perhaps 1mm shorter and narrower), but the E71
bests the E61/62 by a long shot when it comes to how thin it is. It is
practically anemic. It feels comfortable in your hand, and isn't so
wide or cumbersome that you don't like it. It will slip in and out of
jeans pockets with ease.
Despite its small footprint, it packs in some serious
usability. It has a full QWERTY keyboard. This keyboard is fairly
narrow, but still manages to work well. The keys were simple plastic
keys, but they had nice travel and feedback. Though we made some
mistakes in our first test of the keyboard, we imagine with regular
use, one will get used to how small it is. Speaking of small, the
navigation cluster is perhaps the E71s only sticking point. Nokia
really reduced the size of all the keys surrounding the D-pad (there
are eight of them). I found them to be a little bit difficult to hit
accurately with my thumb, given their proximity to one another. The
D-pad itself looks as though it was lifted directly from the E51, which
bears a striking family resemblance to the E71. It is square, with a
large button in the center. It works well enough for navigating around
the phone's screen.
Ah, the screen. Nokia stuffed the largest screen possible into the
E71. It isn't as big as the screen on the E61/62, but it is large
enough to suit most purposes. The resolution is high enough that icons,
pictures and other items on the screen looked clear and sharp. The
screen is also bright.
The E71 comes loaded with a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera with
flash. This camera is flat-out one of the fastest auto-focusing cameras
we've ever seen. Pressing the shutter release button focuses and snaps
the picture nearly instantaneously (see the video). According to Nokia,
the E71 is being powered by a much faster processor than on other
phones. The media software has been improved a little bit, but it isn't
as robust (or as fun to use) as its N series cousins.
It has 3G, WiFi, stereo Bluetooth, support for microSD cards and much, much more. You name it, the E71 probably has it.
Overall, we're very excited about this phone. It may have taken
Nokia a few steps to get here, but the E71 is what QWERTY phones should
be all about.
Here is a video preview:
BLACKBERRY BOLD The
new Bold from BlackBerry is a BlackBerry done right. If you think of
all the changes that BlackBerries have undergone over the past few
years, they've mostly been evolutionary. All the current designs stem
from the success of the Pearl, which was the first BlackBerry to use
the trackball for navigation. But that design is nearly two years old.
The Bold takes BlackBerry in a new direction.
Bold
Click a thumbnail above for a larger view.
Gone are the straight-laced plastics and squarish
designs, and in comes the chrome and black leather, baby! (Seriously,
the back of the Bold is covered in black leather.) The front of the
device has been given a thorough make-over. It has smooth lines and
chrome accents that flow around the phone. It is simply a good looking
phone. But it is a large one. It is about the same size as the current
8800 series smartphones from RIM, though the rounded edges make up for
that a bit. It is also a bit thicker than we'd like it to be. But these
minor detractions don't take away from the phone's luster. When you see
it, you can't help but want to reach out and touch it. You can't quote
close your hand all the way around it, but the way it sits in your hand
is by no means uncomfortable. Despite its size, it will fit in your
jeans pocket without too much trouble.
The Bold carries over the trackball for navigation, but
the function keys and keyboard have been redesigned a bit. There are no
nubby keys on this BlackBerry. The keyboard is a nice smooth arch from
one end to the other, and feels very comfortable to use. It is wide
enough that your thumbs don't feel cramped using it, but not so wide as
to make you feel as though each key requires your thumb to travel miles
to reach it. The buttons have sloped surfaces and are made of glossy
plastic. We found it to be very easy to type with. The trackball has
been embedded a bit further into the phone than on previous models. RIM
staffers reminded us that the software for the device is still not
final, so we weren't surprised to see that the trackball didn't work
perfectly.
Aside from these obvious hardware improvements are some more
serious changes. The BlackBerry OS has been updated. The updates
include all-new media applications, improved icons and themes, as well
as other under-the-hood enhancements that weren't immediately apparent
to our eyes. The home screen and main menu have seen the most drastic
changes, with an all new look. The basic function and way that the
menus work appears to be similar to that of current BlackBerries, but
it just looks so much better on the Bold.
The music application borrows heavily from its predecessor, but the
media player itself has a refreshed UI with nice icons and graphics.
Sorting through your playlists and such is a breeze. The camera
software has been upgraded modestly, with better zoom functionality.
The gallery app is also much nicer.
The browser and mapping application are both quite
good. The trackball is put to very good use, with most zoom and scroll
action functioning intuitively without your thumb ever leaving the
trackball. In the maps, clicking the trackball toggles between panning
and zoom modes.
A cursor in the browser lets you scroll around and click on any
area to zoom in. The rendering comes close to a desktop version, except
the text size is cranked up quite a bit to make everything easier to
read. That's fine for many sites, but can cause the layout to get funky
on other sites. A smart zooming causes text columns to fill the screen
perfectly with one click. The fast speed provided by 3G data is
apparent and much appreciated in both applications.
Unfortunately the devices that RIM had on hand did not have full
inboxes, so we weren't able to get a sense of what the email and
messaging experience of the Bold is all about. This is a shame, because
it is obviously the device's primary attraction. What we were able to
see showed a very slight update to the appearance of the inbox. It is
more appealing to the eye, less utilitarian.
Once you dig down several layers from the revised menus and icons,
you begin to see those old black and white BlackBerry menus appear, so
this means RIM didn't take the underlying code too far from its roots.
Still, the basic experience you get with the Bold is much closer to
that of a feature phone, than with a business device with some features
slapped in for good measure. The multimedia functions feel like less of
an afterthought. That's a good thing.
