Sony Ericsson C905 Cybershot Camera Phone: Is it Worth Getting it for Xmas? Read on...

Okay, I got the Sony Ericsson C905 and tried it out for a week. Seems like SE is really trying to rejuvenate itself - launched its first windows mobile phone X1 Xperia and now its first 8.1 megapixals phone competing with the LG and Samsung in the camera phone market. Let's get down to the phone hardware first, and then the software. 

Phone Hardware

1. SE C905 is a non-touch phone. It's a slider phone and it feels kind of heavy at 136g and slightly bulkier than the equivalent touch phones like Samsung M8800 PIXON or LG RENOIR KC910. However, it is definitely easier to hold in the hands as a compact camera and yes it does have many features of a point and shoot camera (and I'll talk more about that later). 

2. Having used the phone day and night for a week, I'm still not quite used to the 'flat' keypad. I feel that the keys are a little too stiff for my liking. Same goes for the navigation controls just below the screen but the control buttons provide easy access to the menu and key functions without having to slide out the keypad. 

 

3. This is not a touch phone so the screen size is smaller. It's 2.4 inch screen with 262K color. The menu UI is easy to recognize and if you are a SE phone supporter, it's not difficult to navigate the phone. 

 

4. From the back of the phone, it does have the look of a Sony camera. The lens is behind a steel panel cover which you need to slide down before taking the photo. This helps to keep the lens clean and free from scratches. 

 

5. Like the rest of the SE phones, this phone uses a proprietary connector for the headphone. This is not the W-series phone so this is not surprising. However, I must say that if you are not an audiophile, this phone is good enough for decent music playback. No doubt, the headphone is a letdown but if you use the speaker, it's loud and sound is clear. 

 

6. The phone has an internal memory of 160MB and has an expandable slot using M2 (memory stick micro) which can have up to  8GB storage. This is one thing that I don't really like about SE. Most of the phones are using microSD (even Sony Ericsson's own Xperia X1) and yet C905 uses M2. There is 16GB for M2 but C905 only supports upto 8GB. So if you have multiple microSDs that you amass from multiple phones, I'm sorry to tell you that you gotta give them up if you want to buy C905. Of course, M2 can also be used in PSP. So all is not lost. You can also use the phone for mass storage. Just connect the phone to the computer and you can then easily transfer files to the M2 card. 

 

7.   Nowadays it seems to be a common feature for phones to be equipped with GPS and Google Maps. SE C905 has Google maps and Wayfinder Navigator. Wayfinder offers voice prompt but it is not free. Google maps is free and to me Google maps serves my purpose as I don't need a turn by turn voice navigation.

 

8. Given the small screen (2.4 inch), this phone is only meant for light browsing, preferably for websites that have web pages formatted for mobile screen. The phone supports WiFi. 

 

9. Last but not least, C905 has several navigation buttons (see pictures) for easy control and access to media, contacts or shortcuts to menu. When the phone is in camera mode, these navigation buttons become shortcuts to adjust the camera settings including flash, exposure, photo size etc. Convenient and easy to use. 

 

Phone OS and Applications

1. SE has included a video demo in the phone. The demo shows that you can easily upload your photos to youtube, flickr, blogger or facebook. The strange thing is that I can only upload my photo to blogger and I can't seem to locate the shortcuts or apps to upload my photo to youtube, flickr or facebook. I wonder is it because it's a test set and hence the sites are not properly set up on the phone. Otherwise, if you know how to install Shozu onto C905, you can do so. 

 

2. SE uses a consistent UI for the media. You see a similar UI for Xperia as well. The UI is probably adopted from the PSP where it shows a list comprising photos, music, video, games, web feeds and settings (see picture). This is a neat way. In addition, C905 offers simple, easy to use editing tools for its videos, photos and music. 

 

3. For those who need to use the phone as a voice recorder, C905 can be used for voice recording. But I don't see how I can mix this into any of its editing tools. It's a pity. It will be interesting if I can insert my voice recording when I'm using the VideoDJ or MusicDJ or even the PhotoDJ (editing apps on the C905). 

 

4. When you switch to the music player, the navigation buttons that serve as shortcuts for the camera function will become the control buttons for the music player. In addition, you can set the equalizer. I won't probably use it with my headphones since I'm quite particular with my earpiece (only Shure for me). I tested the phone by playing the music through its built-in speakers. Sound quality is decent and the speakers are loud. You can also stream music via WiFi. 

 

5. However, unlike the Pixon for example, you can't set the music piece as voice or video call ringtone or caller ringtone. Again, I must stress that this is not the W-series SE phones and I will refrain from having any unrealistic expectations in this respect. However, it may be nice if SE can have a one-click access to its PlayNow Arena music store (http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/15371.cfm)  rather than having to get out of the music player and go to the menu to access it. 

 

6. With the small screen size, this phone is not going to ideal for video. I won't bother to stretch this phone to be a portable video player. 

 

7. The phone has simple email function. I have set up my Gmail account using IMAP. It works but it cannot open attachment. Again, I just want to say this is primarily a camera phone. 

 

8. I must commend on the camera features. Just to recap - it's 8.1MP with autofocus and 16x digital zoom. It has autoflash (a feature that you can turn off if you don't like). Oh, I should mention that it's Xenon Flash. In addition, the phone offers image stabalizer and several other high end features of a point and shoot camera. I have capture all the screenshots of the camera features (see pictures). In addition, you can easily upload the pictures after taking the photos. 

 

9. Since the USP of SE C905 is the 8.1MP camera, I will elaborate a little more on the features. Under Shoot mode, you can choose Normal, Smart Contrast, BestPic, Panorama, Frames. Under Scenes, you can choose Auto, Twilight Landscape/Portrait, Normal Landscape/Portrait, Beach/Snow, Sports, Document. Under Picture Size, you can choose from as small as 640x480 (best for MMS) right up to 8MP. Under Focus, you can choose Auto, Face Detection, Macro, Infinite. Under Flash, you can set it Auto, Red-eye reduction or Off. There is also a self-timer function and metering mode. You can also select the appropriate White Balance (Auto, Daylight, Cloudy etc) and Effects (B&W, Negative, Sepia, etc). Finally, the other features include picture quality, AF light, Stabiliser, Geo-tagging, Auto-rotation. 

 

10. Finally, SE C905 has a built-in slideshow function for photos and a TV out feature. All you need to do is to choose slide show and connect to the TV and you can start to enjoy all the photos that you have taken. The slideshow has several presets that you can choose. The presets are the transition animations between each photo. However, do note that the TV-out cable is an optional accessory that you have to purchase separately. 

 

Well, if you are a SE phone lover and need a good camera phone, this may be the phone for you, provided the price tag is right. Other than its camera features, it's a rather basic phone and I would not suggest you buy this phone if you don't really need the camera feature. 

 

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My Favourite iPhone App for the Festive Season

Christmas is only 2 weeks away and I just purchased hiCard last week from iTunes. It's definitely not as sweet and as nice as sending proper Christmas cards by mail but the thing is I don't have the most up to date mailing addresses of my friends and associates and quite a number of them are overseas. I'm very sure the email addresses (at least the personal email addresses) will still be valid. So, this hiCard is the best alternative for me. Unlike some free web-based ecard service, the recepient needs to click on the URL in the email to retrieve the card. Using hiCard, the recepient receives the card nicely embedded in email with a personalised message from me.

Merry X'mas!

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{UPDATED} Why do I buy so many iPhone apps and what can other smartphones players learn from this?

I was sitting next to a passenger on the plane when I took out my iPhone to put it on airplane mode. The passenger asked my opinion about the iPhone and he was interested to take a look at the apps I installed on the iPhone. He was rather surprised at the number of apps I have on my iPhone and suddenly it just dawned on me that I had never bought as many apps on other smartphone platforms - whether it's windows mobile, symbian or blackberry. See the recent screenshots on my iPhone. These are not all the apps that I have bought. I have not installed all the apps on the iPhone. 

I started to take a closer look at the apps that I have bought over the months on iPhone. I realised that while I have some free apps, most of the apps that I have on iPhone are paid apps. I also start to figure out that over time my spending threshold and risk appetite on iPhone apps have increased. In the past, I would do a more extensive search on the app before I made a decision to buy the app and most of the apps would cost $0.99 to $2.99; nowadays, as long as the app is not more than $5, I will be willing to fork out that money to try that app (of course, I do still read the reviews just to make sure I don't get a lemon!). In fact, I realised that I have bought quite a few apps of the same category. The low price simply removes the entry barrier and increases my willingness to take risk to buy the the app, particularly if you become comfortable with the general quality of the apps that appear on appstore over time.

Now, the interesting thing is I don't really often use most of the apps that I bought. In fact, I have bought some games because I thought the games might just come in handy if I need to kill time and after a good 2-3 months, I have yet to play more than 5 minutes on the game before quitting them. I'm just not into games (that I knew even before I bought the games. I have Nintendo DS Lite and PSP. DS Lite is collecting dust and PSP is given away - together with a few hundred dollars worth of games that I bought). Well, I figured out that it's better to just buy the games from iPhone appstore that cost not more than $10 than to spend a few hundred bucks on game consoles. But games aside, I also have quite a few photography-related apps such as PanoLab pro, Camerabag, Picoli, Photogene. I hardly use them as well. I use twitter on my iPhone and I had tried out quite a few Twitter apps and were not happy with most of them as I often had the error message on host connection. Twittie is now my latest Twitter app. 

Other than the pre-installed apps on iPhone, There are not more than 5 apps that I use regularly (by that I mean more than 3 times a week). They are: Newsstand, Speakeasy and Twittie, MProfs, Bloomberg. As the Appstore does not have a trial use (except for some apps which have the lite version and that's entirely at the discretion of the developers), I tend to try out many different apps for the same kind of functionality. Just take the Twitter app for example, I had tried out Twitterlator, Twitteriffic, Twinkle, Twitterfon (you won't see all these in the screen shots now as I've discarded some of these apps) before Twittie. I decided to try out Twittie because of the rave reviews and also because the app is affordable (below my $5 threshold). If Apple really takes customer experience seriously, I would urge Apple to work with the developers to have have a "lite verion" or "trial version - with limited functionality or time limit") for the apps and to review the current rating system (see my earlier post on Appstore rating system). 

Perhaps, Google or Blackberry can learn from what Apple has done right (or not so right) for the Appstore. I believe that it will be applications and services on the phone that will create the stickiness. That's why we have Android Marketplace for the G1 phone, Blackberry Application Centre for the Storm. This also explains why Nokia has invested billions of dollars to acquire resources and technologies to create the Ovi services and its Nokia Music Store. When Apple first launched its iPhone 2G more than a year ago, critics were doubtful of Apple's success in the market given that the mobile phone market was already saturated and highly competitive. Well, Apple did not compete in the same playing field. They changed the rules. Instead of competing with the smartphones manufacturers head-on, Apple chose to avoid direct competition by positioning the iPhone as a fun, all-in-one entertainment handset for consumers. A year later, Apple raises the bar with the the introduction of Appstore as a key differentiator for the iPhone 3G.

{New}Whether G1 or Storm will be the iPhone killer, let's see. But one thing is clear: if the phone is not user-friendly, forget about the apps. I had tested Storm for a few days and quite honestly, I was not used to the touch and click. I literally had finger-ache. I could not type using holding the Storm in portrait mode because I was not used to the SureType keypad. I had to tilt the phone to a landscape mode. Storm provides the SurePress keypad in full Qwerty form. Holding the Storm in landscape mode and having to press on the screen was just not my cup of tea. G1 is gaining speed with its Android Marketplace. In fact, Wikitude which uses Augmented Reality has been made available on G1 and not on iPhone. At least for now the web-based cut and paste function Pastebud is made available by using javascript bookmarklets. Not exactly ideal - but at least it's a workaround. For that matter, another app SaveMyDocs is another workaround using javascript to allow you to save documents opened in Safari for offline reading.

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