Sony Ericsson C903
Maxabout Review
High End Camera Phone
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Photos
Sony Ericsson C903
Sony Ericsson C903 is a compact and attractive cameraphone. Sporting a slider design, the C903 has a rather angular look, even with the rounded corners. The slider mechanism is solid and the phone feels comfortable in the hand.
The 2.4-inch display is up to usual Sony Ericsson standards, with bright colors and sharp graphics. The icon-based menu interface is classic Sony Ericsson, which is to say it is simple and intuitive.
The navigation array favors squares instead of circles. You'll find a four-way toggle with a central OK button, two soft keys, Talk and End/power controls, a shortcut button, and a clear key. The toggle is tactile and though the array is spacious, the soft keys are small. Other exterior controls include a volume rocker, a camera shutter, and a player button on the right spine.
The C903's camera sits on its rear side next to the flash. Opening the cover will start the camera automatically and vice versa. The thin metallic ridges between rows enhance touch orientation and tactility is further improved by the fact that the flatbed keypad is tangibly ribbed to the touch. Key presses involve a distinct click and typing is quick and easy.
The left side of Sony Ericsson C903 features nothing but the regular Fast Port - unfortunately, but quite expectedly, it doesn't have any protective cover to conceal the connectors and keep away dirt and grime away.
The M2 memory card symbol simply indicates the whereabouts of the actual slot, which is hidden under the battery cover. It is hot-swappable though, you just have to remove the back cover to access it. The loudspeaker grill lies almost unnoticeable on the left near the memory card slot section.
The right side of the handset is the top side in digicam terms. It hosts the slightly elevated volume rocker - which doubles as a zoom lever when taking or browsing pictures - and all the camera controls. The two-step shutter key is also there and is positioned very comfortably.
It employs a 2.4" 256K-color TFT display of QVGA resolution and it is said to have a scratch resistant surface. Though the same size and resolution as the C905 display, the two screens are quite different in terms of color and reflections.
The superior mineral coated display of the C905 is extremely low on reflections and has superb clarity and contrast while the display of the C903 is more reflective resulting in less vivid colors.
It has a 5 megapixel camera capable of producing images with a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. The handset is equipped with a LED flash to assist shooting in poor light conditions.
The 5 megapixel autofocus camera offers a wide range of niceties such as smile shutter, face detection, image and video stabilizer, BestPic, auto-rotate, macro mode, spot metering, camera images geo-tagging, etc.
The camera toolbar gives access to shoot mode, scenes, picture size, focus, flash, self-timer, metering mode, white balance, effects, and settings Multi Menu. Sadly, an ISO setting is not available in the C903.
The focus mode has an extra feature - Face detection. The face recognition system allows you to simultaneously track as many as 3 faces but focus is locked on the one that's closest to the center of the frame.
The image stabilizer is supposed to keep images from blurring in dark environments but, as in all phone cameras so far, it's purely a software tweak of questionable efficiency. Plus, no stabilization can help you if your subjects are moving.
The shoot mode menu has five modes, two of which deserve special attention - the well known BestPic and a feature introduced to the market for the first time by Sony Ericsson in C905 via a firmware update - the Smile Shutter mode.
Using the Smile Shutter is easy - first you fully press the camera key all the way down to activate it. A small blinking yellow icon in the right upper corner indicates that the mode is working and from here on the phone automatically snaps the photo as soon as it "spots" a grinning face.
The ultra quick-snapping BestPic mode has two varieties - fast and slow. In fast mode it produces 9 full-size 5 megapixel images in about 1.6sec, each of them of approximately 1MB of size.
The slow mode takes 9 images again but at a larger interval of about 2.8sec. The good thing about the BestPic mode is that the LED flash can be used in both slow and fast modes and illuminates constantly while the camera takes the 9 photos.
Sony Ericsson C903 is a cameraphone but it also likes to come off as a genuine all-rounder. It is packed with features you'd expect of a high-end phone and it behaves like one as well.
Main Features Of Sony Ericsson C903:
- 5 MP Camera with dual LED flash, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, active lens cover
- Built-in GPS with A-GPS support, Wayfinder Navigator software, geotagging
- Dedicated camera mode switch and gallery keys
- Scratch resistant 2.4" 256K-color TFT display
- Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
- Bluetooth (with A2DP), USB v2.0
- FM radio with RDS and enhanced TrackID