esterday I received my new phone – the Sony Ericsson C905 Cybershot. Here are my thoughts after a day of use.
I love it. I really do. People were saying that the phone would be ungainly because it has an 8.1 megapixel camera on board but in fact it is only a few millimeters thicker than the phone I was upgrading from – the Sony Ericsson K810i.
It’s my first slider phone so I have no experience with consistent slider usage but the motion seems solid. The only problem with the slider is that is doesn’t slide the keypad out far enough so there is very little space between the main phone and the first row of keys leading to pressing the ‘1′ and ‘4′ keys at the same time but I have no doubt I will get use to it.
The features list is quite extensive even though it isn’t a smartphone.
- 8.1 MP Camera
- Xenon Flash
- AF Assist Light (Which doubles as a torch when recording video in low light)
- Face Detection
- WI-FI
- GPS (Real not pseudo)
- HSDPA
- 3G
- GPRS
- WAP
- Accellerometer
- M2 Memory Card Slot (2GB Supplied)
The most important change in this phone for me is the inclusion of a ‘D-pad’ instead of the dreaded joystick that Sony Ericsson seem so fond of. They seem to randomly include either so I am glad this phone has been chosen for the ‘D-pad’.
All in all I am very impressed with the amount of technology that has been packed into this phone considering that 18 months ago my previous phone was the pinnacle of mobile camera technology. Imagine what will be available in another 18 months. Samsung have already hinted at a 12MP camera phone in 2009 that occupies less space than their existing 8MP sensor.
Here are some pictures taken from my window. The first with my old Sony Ericsson K810i and the second with my new Sony Ericsson C905. Click to see the full size images.
I really like this. It looks so touchable which is handy as it has a touch screen interface. It uses a very thin touch panel and an active matrix organic LED (AMOLED) so the colours are better (16 million) and it is far more energy efficient managing to play music for 40 hours even with the 3.3″ display.
I don’t know if it will be iTunes compatible as many other new players a becoming, and probably contains it’s own unique take on music management software. iTunes is the most user friendly music management / mp3 player syncing software I have used so I hope that it would.
No idea on pricing or availability, the site is not all in English so who knows. Nice though.
While I was in Vegas I had the opportunity to go to the Rio hotel and casino and to the bar with Microsoft Surface tables in it. At first I was really quite amazed at how seamlessly they worked with the decor and surroundings but as I explored them further there were a few usability issues with them.
So start with, nobody was really ‘using them’. I sat down with a few other people at one of the tables, they were trying to communicate with the table next to us. On the screen was a CCTV feed from all the other active tables. It seemed as though you had to drag and drop words from the sides to the screen and the message would send. This didn’t happen, to the point where we were running backwards and forwards between the tables defeating the point of the casual flirty comment between tables.
Another thing was that nobody was putting their drinks on the actual screen, even though cool effects happen when you do, nobody seemed to have noticed this. The problem was that there was a rim round the edge that was a different colour to the screen so people put their glasses on the edge as they didn’t want to break the screen.
I’m sure there were many more features that these tables have (like ordering drinks and playing games etc) but after the initial frustration with the technology nobody seemed interested in exploring further. The average usage time from what I observed was less than 10 minutes.
The more you drink, the more you want it to work but the less it does.
All in all, it was a gimmick for the bar and for Microsoft.
I love gadgets, so whenever a new one comes along, I sit at my laptop drooling over the sleek lines, the glossy finish, the system specs and what it would be like to hold one in my hand… Not once do I think about trivial things like cost.
So when I came across this little gadget wonder I did as described above.
It’s a box from ASUS (good start) which will convert ANY signal into HD and beyond! Actually it goes up to 1,920×1,200 and can even take signals from RF… if you have something thats decade old. It allows you to connect anything to an HD monitor and use it as a universal HD display. Even comes with it’s own remote and has features like Picture-in-Picture. It claims to have better picture quality than anything else because of superior picture processing and some kind of ‘anti-blocking’ system.
Cool… if I needed it… which I don’t… but I want it anyway!
