Previewing the Sony Ericsson G900

The Mobile World Congress (or MWC) brought about many interesting mobile phones including announcements from each of the top-3 major manufacturers.

Sony Ericsson did a very good job of making themselves the stars of the show – or more specifically the handsets. The main attraction from them was obviously the XPERIA X1, a new Windows Mobile smartphone with a fancy 3" touchscreen.

Surprisingly, the most consumer friendly device with the most sales potential managed to sneak in with considerably less fervour and almost went unnoticed was the G900, the second and most powerful of a new series of compact user-friendly smartphones.

User-friendliness isn't usually a trait assigned to smartphones at all but Sony Ericsson are clearly looking at manufacturing devices with this kind of power but with more flexibility to make them more reachable to the average consumer.

The clearest indication of Sony Ericsson's intentions is in the design of the G900 (which in turn is almost identical to the G700.) The Sony Ericsson G900 reminds me a little of the Nokia 6300 or more closer to home, the Sony Ericsson K610i in design, but that's where the similarities end as this phone is streets ahead in terms of the features available, some of which haven't been seen in high-end mobile phones thus far.

The Sony Ericsson G900 runs on the latest version of the Symbian OS, and the fact that it manages to keep thickness down to just 13mm completely belies the capabilities underneath.
Connectivity is typically top-of-the range thanks to the 3G support, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, GPRS and Wi-Fi.

Surely the most interesting aspect of the G900 is the 2.4" touchscreen which has been added to negate the need for soft keys on the front-end of the phone. This helps in the integration of a one-touch media function system on the front page.

A particularly intriguing benefit of having a touchscreen in a mobile phone of this kind is in how the software has been adjusted to benefit the imaging possibilities. In the case of the G900, when taking pictures with the 5 Megapixel camera (autofocus & image stabilizer are both present), the user is able to select a precise focus point of the image by gently tapping the relevant area of the screen. This is something that hasn't been seen before and if implemented in the right way will definitely be one of the key points during the inevitable advertising campaign.

Protection for the camera lens is offered in a very unusual way by Sony Ericsson in the G900. The top part of this bar-phone is slid upwards to extend the overall height of the phone, while at the same time revealing the camera lens and the LED flash.

The Sony Ericsson G900 will come with 160MB of internal memory and will also support Sony Ericssons rapidly-fading Memory Stick Micro M2 format. A music player also comes with the G900 along with an FM Radio with RDS and a business card scanner via the digital camera.

The dull and functional looks aside, the Sony Ericsson G900 is a top of the range mobile phone that won't necessarily offer proper competition with dedicated smartphones but does have some unique features, in particular the manual focus aspect of the 5 Megapixel camera via the touchscreen display, which if it works as they say, will be a fantastic talking point of this phone.