Sony Ericsson G502 Review

Introduction:

In the beginning of the year, Sony Ericsson presented its G series, targeting the “Internet generation”. The first models (G700 and G900), were respectively from the middle and upper range, they were equipped with touchscreen, Symbian UIQ and a good web browser. Their main idea was to provide everything needed to the average consumer and even something extra on top.

Soon after, was announced the G502, which we are about to discuss in this review. It carries the same idea, but it’s not based on the Symbian UIQ and is not equipped with a touch display. It falls in the lower mid range and is Internet oriented as well, offering all basic functions at an affordable price.

The package contains:

To a great extend, the phone carries the same message as K660, which is also designed for the web browsing, but was announced before the G-series were created.

Design:

The Sony Ericsson models and especially the ones from the middle class, have never had extravagant or innovative design. G502 is no different, but that doesn’t mean it is ugly. It is compact and very pleasant to the touch. The device very well balanced and creates the illusion that it is lighter than it is.



You can compare the Sony Ericsson G502 to many other phones, using PhoneArena's Visual Size Compare tool

It is equipped with a 2” display, with resolution of 240x320 pixels, which offers very good, saturated and contrast colors. Nevertheless, using it in direct sunlight is problematic. However, we were very happy to see such a good display in a phone, belonging to this market segment.

The soft buttons have a pleasant wavy relief and are large and comfortable enough. The exception here is the D-pad, whose directions are small and hard to press. The middle button is square and separated from the rest with a red backlight, which at times, made us think it is a joystick.


Underneath, we have the numeric keypad, also with a wavy relief. Its keys are wide, relatively easy to press and illuminated in white. Overall, it is very comfortable, but there are no shortcut indicators, facilitating surfing the Internet. Those were one of the advantages offered by K660, which is the other web oriented phone from this class of the manufacturer.

On the right side, we have the volume rocker and the camera dedicated button. The last one is extremely hard to press, due to its short stroke and small size. The only marking for the M2 card slot is located on the left. However, to get to it, you have to remove the battery lid which is not very convenient.


On the bottom of the phone, we have the charger/data cable/handsfree connector and the hand straphanger.

Overall, G502 is a compact device very comfortable to carry in your pocket. Unfortunately, it would hardly attract much attention. Besides a black one, (like the one we reviewed known as Champagne Black) there is also a white color scheme called Brilliant Hazel.

Interface:

“You don’t have to be big, to be smart”. That’s the case with the G502, which even though a representative of the lower mid level device group, has the same interface used by the big guys like K850 and W890. That is definitely an advantage.

The homescreen has not been changed and is similar to the older versions – the lower part shows the functions of the soft buttons and of the central key of the D-pad. The background can be animated, which is joy for the eyes.

The menu system is the same, showing the main as a 3x4 grid, and the sub menus as a vertical list. By the way, this version includes Flash animated themes for the main menu, which changes its appearance.

Phonebook:

You can store up to 1000 contacts, and you can add a few extra numbers for each of them (up to 7000 total), e-mails and web addresses. Besides, you can assign a picture, ringtone, videotone, to notify you of an incoming call. The user is also able to add contacts to groups, but those cannot have a separate melody.


Searching for a contact is done, by directly inputting letters from the keyboard, but unfortunately the system will only use the first name as a criteria.

If you directly dial a number from the homescreen, G502 will look for matching entries in the phonebooks (names and numbers), as in WM6 and BlackBerry. Here we have the predictive input present, which helps you in the search. If you want to call “Neo” for example, press 636 (6-MNO, 3-DEF, 6-MNO) and the phone will list all matches almost immediately. Regrettably, like in the contacts you can’t search by the second name.
Organizer:

Just as the Contacts, the Organizer menu has its own icon in the main menu. Its options include calendar, tasks, notes, alarms, calculator, timer, stopwatch, code memo, applications links, and synchronization option.

The Calendar can be viewed for a month, week, or a day; the latter option shows the events, set for the particular day, and it enables you to add new options. When you want to add appointments, you select the starting time, duration and the reminder’s time. You can include details about the venue of the event, as well as a description. You have the option of setting it as an All day event (all birth dates from the contacts list are added as such) and to include recurrence options (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).


You can also save simple Tasks (reminder for Task or Phone Call) or write a plain note. The menu houses a Calculator with basic functionality, a Countdown timer, and a Stopwatch capable of storing up to nine results, as well. We think that the Code Memo option is useless and we will prefer to have a “safe” where we can save text information, LOCKED (not coded) by a password.


Additionally, in this menu is the file manager, which was found in the main menu of phones with the earlier software version. It sorts the content by type and offers an option to filter either the phone or the card memory, or to view both at the same time.

Instead of the manager, the main menu has icon for the five alarms. Each of them can be set on its own and has fields for time, recurrence, and signal type.

The voice commands are activated by holding down one of the volume keys, and if you don’t have any voice-tags recorded, the phone will prompt you to enter one. We think that this system is useless, since you must read what it says on the screen, but shortly after that hold the phone to your ear, as it has sound notifications but doesn’t utilize the speakerphone. This makes voice-tags absolutely inconvenient to use and we had a problem even with one contact saved only. There's no room for making a comparison with the system used in Symbian S60 phones or any other that have speaker-independent voice commands for making calls and opening applications. To sum it up, the one here simply does not work.

The phone has about 32 MB of internal memory that can be expanded through Memory Stick Micro (M2) cards.

Messaging:

Besides SMS and MMS, the messaging menu also houses an e-mail client. We were pleasantly surprised when G502 offered to check for the settings on-line. So if you are using one of the more popular web mail servers, you can save some time, because you won’t have to input them manually. This is a great function for a phone of a relatively low class, especially considering the fact that it is not present at all in the top models of some rival brands. Two thumbs up for Sony Ericsson.

T9 assists you for the text input, which accelerates the process to a great extend. The factory preset templates can also save you some time, by giving you one of the most popular phrases.

Similarly to K850, here we also have an RSS reader in the messaging menu. This program is used for browsing through web content without loading entire pages. We very much liked the ability to show the new information from the sites of interest on the start screen (similar to widgets).

Connectivity:

Here, G502 is up against the main rival for the title “Best web browsing phone” in the “low mid” class – К660. The last one has been the leader from the very beginning, since it is quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) and can be used anywhere on the Globe equally well. However, this is a minimal advantage, because both phones cannot use UMTS (2100) in America. They are head to head in Europe and Asia, thanks to the HSDPA 3.6 Mbit/s support. Nevertheless, K660 has a videocalling camera, which is still considered an advantage.

For local connectivity you can use a wireless Bluetooth 2.0 connection or a using the USB cable (PC), which unfortunately is not provided in the package. The standard for all Sony Ericsson phones PC Suite can be downloaded from the manufacturer’s site, but if you connect the G502 with a PC as a mass storage device, you will be able to transfer files directly.

Internet:

So far, both models performed almost equally, with K660 being slightly ahead. Their browsers are identical as well (Access NetFront 3.4). That program manages easily to load complex pages (like phonearena.com’s homepage for example), with the lower speed (if using EDGE), being the single obstacle for fully visualizing all images. Luckily, they can be disabled from the view settings. Also from there, you can choose whether you want to see the page in a portrait or in a landscape mode, to zoom in/out, or to enable panning. The last function is very well realized and allows for faster viewing of large pages, giving you the ability to see in detail what’s of interest to you.


From the tools menu you can add a bookmark, search for an element on the current site, mark and copy, save an image or a page, reload the page or to send a link (as a message, e-mail and even via Bluetooth).

The extras offered by the browsers of both are identical, and apparently, the winner will be the one having a more user-friendly interface. Here we should witness one of K660’s strengths, which has four shortcuts assigned, used to Search, add Bookmarks, go to Homepage and to Zoom out. Meanwhile, in G502 the functions, which have keyboard shortcuts are:

* - change view (full screen, landscape and portrait mode with options displayed)
0 - turns on zooming in/out (by using the different D-pad directions)
# - activates panning
1 - bookmarks

Inputting any letter from the keyboard, will automatically activate the address bar (always visualized vertically for convenience).

G502’s shortcuts lead to the more important functions and are quite handy with the only problem being that they are not clearly marked and you’ll have to experiment or read the manual in order to get used to them.

According to us, this titanic battle between the mid-class Internet oriented phones produced no winner. Even though K660 has the minor advantage of being a global phone, it cannot provide high-speed web access all over the World.

Multimedia:

G502 is equipped with the already standard for the latest Sony Ericsson models, multimedia menu. We were glad to see options here, which not until long ago, were only appropriate to the high class devices of this type. This will definitely be a plus for the audience G502 is intended for or in other words, for the “Internet generation”.

The music player offers options for sorting the tracks by artist, album, or by the user created playlist. You can upload audio books as well. The fact that the weak loudspeaker and the average sound quality can be seen as drawbacks, is understandable, bearing in mind that we are not discussing a multimedia phone.




The TrackID function is accessible from the Entertainment menu and thanks to it, you won’t be wondering who is the artist of the song you are currently listening to. However, there is an RDS FM Radio for when you get tired of the uploaded music.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that G502 easily played 320x240 pixels videos in H.264 format. Despite that the quality of the picture wasn’t great, the player did a good job for a device of this class.


Camera:

The G502’s camera is 2-megapixel without autofocus or flash. The good news is that, it uses the software we know well from the high class of the manufacturer. It starts up quickly (about 3 seconds) and offers quite some options. The left soft button opens the settings menu, where you can select the shooting mode (normal, panoramic, frames, burst), resolution and other options such as night mode, countdown timer, white balance, etc.

The pictures are not top quality and have poor detail, but that is normal for a camera from this class. However, when taking photographs outdoors or in a well-lighted area the colors are real and saturated. Avoid shooting when there is not enough light, because the results will make you cry.



The video camera can record clips in MP4 format with QVGA resolution and 15 fps, which is much better than 3GP, but is far from useful on a computer, due to the low quality.

Sony Ericsson G502 sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution

Software:

As seen in the previous phones by Sony Ericsson, the Entertainment menu holds the Photo, Music and Video DJ applications, which are simple multimedia editors. Here you will also find Games, the Bluetooth remote control function and the Dictaphone. The innovation here is the presence of the Location services submenu, which includes the Google Maps application, My favourites menu, Status info (accessible only if an external GPS module is present), Log and Settings. All these options demonstrate that G502 can be used for navigation, which is very good. Do not forget that you’ll still need an external GPS module for navigation.

QuadraPop is the only one factory preloaded game that the phone comes with. It is something like Tetris, but you have to get in a group at least four gems of the same color in order to score points. It sounds pretty simple, but it is not. The game is actually much more complicated and you could easily kill some time playing, which after all, is the main idea of such games.

Performance:

The good news is that G502 performs very well during a talk. Even though some what monotonous, you will hear your collocutor loud and clear and vise versa. The loudspeaker is a good one and is very handy, as long as you are not at a very noisy place.

Sony Ericsson continues to use very long lasting batteries in all their models. According to the specifications, the one in G502 has to be good for 10 hours of talking or 14 days in standby mode.

There were no significant software defects at any time, during our tests. Despite using the interface of the high class of the manufacturer, the menus were opening almost simultaneously. This is a prove of the good optimization of the device.

Conclusion:

The big question here is „Does the phone satisfy the needs of the internet generation?”. If you ask us, it does.

Sony Ericsson G502 is a wonderful example for a combination between an affordable, unpretentious package, and every function and option, which the modern user needs. It has a really impressive for such a device Web browser, high-speed Internet support, a good e-mail client and quality sound during a talk. The main problems are related to the design language, with the phone being not as attractive and the uncomfortable D-pad.