Sony Ericsson G900 Review

Introduction:

The busy lifestyle of the contemporary individual justifies the need for an assistant, which to help him plan his schedule. A mobile device with a convenient personal organizer and easy Internet access is what Sony Ericsson’s G-series offers them. However, the company’s solution doesn’t come with the complications brought by all smartphones.

G900 is the flagship model of the new line and it’s positioned in the high-class. The phone is based on Symbian UIQ without making it hard to use. Its main purpose is to offer intuitive work, and the OS will simply widen the organizing options. Like its smaller brother G700, the flagship model is equipped wit a touchscreen, on which you can write or draw notes. In contrast to it though, it has a 5-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi support, respectively for quality photographs and Internet access.

The package includes: The phone, Handsfree, Charger, Data cable, Additional stylus, Software CD, Manual, Warranty, Two booklets

Design:

The first nice thing we notice about G900’s design is its slimness (0.5”). In combination with the light weight, these dimensions make it very convenient to carry in a pocket.




You can compare the Sony Ericsson G900 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

It is equipped with a 2.4” touch display with a resolution of 240х320 pixels, which deserves a good grade – the colors it offers are somewhat pale, but luckily, the screen remains usable even in direct sunlight. The touch sensitivity it has is great but there’s only sound notification and no vibration, which makes it useless in a noisy environment.

As we’ve already mentioned, the display is mainly intended for inputting text via handwriting recognition, and not for navigation. That’s why the stylus, which is too short is not such a big problem.

The navigational buttons are located under the display, surrounding the 5-way D-pad and are used for going back, delete and shortcuts to the functions important for the model - writing of notes and messages. At this location we usually see the soft keys (their functions are now to be found on the display) and at first, this will lead to their frequent incorrect use. Same as the keyboard, the navigational buttons are quite comfortable, have a well-expressed relief and good drive.


On the right side of the phone we have the volume controls, the key for locking the display and the keyboard (simultaneously) and the camera shortcut. Unfortunately, they not only look extremely cheap but also have a very short drive, which makes them inconvenient to use.

The opposite side houses the charger connector, LED (flashes green in the event of a missed event and is constantly lit when charging) and the M2 card slot. Unfortunately, in order to get to the last one, you have to remove the back lid, which is not very practical.

Overall, we are happy with G900’s appearance for which also contributes the pleasant dark red color scheme. We definitely like this one better than the brown we previewed some time ago. The model will not become a favorite to the fashion phone fans but it’s still looks like a user-friendly device.

Interface:

Sony Ericsson G900 is based on Symbian UIQ 3.0, with slight modifications. Respectively, its interface very much resembles P1’s with all its pluses and minuses.

The G-line doesn’t oblige you to use the touch screen (besides the soft buttons located there) and its full functionality is accessible via the hardware buttons. This is extremely good news for the people who are not used to or just don’t like touching the display. If you are not one of them, the device still has what to offer; most icons are large enough and easy to use with fingers, without the need of the small stylus.

Some modifications can be noticed in the row of icons located on the homescreen. These are not simply shortcuts, as in P1, but a plug-in, which can be personalized. Besides the most frequently used functions like the main menu, messaging, appointments, favorite contacts and shortcut menu (letting you add 9 extra applications of your choice) you can also add:

Thanks to those, you can make your life much easier and to reduce rummaging through the main menu to a minimum. These applications still need optimization; it would have been better if you could rearrange them for example. Besides, the navigation is only convenient with the D-Pad, because you cannot scroll via dragging. Overall, this element is realized better than the standby applications and the widget in other phones (e.g. LG KF700, Samsung F480) and is similar to modern smartphones such as HTC Touch Diamond.

There is also another version of this screen, which is called “business”. Here, the icons simply act as shortcuts to a given function, but the menu can have up to 15 applications of your choice.

The appearance of the menus and the background can be personalized via themes, but the icons never change.

Phonebook:

In G900, the phonebook hasn’t been a subject to any serious modifications and looks as in the non-smart phones of the manufacturer. The contacts appear as a list composed of a name and primary number, but the caller ID icon is not present. Search is only done by the first name, no matter in what manner is the phonebook arranged. In other words if you’ve chosen to see last names first the filtering will be done only according to them, which is quite inconvenient.

When adding a contact you can't make a mistake – everything's easy and clear, and the fields are divided into a few tabs, as it is with standard Sony Ericsson phones. You can easily add additional numbers and emails fields if you need some, and you won't experience any limitations (one type of field can be added as much times as you want). This is the same as with S60 devices and is better than the fixed fields of WM smartphones.

If you want you can also add personal ringtone or callerID image, and with the latter the phone allows you to capture the image at the moment with small window using the camera.

When dialing a number from the keyboard, you won’t get any matches from the phonebook like you do with most modern models..

Organizer:

Of course, the phone has a calendar, which helps you organize your schedule. It offers the standard viewing options (by month/week/day) and you can store appointments, reminders, all day events and anniversaries. An alarm can be set for every event featuring repetition, description, start and end time. There are two separate tabs, from which you can add visitors, chair and note.

The File manager allows for browsing the files stored on the phone memory or the memory card and to copy or move them. The Calculator is nothing interesting and even lacks scientific option. Here also can find converter (distances, volumes, weights, temperatures, speeds, areas, and currencies), stopwatch (saving nine laps), countdown timer, and world clock with three alarms that can be programmed with separate times, alerts (including an option for FM Radio as an alert).

Notes and Tasks, as well as QuickOffice, PDF Reader and Business Card Scanner can be found in the same menu. Via notes, you can simply write a text, set a reminding alarm and the color of the sheet. By default, they are started in Scribble mode, and as you might have guessed, it lets you draw something, by using the handwriting recognition. We haven’t found a practical application for this function besides drawing pictures, which reminded us of our childhood. We doubt that the fridge is going to become a less popular place to leave notes.

QuickOffice allows you to modify Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, but not ones, made with Office 2007. The large Excel documents (with multiple sheets) load, but their visualization is not the best we’ve seen and overall, viewing them is not very convenient. You cannot zoom in at any given rate (%) but only according to the presets, which limits the application of this function. On top of that, the navigation is quite sluggish and this doesn’t change even if you press and hold any of the directions of the D-pad. In case you want to edit or create Word or Excel documents, you’ll have to deal with an interface, which is almost unusable. You can use Format toolbar for color options (font and background), bold/italic/underlined and even aligning.

Viewing complicated PDF files with G900 is not something we would recommend although it has landscape mode and search. There is no handy shortcut to help you jump to the previous or a random page and you’ll need to open the options. The rest of the navigation is slow and annoyingly choppy. Nevertheless, you can zoom in at the rate of choice, but since the fonts do not visualize as on a computer, reading is a pain.


The thing that we found most interesting was the scanner for Business Cards, which actually worked! To use it, you capture a photo of a random business card and then process it for a quarter of the minute (about 15 seconds) to take the information out of it – then it saves it in a new contact, automatically adding its name, number, email, address, summing all the information up as a not, and putting the photo of the business card as caller id image. In is not sure that the program will work in 100% of the cases, but we found it very useful and well done!


There are a few more options in the Entertainment menu, which will help you organize your day or a trip overseas. They give you access to a five-day weather forecast in the city of your choice and Handy Clock. The last one houses a time zone map, world clock, simple calendar (cannot add events), alarms and a few time applications (timer, countdown timer, time journal). Handy Converter will help you convert currency, and Handy Expense is used for keeping track of the payments done during the day.

The phone is equipped with 160MB built-in memory, expandable via an M2 card. That’s if there’s an operational slot at all.

Messaging:

Messaging menu is as standard as you can expect: you have inbox for messages and email boxes. Composing a simple TXT message (SMS) allows you to add multiple recipients, insert simple images or sounds, use BOLD for the text, three size options and insert emoticons (text codes - [ :)] for example), visualizing as animated faces on phones that support it. Composing a multimedia message (MMS) you can add real images and sounds, and even video clips.

Operating the e-mail client is extremely easy, since the phone offers automatic settings for the most popular web mail servers. In order to save on traffic, you can set the option to download only the headers of the letters, smaller than  100kb for example. When you've written a message, you can choose if you are willing to send it immediately or save it to the outbox, where it will stay until you use ”get and send” in convenient moment (when you have Wi-Fi nearby for example).

Text can be entered via the keyboard and the display. The second method offers a full QWERTY (useless without stylus) and handwriting recognition. This method is active by default and is very handy. You can take advantage of it even in the phonebook.

When you turn the phone on you’ll face one of the annoying bugs. If you have any messages stored on the SIM card you’ll start getting notifications for them as if they were new messages and the phone will become useless for a certain period of time(it could take up to a few minutes depending on the amount of messages). On top of that, when you open a message from the homescreen, first, you have to wait for the entire Messages menu to load and then the very text appears. Sometimes, this could be very annoying.

Connectivity:

Sony Ericsson G900 is a tri-band GSM and single band UMTS phone, which limits its use in the States. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support the modern standard for high-speed Internet (HSDPA). However, the presence of Wi-Fi compensates for that to certain extend.

For local connectivity you have Bluetooth v2.0 and a data cable for computer connection. The device comes with the standard for all Sony Ericsson phones PC Suite CD. To our regret, the review unit we received refused to connect at all. Moreover, if you select „Phone mode” in a non-defective headset when connecting it to the cable, the application will not detect it at all. With “File transfer” the PC Suite detects it but this is not very handy since you still don’t get access to the memory of the phone. At least the Bluetooth was working fine and we managed to transfer files to the G900.

Internet:

The G-series flagship model is equipped with the popular mobile browser Opera v8, which in contrast to v9.5 didn’t leave us with good feelings. The heavy pages were loading slow and even when using Wi-Fi, didn’t visualize correctly. You can view them in landscape mode as well but the navigation through the D-pad becomes very annoying since the directions are kept the same as in portrait mode. In this case, using the touchscreen is much more convenient although somewhat slow.


The only way you can facilitate the navigation of large sites is to zoom in/out, but there is no shortcut for that (e.g. volume controls), and you’ll have to get into the extra menus on the options. Nevertheless, there are various functions, which are not frequently used, but are assigned to the keypad buttons. The lack of pan-view in a high-class device targeting the Internet generation is absurd, especially after seeing it in the much simpler G502. As a whole, we are very disappointed from this element.

An additional “RSS feeds” options allows you to get the information you need in just a few seconds, without the need of fast (Wi-Fi or UMTS) connection and generating lots of traffic.

Camera:

Although not branded as a Cyber-shot, G900 is equipped with a 5-megapixel camera with flash and autofocus and as the manufacturer claims, quality suitable for prints.
 
The camera interface starts for about 2 seconds, if you manage to deal with the extremely inconvenient button. The focus takes 3 seconds and basically, in 6-7 seconds, you will be able to take pictures again.

The design of the menus is quite different from the one we’ve seen in the Cyber-shot series. The interface is optimized to be finger friendly, and you even have an option to select the focus area by touch. In order to take a picture however, you will have to tap and hold the screen, which makes this function pleasant, but inconvenient. Besides the focus settings, you can adjust the different modes, frames and flash.

From the options, you can select size and quality of the pictures, white balance, turn on/off the self-portrait and add effects. We also have an image stabilizer present, which doesn’t have any visible results. Besides, it makes switching the flash on impossible and useless indoors.


The outdoor picture quality is satisfactory, the colors are saturated and pleasant, but the fine details are not present. There is heavy noise when pictures are taken in a darker environment and they are almost useless. The flash is rather strong, but because of its positioning (in the upper left corner), the objects photographed are not evenly illuminated, which leads to quite strange results if you are shooting from a close distance. Overall, the camera performs well, but is behind the modern cameraphones..

G900 records video with sound, but unfortunately in the outdated 3gp format with QVGA resolution and only 15 fps. The quality is not impressive at all.

Multimedia:

The phone is equipped with the well-known flash based multimedia menu, which houses photo gallery, your music and video files. Here we have the fun option x-Pict, which lets you make short presentations from your pictures. Unfortunately, viewing the very photographs is very inconvenient since zooming in is done via a menu without shortcuts.

Music-wise, the phone cannot be compared to the Walkman series of the manufacturer. You can sort your tracks by artist, album, frequently played or to create various playlists. The quality of the sound coming from the loudspeaker is quite bad and there are annoying crackling noises. Using the earphones from the box improves the situation despite the sound being still very sharp. You have an equalizer at your disposal, through which you can drastically change sound but there are no customizable presets.

The radio has RDS and its interface is very finger-friendly. The TrackID option is a very nice and provides info on the song you are currently listening to. This is done in the following way: a short portion of the track currently playing is recorded and then compared to an Internet database. Most of the time, the results are correct and you won’t wonder what’s the name of the group playing. This same function can be chosen from the Entertainment menu and applied on your music collection.

The video watching experience is average. The MPEG4 clips with H.264 codec and QVGA resolution play, but there is a strange bug. When you are in portrait mode, everything runs smoothly. The first tens seconds after switching to landscape are OK as well, then the screen flashes and the picture becomes choppy and doesn’t correspond to the sound. This makes watching videos impossible. On top of that, although claimed by the manufacturer to be supported, H.263 doesn’t start playing right-away.Basically, G900 is not suitable for watching videos.

Performance:

The biggest problem of the phone is the lag. It’s not present at all times, only making it more irritating. Sometimes, the same application opens with different speed. This usually happens after a reset. We had to frequently power on and off the phone since it was blocking in various applications, and the camera “didn’t feel like working”.

The quality of the sound in the receiver is more than satisfactory. The voices are heard quite monotonous but loud enough to clearly understand your collocutor. The other person won’t have any troubles either, because the sound is pleasant and real.

Forget about the loudspeaker in G900. This will save you some headaches caused by a rumbling and inconsistent sound.

The battery is one of the key features of the model. According to the manufacturer the battery should provide up to 12 hours of talking and 16 days in standby mode.

Conclusion:

This is sad. It’s sad that the flagship modеl of a new class of devices has been ruined by hardware and software defects. Meanwhile we are ready to believe that the first ones are only characteristics of our review unit, we cannot hide our disappointment due to the fact that for one month there hasn’t been an update to fix all the issues .

Since we don’t think we can trust the quality of the product, we give G900 a lower rating. If all its elements performed decently it would have gotten a good grade, because of the convenient combination of touchscreen, tolerable camera, multiple organizing options and an easy to use device.

If you want to get this model anyways, bear in mind the many defects, and get ready to send it for an exchange soon after the purchase if you get a similar unit to ours, of course...