Sony Ericsson C903

The C903 is a classic Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot, with a decent five megapixel camera and packed to the hilt with features.  It ‘s stylish and snaps great pics. From the front it’s a traditional slider with decent sized 240 x 320 pixel screen with VGA resolution and a well spaced D-pad for easy navigation. The smallish keypad proved tough to type on with large fingers. From the back it looks like a compact digital camera with a lens cover that runs the length of the phone. Stylish and light it looks a very decent camera-phone, but what else does it offer?

Camera

The C903’s camera is superb as far as camera phones go. With features like autofocus, image stabiliser, face detection, BestPic and Smile Shutter, it’s very close to letting you forgo the necessity of carrying around a compact digital.

The C903 offers 16x digital zoom which is a little pointless as the image quality is severely affected when zooming that much anyway. It’s still a nice feature to have though. You can also geotag your images and upload them to the web via HSDPA. We did feel the shutter speed was a little slow though, which makes the process of taking and saving images a bit tedious, but that’s pretty much our only complaint about the camera. The camera even features two LED lights which makes it a satisfactory snapper in low-light conditions.

Everything else

The trouble is the C903 is a camera-phone but very little else. It lacks Wi-Fi connectivity and a 3.5 mm jack. The omission of Wi-Fi is clearly a cost cutting decision but the availability of a YouTube app is rendered almost pointless and the pleasure of surfing the web or uploading and downloading content overshadowed by constant data calculations you find yourself making as you can only connect via 3G.

The omission of a 3.5 mm jack, and worse still an adaptor, is even more frustrating. With a decent MP3 player with support for podcasts and FM radio, the C903 would have been a great music device if it was possible to put in a decent set of earphones, but it isn’t.

In terms of call quality and massaging the device works well. You won’t be using it as a productivity device though as email isn’t spectacular. You can however access Google Maps and enjoy a few apps like Sports Tracker. This adds a little appeal to the phone but with the lack of an apps market SE phones are still a ways behind competitors.

Final word

The C903 is a value for money camera-phone. It looks good, although the casing feels a little plasticy. It offers some decent connectivity but misses the Wi-Fi train altogether. We found little fault with its camera, so if you’re not into productivity or surfing the web it will certainly do the trick.