The rest of the features includes GPS, accelerometer, a quality 2.4’’ screen, but you still get a compact and slim handset. Compared to its senior counterpart C905, the new product looks quite dwarfish. Judging by its functionality, it’s impossible to tag the model as a purely fashion-oriented one, though its design is great. G705 is a finely balanced and optimized solution not without a touch of elegance and style. The only thing hardly worth of appraisal is the camera – in this model downgraded to a 3.2 module with no auto-focusing available. The rest of functionality stays on a level with C905, but this handset sells for a price twice as low.

Sony Ericsson Specs G705:

Networks: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 + UMTS/HSDPA 2100
Memory: 120 Mb of user memory, Memory Stick Micro (M2) slot, 1 Gb card bundled
Screen: 2,4" , QVGA (240х320), 262K
Connectivity: USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, A2DP, Wi-fi 802.11 b/g (DLNA)
Camera: 3,2 Mp (up to 2048х1536), flash, video (QVGA 30 fps)
Battery Life: BST-38, 930 mAh (10 hrs of talk time / 400 hrs of standby)
Size: 95 x 47 x 14,3 mm
Weight: 98 g
Recommended price: €300

Design and Ergonomics

Sony Ericsson phones have long been known for their good looks in general. G705 isn’t an exception to the rule. It does look cool. Its rectangular shape looks as if it meant to challenge the meek rounded angles of most other phones on the market. There’s nothing extravagant or grotesque about the shape and size of buttons and other control elements. The handset’s design is quite strict, but obviously not square. The handset will be available in two alternate colors: black and gold. But actually it’s only the back panel that is colored differently, while the face panel retains a glossy black color in all versions.

The slider’s weight and size are on an average scale. It’s not too thin but still can be termed miniature, all dimensions being well-balanced. The quality of assembly and materials is extremely high. The face panel is crafted from glossy plastic (rather easily soiled, by the way). The back panel has a matte soft-touch surface. A chromed strip runs all along the casing’s perimeter, embracing the side buttons. The use of metal is minimized, unlike in W595. On the other hand, this results in a weight reduction.

The right edge of the handset hosts the shoot button and volume controls, disguised to look part of the chrome framing. The left edge has a Fast-Port slot on it, acting as a headset and cable connector. Putting the headset slot on a side edge obviously isn’t very practical, but it’s already fine they didn’t put it on a level with the keyboard but rather shifted its location upwards. The M2 card slot is located on the same side, concealed beneath the battery bay cover.

An improvised lock is found at the bottom end of the handset, pressing the panel tightly against the bulk of the casing. At the top end, you will discover a small play/pause button. The back panel hosts the camera lens neighbored by a LED flash. The polyphonic speaker is seated a bit below. The soft-touch coating of the back panel prevents the handset from an occasional slip. The back side of the sliding block sports a dotted texture, this ornament being a unique trademark pattern for each independent product line in Sony Ericsson’s portfolio.

The keyboard has nothing very special about it, looking much like its counterpart from C905. The keys form a solid plastic film without any signs of segmentation. The thin silvery lines are but parts of ornamentation, the buttons themselves reside in-between. The keyboard is handy in operation and friendly to an inexperienced user. The backlighting isn’t exceedingly bright, sporting a pale green color. When the browser is active, it switches to a purple, the secondary function key markings become backlit and visible. The controls come in a standard set of big buttons.

Screen

Sony Ericsson G705 is equipped with a TFT QVGA screen (320x240). The screen diagonal is 2.4’’ long. SE C905 is equipped with a screen of a same size but in that case, it doesn’t look as good being a bit out of proportions, but the two and a half inches are very becoming to the slim G705. The picture quality is nearly ideal, but the maximum brightness level is a bit too low. This was probable made so because of energy saving concerns.

The screen is fairly sun-resistant, but not as good as C905 and W902 because of their tinted mineral screen glass. G705 only has a plastic screen shield that doesn’t stand well against physical damage. Right above the screen you’ll discover a luminance sensor and a video call frontal cam.

Battery Life

The model utilizes a standard type of battery, a BST-33 950 mAh unit. The manufacturing company claims a battery life of 10 hours of talk time or 400 hours of standby. A standard duty cycle (an hour of talking, about two hours of listening to the music and an hour of menu interaction) the phone stays online for about three days – a result that’s hardly going to disappoint anyone. It’s a general rule that regardless of the hardware power and product class, Sony Ericsson products maintain the same good battery life in all instances. We can’t say this result is breathtaking but it isn’t discomfort able or frustrating either.

	Nokia E66	Sony Ericsson С905	Sony Ericsson G705
Normal Duty Cycle	3 days	3 days	3 days
Video playback	4:20	4:00	3:50
MP3 playback	16:45	18:20	18:30
GPS mode	4:00	3:40	3:45
Data downloading, Wi-Fi	4:25	3:15	3:10

Connectivity

Sony Ericsson G705 supports four GSM frequency bands (850/900/1800/1900) as well as HSDPA 2100 networks. There’ s no frontal cam for video calls available, the element quickly phasing out from use in the latter days. A luminance sensor is seated above the screen, automatically tweaking the screen brightness level. Wireless connectivity is limited to Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR only. It works just as fine as expected, bringing about no trouble with wireless stereo headset. The following profiles are available:

• Basic Imaging • Dial-up Networking • File Transfer • Generic Access • Generic Object Exchange • Handsfree • Headset • HID • JSR-82 Java API • Object Push • Personal Area Networking • Serial Port • Synchronization • SyncML OBEX binding • Audio/Video Remote Control • Phonebook Access

The Flight Mode is only available with an active SIM card; you still can turn on the phone that has no SIM card inserted, but feature like player and camera become inaccessible until you put the SIM card back into the slot. That’s a huge downside of the series as compared to the host of models by other brands that never suffered from such a silly limitation.

The cable communication is done through a firmware connector. The USB 2.0 standard is officially supported, but in real life the data transfer speed stays below the alleged 800 Kb/s. Modem, Mass Storage and PictBridge connection types are supported. The wanted connection mode can be selected in the corresponding menu. Our tests revealed no problems with the Mass Storage mode, both disks were successfully detected (the onboard memory unit and the flash card). Phone-to-PC synchronization is possible with the help of bundled Sony Ericsson PC Suite software coming on a disk that you’ll find in the box.

The availability of Wi-Fi is one of this model’s most prominent strength. This is the second non-smart handset by the company to feature a Wi-Fi capability. The first one, namely C905, is already available in retail stores, but the price is biting, the offer being apparently overpriced. G705 is a more balanced and fairly priced product, the handset has basically the same set of features with C905 minus the powerful camera (G705 only has a 3.2 Mp unit without auto-focusing). The Wi-Fi settings are all standard: search by device name, auto-connect to a user defined network, manual settings, sleep mode auto engagement after prolonged standby (something of the kind was found in Motorola ZN5). A Wi-Fi connection is typically used for web browsing, but will also perfectly do for direct blogging. The phone is DLNA-certified. The status bar at the screen top displays a network connection status indicator.

The browser was left intact, it’s still the good old NetFront 3.4. On the feature list are options like picture saving, the SmartFit feature, switching to horizontal orientation, page zooming, etc. But OperaMini is always preferable due to its superior functionality, NetFront 3.4 remaining a very basic application.

Sony Ericsson G705 belongs to the Generalization WEB product family, standing for an enhanced set of browser-related features available. First of all, some of the buttons alternatively act as shortcuts to the most frequently used browser functions. The right column of keys bear markings indicating their secondary browser-specific function, backlit in purple. In the settings, you can switch the keyboard between two alternate browser shortcut sets, of which only one can be kept active at a time.

The Search application is available with the left soft button pressed during standby. Unlike with Nokia smartphones, you can’t search for specific content in the onboard storage, the search options only affect the internet. The search form looks trivial, with a list of recent queries displayed below.

Java Performance

The Java performance test score keeps on a level with the rest of SE phones (except the C905 model). According to the public documentation, G705 uses the same revision of Java framework – 8.4 with Capuchin and Flash feature packs included. Synthetic 2D graphics performance tests reveal a substantial advantage of this model over C905, while things go vice versa when it comes down to 3D graphics – in this case C905 scores a victory. This controversy is partly explainable by the fact that the pre-sale sample runs a yet imperfect software lacking some optimization tricks. This article will be updated with more details on the issue on a retail sample falls into our hands.

Model	Nokia E66	Sony Ericsson G705	Sony Ericsson C905
Jbenchmark 1.0.1 Score	3232	4771	4400
Text	891	769	215
2D Shapes	900	1533	1576
3D Shapes	562	739	682
Fill Rate	369	413	610
Animation	510	1317	1501
Jbenchmark 2.0.1 Score	548	862	365
Image Manipulations	244	259	172
Text	595	548	399
Sprites	470	651	343
3D Transform	1249	680	548
User Interface	576	7539	403
Jbenchmark 3D HQ	195	264	364
Jbenchmark 3D LQ	380	260	400
Triangles ps	43343	33564	34234
KTexels ps	3254	1706	2843
Jbenchmark HD Gaming Score	166 (5.5 fps)	166 (5.5 fps)	167 (5.0 fps)
Smooth triangles	110145	37776	33512
Textured triangles	82240	120029	35776
Fill rate, KTexels	2289	8121	1359

User Interface

Sony Ericsson G705 is built around the A200 platform, sporting all its native features. Please refer to this article to learn more about the standard feature pack that the A200 platform offers:

Sony Ericsson A200 Platform Base Functionality

There’s a number of different themes available, each making the interface look in a different way. There are two traditional view modes available for the main menu: the traditional grid, a merry-go-round or one large icon per screen. The menu uses rich animation effects. Sony Ericsson handsets sport some of the best looking menu graphics among all existing mobile devices. Nokia phones come in the second place, S40v6 platform offering some really nice graphics… but at the price of a laggy performance.

Preinstalled Software

The two preinstalled games are Brain Juice and Super Breakout.

The StandbyWorld application allows to keep a large clock adjusted to a custom time zone. You can actually have more than one clock; they will replace each other at a fixed interval. The WalkMate is a pedometer that can be running in the background. It isn’t too precise, entirely relying on data submitted by the onboard accelerometer.

The GPS functionality is quite trivial, nothing was changed from W760i or C905. The phone utilizes the same Wayfinder Navigator 7 software plum a preinstalled copy of Google Maps Mobile 2.0 that doesn’t solely handle Cell-ID data but takes benefit from the readings of the onboard GPS receiver. The A-GPS and geo-tagging technologies are supported. The traditional Tracker program is missing, seemingly reserved for youth-oriented models like W760i and C702. It’s noteworthy that C905 comes with a three months’ subscription to Wayfinder Navigator that’s based off TeleAtlas maps.

Google Maps 2.0 is the platform-native, preinstalled alternative to Wayfinder. The software is completely free. This mobile build sports some options not found in the standard issue. These extra tricks include customizable measurement units, smart map scaling, list of favorite locations, route composition options and an expanded search engine utilizing a variety of customizable search parameters including the so-called places of interest.

Multimedia Features

Multimedia features come in a pack standardized for all Sony Ericsson handsets based around the A200 platform. The Media application is the traditional content viewer with an interface tailored after the brand looks of Sony PSP, making extensive use of the accelerometer that switches the screen orientation as you rotate the handset in space… or at least it would be so if T700 had one, but in facts the accelerometer is missing, resulting in a rarely encountered unavailability of a standard feature. Still, you can switch the screen orientation manually in the settings menu. The interface enjoys some really nice graphics and all sorts of animated transition effects as you move from one menu item to another. The interface looks the same for all recent SE handsets regardless of product class and positioning, even UIQ smartphones using the same scheme and looks.

The player interface is of the brand Sony Ericsson type common for all latest models. The settings include looped and random playback, sorting by artist and genre, enhanced stereo and progressive track rewinding. The player can change skins, switching between completely different appearances, which is something you won’t get with a Nokia.

The playlists are easily sorted and modified. It’s possible to add and remove tracks one by one or in a bunch simply by checking the checkboxes. The number of tracks per playlist is unlimited. There are five equalizers available plus the brand Mega Bass feature. Unlike with UIQ smartphones (G700/G900, W960i), you won’t the Auto Playlists feature here. The Time Machine advanced content sorting manager is also missing from this model.

The grave difference separating this model from all the latest Walkman phones is a lack of Clear Audio Experience support, a pack of features helping to improve the sounding to a perceptible extent. Sony Ericsson W980i and W902 are known to have a substantially better sound as compared to the bulk of the recent models, the settings are very flexible and give a fine opportunity to find a sounding that fits your liking the best, combined with a set of equalizers. The non-musical SE phones lack features like Shake Control and Sense Me. The color gamma of the player application is also different, but the rest of the features stay the same. So, generally speaking, T700 offers a player on par with the rest of solutions found among non-Walkman SE phones.

The TrackID service enjoys a full support. Using it you can capture a fragment from a song currently playing on the radio or in the music player; then the phone automatically submits the fragment to a web server that tries to identify the track through reference to its vast database. If the song is successfully identified, you are replied with an short message telling the name of the song and artiest; furthermore, you’re offered to purchase the song online. The service must prove a very interesting offer to all sorts of music fans, the audience mainly consisting of young people. Combined with the onboard FM tuner, this feature is at times great fun.

Camera

The camera of T700 is a plain 3.2 Mp unit without auto-focusing. The same kind of camera is used in W760i and W890i – the solution isn’t positioned as a photographic one. A LED flash is available, alternatively acting as a flashlight or a backlight during video shooting sessions. The quality of video, - surprisingly! – is on a level with the rest of recently released models including C905 – QVGA@30fps.

A camera launch / shoot button is located on the right edge of the casing, the volume controls alternatively serving to scale the zoom factor while in the shooting mode. It takes only a few instants to save a photo into the memory.

The main interface uses a landscape orientation and exhibits no difference from W902. Even the settings are all the same. Three small icons are shown on the right, used to switch between the photo, video and gallery modes. The viewfinder window features a variety of status icons indicating standard parameters like the current resolution, the remaining number of shots and so on. Geo-tagging is supported.

Pressing the left navigation button brings up a brand Cyber-shot-styled menu. Unlike with the more powerful cameraphones, multiple settings are missing - you can’t change scene presets or tweak ISO level, in fact you get only the most basic options:

Photo:

• Shoot modes: Normal, Panorama, Frames, Burst
• Picture size: 3 MP (2048x1536), 2 MP (1632x1224), 1 MP (1280x960), VGA (640x480)
• Self-timer: 3, 5, 10
• Effects: Off, Black & white, Negative, Sepia
• White balance: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent
• Picture quality: Normal, Fine
• Shutter sounds: On, Off
• Turn on time and date: adds a timestamp to the photo
• Geo-tagging: adds a geotag to the photo

Video:

• Shoot modes: Normal, Panorama, Frames, Burst
• Video size: QVGA (320x240), QCIF (176x144)
• Night mode: Да
• Turn on/off microphone: Off, Auto
• Reset file number: same with photo
• Effects: Off, Black & white, Negative, Sepia

The photo quality is average, suffering from the lack of auto-focusing. You have to be shooting in a properly lit environment in order to get a good shot; a lack of lighting results in a drastic drop in picture quality. Obviously, the camera isn’t a key feature in this model. In principle, a mid-end handset with no emphasis on the camera this sort of solution is perfectly excusable, the gadget is geared towards comfortable WEB surfing in the first place.

SMAPE's opinion

Sony Ericsson G705 leaves a twofold impression. The conflict between positioning, functionality and design may feel in a way embarrassing; the gadget has good looks and an impressive quality of materials and assembly; it’s not deprived of elegance, either. Quite unexpected to discover in a mid-end device, it sports Wi-Fi and GPS. What’s the likely target audience for this one? It’s really hard to say. Nokia E66 competes in the same niche, being another slim and stylish slider mainly targeted at a business audience. The boldly utilitarian and reserved looks no longer make up an obligatory point on a business handset’s feature list. E66 feels at liberty with its exterior appearance, pushing aside the more conservative views, and facing no obstacle on the market.

G705 aims at the same target, its only market rival being the E66 Nokia model. The SE handset is slightly cheaper, less bulky and in general substantially more compact. It can’t be called an ideal solution of its class, but not a failure either. It’s especially notable for a good balance of features. Besides its miniature build, you get an excellent screen, a handy keyboard and a fair choice of materials. Camera is apparently the weakest spot because the model’s price tag suggests it could have had an auto-focusing unit for its money. As for the rest of features, our impressions were purely positive.

The gadget is about to hit the shelf during the very first days of December, priced 300 euros. That’s a god start, the new device doesn’t look overpriced, - at least not as overpriced as C905 was, - and poses a fair challenge to Nokia E66. The latter has the formidable advantage of Symbian platform’s full power, but can’t boast any real compactness, elegance or special feel. People looking for an affordable slider with advanced connectivity get a fine alternative worthy of close consideration.

Related links

Review: Sony Ericsson C905

Review: Sony Ericsson G900

Review: E66

Author: Anton Spiridonov, spiridonov@corp.mail.ru

SMAPE.com

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