In these circumstances, the main rival to C905 is Samsung INNOV8, the secondary competitor being Nokia N85 (it has a weaker camera). There’s a good target marked with a ready demand open for the C905 model, and it’s pretty big. The smartphone by Samsung turned out simply amazing, sporting an unmatched quality and functionality, though it has a higher price, is bulkier and actually misses some charm. It’s a leader inside its class, but not a mass market solution by all means. On the other hand, the C905 has all chances to become a bestseller provided that the price gets pulled down on time, probably seizing the title of the most popular cameraphone. The Cyber-shot brand, the xenon flash and an active marketing accenting the camera capabilities do their job well, all the shot reaching the target. The most interesting question about these two models is the picture quality and the powers provided by their integrated cameras. Let’s compare a bunch of sample shots taken with Sony Ericsson C905, Samsung INNOV8 and Samsung M8800 PIXON and see which one does the job better. There isn’t going to be any crucial changes in the camera technologies during the first half of 2009, so the three debuting devices will set the technological tune for all following solutions of this class.

Hardware Implementation

The camera unit is placed at the top end of the casing, the lens is protected with a metallic guard, which doesn’t stick above the surface at all. The availability of a lens guard is a big advantage for any type of cameraphone: it only takes a subtle slide to activate the camera which feels better than having to press and hold some button or going all the way through the menus to reach the camera application. The lens guard is rather tight, it never opened due to occasional friction against the fabric while carried in the pocket.

A self-portrait mirror is neighboring on the camera, accompanied by the LED and xenon flashed. C905 is the only 8 Mp cameraphone from today’s market that carries a xenon flash. The Samsung handsets all come with a generic LED flash. The availability of a xenon flash imbues C905 with maximum possibilities for nighttime shooting. The secondary LED flash is mostly used as a flashlight, as well as for video recording and backing up the auto-focusing process.

The two-position camera button is located on the right edge of the handset. It’s slightly sunken into the casing. When the camera is active, the functional button block and the navigation button are highlighted with a blue color. Other Cyber-shot handsets had the extra functions marked on the numerical buttons (e.g. K770i, K850i), while C905 has these marking printed right on the navigational buttons. The sound volume controls alternately serve to adjust the digital zoom ratio, the two other buttons are used to launch the gallery application and switch to the video mode.

The screen refresh rate is pretty high, as well as the focusing and image saving speed. The screen itself sports a fine quality, the picture looking really good (also due to its small physical size). The colors are maximally natural. The unimpressive maximum brightness level is the bad thing, though. On some occasions, you won’t find it sufficient. The reason for limiting the brightness obviously was the desire to curb the power consumption rate. In fact, they succeeded to extending the battery life to embrace a whole two or even three life spans of the i8510 batter. Let’s compare the brightness and colors of the C905 and i8510 screens:

The screen i8510 does a better job fighting against the sun glare, the screen picture stays visible whatever the viewing angle. The screen matrix is protected by a mineralized glass which offers a substantially better protection from physical damage than the plastic used in C905. The same type of screen glass is utilized by the W902 model. The bad thing is that the screen diagonal is a mere 2.4 inches which doesn’t stand up to the competitive models. Two dedicated buttons used in the gallery and several Java games are mounted above the screen. There’s no frontal cam available, the major companies are gradually growing discouraged of its use (obviously because actually very few people ever find any need in this). The small ‘window’ seen nearby is the luminance sensor, automatically adjusting the backlight strength.

There has been a good deal of rumor circulating across the web, regarding the exact type of camera module used in this model . The guesses about a third party unit were wrong, Sony Ericsson have picked an inhouse camera, since there was no sense in addressing a third party manufacturer because of plain economic concerns (many people were claiming that Samsung have shipped their cameras to Sony especially for the use in this model). Nokia isn’t engaged in production of such hi-end camera units so far, so it’s pretty natural for them to buy the cameras from Toshiba and Samsung, but this is clearly not the situation about Sony Ericsson. The latter makes use of a vast variety of inhouse cameras, ranging from the modest camera mounted on the C902 handset to the powerful unit integrated into C905 – and that’s an officially documented fact.

Just as expected from a Sony Ericsson phone, its cam can boast a really fast performance; it takes less than two seconds to focus on an object and a same amount of time to save the photo to the memory. Less than six seconds is needed to initialize the camera once the lens guard is shifted aside.

Software implementation

The camera interface uses a horizontal orientation. The difference from the preceding cameraphones from this brand is minimal (just because this design proved to be successful enough). In the viewfinder window, a number of status indicators are shown, telling the current resolution, flash activation status, macro mode activation status, the remaining number of shots, image stabilization, geo-tagging activation status, Smart Contrast activation status and so on.

When the camera is active, the navigation button markings are backlit, as well as those on the side buttons, indicating the new functions these buttons assume for the length of the shooting sessions: flash controls, focusing mode selection, timer and brightness settings. The side buttons switch between the photo, video and gallery modes; the volume controls are used for zooming in an out.

Pressing the left navigation button brings up a standard Cyber-shot menu. There are few shooting modes available, the new SmartContrast feature complementing the standard Normal, Panoramic, Frame and BestPic. If you choose SmartContrast, the pictures taken will be automatically optimized for the best contrast possible.

In fact, a picture taken with the SmartContrast setting has some of the darker areas highlighted, so it’s easier to spot details. It was really interesting to compare this technique to the Wide Dynamic Range feature available with Samsung phones. The results stay on a same level, in all cases the photo becomes brighter but that doesn’t bring about any real improvement in quality, so we don’t think that the current generation of cameraphones can extract any practical benefit from such features.

The four available focusing modes are: auto, macro, infinity and Face Detection. In the latter mode, the person’s face is captured in a moving frame, shifting its color from white to red or green depending on the focusing status. The feature works just fine, but can be easily tricked with a printed photo. Don’t expect it to give you any major boost in quality, but at least it makes focusing quicker and easier.

Shooting sample with Face Detection turned on.

There are seven different Scenes available, the eighth being the Audio mode, which is just fine. The list comprises the following items:

• Auto
• Portait
• Twilight portrait
• Landscape
• Twilight landscape
• Beach/snow
• Sports
• Document

The five available resolutions are:

• 3264x2448 (8M)
• 2592x1944 (5M)
• 2048x1536 (3M)
• 1280x960 (1M)
• 640x480 (0.3M)

The special effects are few and not too fascinating: Sepia, Negative, Solarize and Black&White. The rest of the features include a timer, an exposure meter, two alternate quality settings (Fine, Normal), instant viewing of the latest taken photo, four shutter sounds (the fifth variant being a mute mode) and the image stabilizer. Numerous other models by Sony Ericsson come with this feature (e.g. C902), it is solely available in the landscape shooting mode. In real life, it has a very limited usage – the increase of photo quality is practically marginal.

The standard white balance presets are Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent and Cloudy. The only available ISO setting is Auto, which looks very weird considering the available ISO customizability nearly with every other cameraphone, e.g. Samsung PIXON M8800 or LG KC910 can have the ISO level manually adjusted up to 1600, which is a much needed improvement for successful night shooting.

The geo-tagging setting, if activated, automatically attaches geo-tags to all taken photos. This option is eventually becoming a standard feature for all modern photo solutions. The screen orientation switches automatically according to the original orientation of the photo. The focusing distance of the lens is 5.91 mm.

The maximum video resolution available for shooting clips is the same with the rest of A200-based phones, that is 320x240 pixels. This makes a very poor impression in comparison with the competitive products supporting the VGA video standard, but on the other hand the soundtrack turns out much better than with Samsung i8510, C905 being fairly comparable to Nokia’s multimedia smartphones as far as this aspect is concerned. The rest of the settings are quite traditional, e.g. you can activate the image stabilization feature or limit the maximum clip size to fit into an MMS message.

Given that C905 is the flagship model of the Cyber-shot line, the device doesn’t sport a variety of functions comparable to what the leading Samsung cameraphones can offer. The exclusive features of C905 are limited to Smart Contrast, BestPic and… scarcely anything else. At the same time, i8510 comes with a much diverse variety of goodies, including features like Wide Dynamic Range or ‘smile capture’ which all make good selling points (though their usefulness in real life isn’t above the level of Sony Ericsson’s fancy stuff like the image stabilizer). The Cyber-shot handsets have been long recognized as having an extremely friendly and usable interface, but this level of operational comfort is currently being challenged by numerous competitive products, some of the rivals even excelling SE in the number of extra features.

Software

The two standard editors included into the software package are PhotoDJ and Photo Fix. The former allows for simple drawing actions (in a way similar to MS Paint) and post-processing filters. The options include:

• Rotate,
• Auto levels,
• Brightness,
• Gamma,
• Contrast,
• Red eye filter,
• Add effect (Negative, Cartoon, Frosted glass, Painting),
• Add object (Frame, Clipart, Text)

The latter feature, Photo Fix, is just an advanced set of filters at times helpful in improving a picture’s looks to a good extent.

Gallery

The photo and video viewing capabilities are all the same for all the latest multimedia phones released by the company. The Media menu item brings up a standard viewer with an interface reminiscent of Sony PSP that makes a great use of the accelerometer, automatically adjusting the screen orientation with the help of the accelerometer. The only available image rotation direction is to the left. If unneeded, the feature can be turned off. Getting back to the gallery functionality, let’s have a closer approach to the menu items: Photo, Music, Video, RV and Settings; the item names are self-explaining. The interface sports some really nice graphics and impressive transition effects. The performance is really good, any lags being out of the question. The appearance of the interface doesn’t change from model to model, being all the same for any new UIQ-based smartphone from the line; in fact, this trademark interface design has become a signature feature of Sony Ericsson’s latest products.

The Photo menu item lets you view the latest taken photo or the whole gallery, sort the materials by a set of user-specified tags, view misc graphic files or go to the podcast submenu. Inside the gallery, each month’s materials are distributed between individuals folders each marked with a corresponding thumbnail and the number of photos stored within. Tags are a novelty feature that came along with the A200 platform. Just like with Nokia S60 FP2, the user can create his own tags, make associated text notes and group his photos by a specified tag. For instance, all photos tagged Vacation can be instantly viewed as an organized groups, filtered from the rest of the photos in the gallery.

The X-Pict Story application is used for composing slide shows from the available photos. The only available customizable setting is the show interval for each shown frame, the music background and transition effects hard-coded into each of the four available ‘moods’, i.e. themes. Switching moods bring about a different background music and transition effect, but hardly anything else. There’s no opportunity for creating a custom mood.

The last addition is called CamPlus, that is effectively a small app that works as an alternative to the standard camera interface used for taking pictures. The PhotoMate program is what you’d want to use for easy and smart photo viewing, offering a variety of nice-looking transition effects.

Comparision

We picked up a few anchor points to go with as the main criteria for the comparison: daytime shooting, nighttime shooting, flash and flashless shooting, macro mode. The final version of the firmware (R1BA030) powering our samples is exactly what the retail version of the product will get. Certain previous firmware upgrades would occasionally drop the photo quality, the others bringing some real improvements, but as of now the image acquisition process has been optimized to the full, and things look very differently from what they used to look like in the earlier comparison tests.

Daytime

Sony ericsson C905 / Samsung i8510 INNOV8 / Samsung M8800 PIXON

As you see, the quality of color rendering, the sharpness and overall feel stay on a level and it’s hard to find a leader. In some pictures, we see C905 leading by a small margin, in others i8510 does a better work with a more precise focusing and color rendition.

Sony ericsson C905 / Samsung i8510 INNOV8

Macro shooting

Both cameras pass this test showing some good results. We weren’t able to spot any color distortion or blurry areas. Samsung i8510 feels easier to handle, C905 at times requiring a bit of time and effort to focus on the scene and catch the object.

Sony ericsson C905 / Samsung i8510 INNOV8 / Samsung M8800 PIXON

Nighttime

The xenon flash mounted on C905 is helpful in improving the photo quality at short range; this is the most important point about nighttime shooting, so C905 is a better option than INNOV8 equipped with a LED flash. At longer ranges, the LED flash proves more efficient than a xenon unit, but that doesn’t play as big a role in general, so it’s always advisable to stick with xenon – because you will always get better close-range portraits, which is the most popular sort of night-time photos, unlike far-range panoramic shooting.

Sony ericsson C905 / Samsung i8510 INNOV8

Flash

The advantage of the xenon flash becomes obvious at shorter ranges, the flash power keeping on a level with Nokia N82 and Motorola ZN5. The object you’re aiming at is always perfectly lit at the moment of shooting, though the far background turns out considerably worse. The things go vice versa for i8510: the whole scene is evenly lit, resulting in a better picture of the far objects, but the general photo quality is worse than with C905.

Sony ericsson C905 / Samsung i8510 INNOV8

Smape's opinion

The camera of Sony Ericsson C905 has its strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, it can’t offer an image quality as good as that of Samsung’s; on the other hand, it is backed up by a xenon flash ensuring more advantageous night shooting conditions than i8510 has to face with its much weaker LED flash. Likewise the xenon flash gives the C905 an advantage at close-range indoor shooting. C905 manages to take nighttime portraits (e.g. at a party) in good quality, a goal out of Samsung’s reach.

That’s why there’s no distinct winner in this competition, either of the two models serving better for accomplishing specific tasks. If you take a special focus on nighttime shooting, C905 would be a better option. Otherwise you may take the advantage of the slightly superior quality of daytime shots that is observed with Samsung i8510.

One thing that stays absolutely clear is that C905 is a well-placed shot as far as the target audience is in question. The real-life photo quality isn’t ideal, yet good enough not to feel annoying; its unique feature is a xenon flash unavailable with any other released or announced 8 Mp cameraphone. Should we be viewing the C905 as an all-in-one models, the only modern requirement it’s up to in this sense is its price, the rest of the features being below the level of ambitions typically associated with an all-in-one hi-end multimedia gadget. The compact size and the good looks are the only two principal advantages C905 has over i8510. The price for Sony Ericsson C905 should be subject to a serious reconsideration in order to give the model enough impact to score a success on the market, otherwise i8510 is very likely to take over. Nokia N85 is sold at an even lower price, offering a better multimedia functionality at the same time and being not as large as the i8510, so it’s also sure to draw away a certain percentage of the target audience (its camera isn’t as good though)

The device will start selling during the final days of October at a starting price of 600 euros. This is a bit less than they will be asking for the 8 Gb version of i8510, the price gap being as big as about fifty euros which doesn’t make a big difference in the hi-end product segment. Sony Ericsson are really good at making stylish-looking, fashion-imbued phones (like w980i, W902) which justify the price by the luxury of their looks and materials, the functionality being a forgivable point. The company are taking little to no action to establish a firm presence in the all-in-one sector. C905 is a photo profile, not too bulky hi-end cameraphone sporting good looks, but hardly anything more than that. Once the price is pulled down to a more adequate value, the C905 handset will become a formidable opponent to anything in the upper price bracket of the cameraphone market segment, but trying to challenge i8510 INNOV8 in its native all-in-one segment still sounds like a very bad idea for Sony Ericsson’s creation. Moreover, the target audiences of the two hardly intersect. Despite the availability of a bunch of extra features uncharacteristic of conventional phones, C905 is far from being a full-blown smartphone either, posing little threat to the pureblood smart gadgets by Nokia and Samsung.

A full review of the phone is to be published on the site shortly, stay tuned.

Related Links

Samsung i8510 INNOV8 Review

Nokia N85 Review

Author: Anton Spiridonov, playdead1@gmail.com

SMAPE.com

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