Sony Ericsson G502

The latest phone from the Sony-Ericsson warehouses to hit the market is Sony Ericsson G502. Sony Ericsson introduced the G-series cell phones recently, a change from the W-series and the K-series which had almost become trademark of Sony Ericsson cell phones. The Sony Ericsson G502 has tough competition to deal with with touchscreen phones hogging the limelight off-late.

Sony Ericsson G502 specifications :

• Dimensions : 109 x 46 x 13.5 mm
• Weight : 83.5g
• Display : 2 inches TFT display
• GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• 2 megapixel camera
• Google Maps
• FM radio with RDS
• Approx. price : $300

The phone is of bar-candy form factor and is priced for people with medium-budget and hence has few features missing. The phone is extremely light weight at just 83.5g and its dimensions are also rather small. The small dimensions hence can incorporate only a 2 inch big screen. The phone has good looks to appeal anyone in general, although not flashy.

The exterior of the phone is made of plastic but the plastic isn’t of cheap quality. In fact, the handset feels quite well built with tough exterior. The D-pad of the phone is quite unlike the traditional Sony Ericsson keypads. The alphanumeric keypad blends with the D-pad nicely giving it a neat and clean look. The loudspeaker had been hidden just above the camera, a neat trick there.

Display and Keypad

The display of the phone is a 2 inch TFT display with a resolution of 240 x 320. The screen size is just acceptable, although a bigger screen never hurts. The clarity of the display is great and the contrast and saturation levels are well set. But the sunlight visibility is disappointing as the display is hardly visible in sunlight, an area Sony Ericsson needs to work upon seriously. The battery life is amazing at about 5 days with minimal usage.

The keypad as discussed earlier, blends nicely with the keypad, but whats more important is that it is highly ergonomic making way for SMS junkies. The navigation buttons are also strategically placed, paving the way for smooth navigation through the menus. The keypad design leads to minimal typos. The backlighting on the display is good and night visibility is optimal.

Music Player and Camera

The Sony Ericsson G502 features the Walkman 3.0 music player. There is no doubt about the capability of the music player as it supports a wide range of formats and has various preset equalisers including the trademark Mega Bass one. Album art is also supported along with track filtering. The music player can be minimized in the background and used D-pad for controlling the player. Also, the FM radio has RDS supports with usual options and the FM reception is good. The volume of the G502 handset is pretty loud and also the sound quality is good, as expected from Sony Ericsson phones.

Surprisingly when 2.0 megapixel cameras are slowly making there way out, Sony Ericsson decides to include one in one of its latest phones. The camera has a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200. The interface on the camera is good but it surely can’t help improve the photographic capabilities of the phone.

Sony Ericsson has cleverly taken out a few settings/options that can be found in the high-end Cybershot series mobiles phones like BestPic. You still have a number of settings to play around with but even with best settings the images turn out average. The image quality is acceptable for a 2.0 megapixel camera though. The images have a fair amount of noise and lack detail.

Web browser and Organizer

The G502 has the latest Access NetFront HTML browser 3.4. This is one of the best inbuilt browsers that you would find on mobile phones. It renders the pages beautifully to fit the screen. You can change the orientation as well as run the browser in full screen mode. Virtual cursor is also a part of the browser. The pages can be scrolled smoothly. The browser also has a search feature, a very handy tool for any browser. Overall, it will be a pleasure to browse on the G502 as it has 3G connectivity as well.

The organiser on the phone has the standard set of features you would expect on any phone in this range. These includes Alarms, Notes, Tasks, Calendar, Timer, Stopwatch, Calculator etc. The organiser can be accessed through a dedicated icon present in the main menu. Having a separate icon for Alarm in the menu is a nice  thing as this is the feature you are most likely to use frequently.

Pros :

• Good display
• 3G compatible
• Great battery life
• Ergonomic keypad
• Excellent web browser
• Great loudspeaker

Cons :

• Average camera
• Poor visibility in sunlight
• No video-call camera

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson G502 is a nice offering from Sony Ericsson at a competitive price. Except the camera, there are hardly any faults with the phone, and the camera is also an average performer. A couple of extra features could have made it an excellent offering, but that could have also jacked up the price.

My Rating : 3.75/5