Sony Ericsson G705 Review

The Sony Ericsson G705 is a mid range phone with no extremely outstanding features to speak of, it just offers what most phones offered some time back. It is certainly not going to refresh Sony Ericsson’s image as an innovator but will definitely mark its presence in the mid budget range. It does have a nice mix of features and also looks quite stylish. While there are many other phones which offer almost the same setof features at about the same price range, we will see whether there is anything that the Sony Ericsson G705 betters them at, in this detailed review. While it is no match for the superior Linux and Symbian based smartphones, if just basic features and style is what you need, the Sony Ericsson does seem like a nice deal.

Sony Ericsson G705 Specifications

• Dimensions: 95 x 47 x 14.5 mm
• Weight: 98 gms
• Display: 2.4 inch TFT Display, 256K colors, 240 x 320 pixels
• Memory: 120 MB Internal Memory, 1 GB Memory Stick M2
• Connectivity: GPRS class 10, HSCSD, EDGE class 10, 3G HSDPA, USB v2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with DLNA, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048 x 1536 pixels with LED flash, secondary videocall camera
• GPS: Built in GPS with A-GPS, Geotagging
• Battery: Li Po battery 950 mAh, BST 33,
• Other Features: Java MIDP 2.0, FM radio with RDS, TrackID, Netfront, HTML browser, Accelerometer

Design, Build Quality and Display:

The Sony Ericsson G705 has a nice sleek design and a slider form factor. At dimensions of 95 x 47 x 14.5 mm, it is pretty slim, though not as slim as other sliders like the Nokia E66. It is also fairly light at just 98 gms, it is one of the lightest sliders available. While it looks quite nice, the build quality is just average. The body is mostly made of plastic, which has a okish feel, but feels a bit cheap compared to other phones with a metallic feel. Compared to the superb design of the Nokia E66, its main competitor, it feels incomplete. It is available into two colors – Gold and Black. The Black is the better looking one. The slider action is nice and feels smooth.

The front of the phone sports a 2.4 inch display with the ambient sensor, earpiece and secondary videocall camera above it. Below the display, you find a D pad with the usual array of control keys – the left and right select keys, the call and end keys and the shortcut menu and cancel key. Below the slider is the keypad. The keys are nicely spaced and dont feel cramped at all. The key feedback is nice and the backlighting looks great. The right side of the phone has the volume rocker and the dedicated camera key. The left side has the just the fast port. On the top is the new Music key using which you can play / pause music playback. On the back, you find the 3.2 MP camera with the LED flash and sensor. The design is clean and simple.

User Interface and Multimedia:

The Sony Ericsson G705 sports the same user interface as all new Sony Ericsson phones. One department where Sony Ericsson needs to do something refreshingly new is in the user interface department. A complete overhaul of the user interface would help it more in competing with Nokia’s smartphones. Having said that, the interface is very intuitive and easy to use. It is improving a lot with new iterations and has some visual improvements. It supports Flash themes using which you can customise your phone and adjust it to your own personal experience. It also offers some basic multitasking functionality through the activity menu.

The Sony Ericsson G705 has nice multimedia capabilities – it comes with the Music Player 3.0. The interface is nice and easy to use with nice visual effects and auto rotation. The audio player supports a wide range of popular formats like MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC +, WAV, WMA, M4A etc. It can be minimised and be run in the background with some other applications. The music player also supports the famed Megabass and stereo widening features. It also sports a custom EQ. It also has the TrackID feature using which you can identify and download tracks easily.

The video player is also quite nice and supports all the basics like fullscreen viewing, fast forwarding, rewinding etc. It plays the MP4 and 3GP formats. You can also take screenshots of the videos and save them. The image gallery is also very nice and fast. It supports a lot of viewing modes – grid, list, thumbnail etc just like the older versions. You can zoom into images and also view them as slide shows. You can also geotag the images directly and inscribe geographical coordinates on them. The G705 also sports the FM Radio with RDS.

Camera:

The Sony Ericsson G705 has a 3.2 MP camera with a LED flash. It can shoot images at a max resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. The camera quality is quite nice, just as you would expect from any 3.2 MP camera. The camera interface is much like the Cyber Shot interface and again offers many customizable features in an easy to use way. You can tweak the control shoot mode, picture size, LED flash, self-timer, white balance, and other effects. The LED flash is quite decent. The camera doesn’t sport autofocus which is a shocker coming from Sony Ericsson. You can also record QVGA video at a measly 15 FPS.

Other Stuff:

The call reception quality of the G705 is superb. Sony Ericsson has improved greatly in this department. The voice is crystal clear. The Sony Erisson G705 sports a 950 mAh Li Po battery which has a rated talktime of 10 hrs and a standby time of around of 400 hrs. It lasts about 2 days easily with moderate usage. The GPS reception is also good and a GPS lock down takes just a few seconds. The Google Maps application works quite nice, and offers two views – map and geographic. It also sports a lot of connectivity options like GPRS class 10, HSCSD, EDGE class 10, 3G HSDPA, USB v2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with DLNA, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP etc. The bundled Netfront 3.4 HTML browser is quite good but not as good as the number one Opera mobile browser.

Pros:

• Nice design
• Good Feature list

Cons:

• Just a 3.2 MP cam with only QVGA video recording
• Average build quality

Final Words:

The Sony Ericsson G705 is a nice phone with good features but doesn’t offer any new features. Personally, I would choose the Nokia E66 over this phone.

Our Rating: 3 / 5.