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C901 Unboxing And Mini Review By Rookwise


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Posted by Rookwise
Having owned a C901 for nearly 2 weeks now and promising to do a quick review. I thought I'd better get into gear and start typing.

Unboxing

The C901 comes in the standard familiar mini cardboard box. Aparently there are different colour boxes for each colour of this phone. Mine is the Sincere Silver version and the box was a white/green colour. I believe the Black model comes in a white/purple colour box.
Upon opening the box you are geeted with the C901 phone placed in a recess over one side. The phone is packed inside a clear plastic bag.
Underneith this section holds the bundled accessories. However. They are quite sparse consisting of just a CST-60 mains charger (or a CST-70/75 depending on your country), BST-33 battery and very basic stereo wired handsfree headset (the type that came with older phones like the K750, K800).
Upon removing the "accessories" you get to the section containing the paperwork for the phone. These are a SAR information booklet, Important Information booklet and a quick start user guide that unfolds into a small poster size.

Missing from the usual packaging are the PC Suite cd, DCU-65 usb cable, instruction manual and a memory card.

Like the Greenheart version of the C901. The phones instruction manual has been preloaded onto the phone and can be found in the Settings section.

However. The place I bought mine from included some quite nice extras (fabric case, wrist strap, 2GB Memory Card) so I guess it depends on where you go and how generious the seller is.

Pics

Box Front




Box Rear




Phone




"Accessories"




Entire Contents





Phone


As previously mentioned. The version I bought was the Sincere Silver colour. This consists of two shades of silver. One a more grey/silver and one much lighter silver. The grey/silver covers the majority of the phone with the lighter silver running around the sides of the phone.
Also on the phone, there is a bronze colour located on the camera lens cover and also on the select button in the middle of the D pad. The D pad also has a chrome trim around the border.

On the top section of the phone we find the battery cover lock. This I guess doesn't need any explainaion except that it does its job very well IMO.

The front of the phone shows the screen with the earpiece speaker and light sensor located just above the Sony Ericsson lettering (light sensor is just to the left of the earpiece).
Going down the front we get to the D Pad and top key section with the usual layout we've seen on the A200 platform phones for a while now. These consist of (From the left):

Call Key
Media Shortcut Key
Shortcut key to New Events,Running Apps,My Shortcuts and Internet tabs
D Pad with the select key in the middle
C (Delete) key
Search key
Call End key

As mentioned above. There is now a key assigned to a Search feature. This was usually assigned to access the users phonebook or if branded, whatever the network would assign the key to function as.
The Search feature is basically the Google search part of the phones web browser where you can input a website address or word for the phone to look up via its internet connection.

Next is the number keypad. Each row of keys (4 rows in total) are seperated via a chrome strip. The keypad itself is well designed with quite large buttons making typing very easy aong with every button hardly requiring much pressure to press down and each button on the number keypad seems to have rounded faces making it even easier to press.
The keys are of a semi transparent colour with clear plastic over a silver background (other colours should be similar). This reminds me of the T630, P910, K700 & S700 keypads.

Below the keypad we find the Cybershot logo sticker and also the phones Mic located just below the "hot" letters of the Cybershot logo.


The bottom of the phone is completely plain wth just the lighter silver covering the middle section.

On one side of the phone we find the Wrist Strap/ Dangly object bracket andalso the Fastpot plug.
The other side consists of the Camera button, camera function key for video/camera modes, Image viewer button and the volume up/down buttons.

Moving to the rear of the phone. We find the battery cover covering the entire of the rear section. The battery cover displays the Sony Ericsson lettering and logo, Ringer speaker and also the Camera lens cover. The lens cover moves with slight resistance until its moved halfway and then it opens easilly (similar to a slider phone).

To remove the battery cover you must first slide the lock switch over. Next run your finger along the inside edge to seperate the cover from the rear of the phone.

Underneith we see the sim card/battery compartment, camera, xenon flash module and memory card holder. Its worth mentioning that the memory card just push's into the holder. There is no spring loaded locking switch like on some handsets. You just simply push the memory card in and out. The memory card cannot be accessed without removing the battery cover unfortunately.


Pics


















Features:

Camera: 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, xenon flash, video
Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email, IM
Browser: WAP 2.0/HTML (NetFront), RSS reader
Games downloadable

General:
2G Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network: HSDPA 900 / 2100

Size:
Dimensions: 105 x 45 x 13 mm
Weight: 107 g

Display:
Type: TFT, 256K colours
Size: 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches

Ringtones:
Type: Polyphonic, MP3
Customisation: Download
Vibration

Memory:
Phonebook: 1000 x 20 fields, Photo call
Call records: 30 received, dialled and missed calls
Card slot: Memory Stick Micro (M2)
Accelerometer sensor
Internal memory: 110 MB

Data:
GPRS: Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD
EDGE: Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G: HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps
Bluetooth: v2.0 with A2DP
USB: v2.0

Other Features:
Camera images geo-tagging (cell-ID), face and smile detection
Google maps
Motion-based games
FM radio with RDS
MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player
TrackID music recognition
Picture editor/blogging
YouTube application
Organiser
Built-in handsfree
Voice memo/dial
Java MIDP 2.0

Battery Type: BST-33


Available colours Ocean White (Greenheart), Noble Black, Sincere Silver, Precious Peach








Overall I find the feel of the C901 similar to another classic phone. Namely the K750 minus the joystick and the camera lens is a flush inline with the phone. This is indeed IMO a worthy sucessor to the K750, K800, K810 line and could be considered what the K850 could have been.
[ This Message was edited by: Rookwise on 2009-10-07 09:59 ]



Posted by Bonovox
Nice review of a nice phone. The box is exact same as c510 box. How is the build?

Posted by Rookwise
Build is spot on IMO. Nearly 2 weeks and no squeaks so far. Usually have squeaky battery cover syndrome by now.

Posted by masseur
nice write up!

I admit that since being an iPhone owner I am finding it harder and harder to be excited about any other phone be it SE or WM etc... but as my only everyday SE is W890 the C901 has been one of the very few that has caught my attention based on feedback here on Esato

enjoy!

Posted by Bonovox
Yes its of decent features decent price and quality in a nice package.

Posted by Rookwise
Price is quite good on the import scene atm. I managed to get mine for £160 inc delivery.
From what I can gather. The UK will only be getting the Black model as a sim free unit @ £200/£250 and the Greenheart (Ocean White) will be an O2 UK exclusive which will be locked and branded at a cost of £160 on P&G or free on certain contracts.

Posted by Bonovox
I am tempted by one but not till its been out for a couple of months. Masseur are you tempted by the Satio?

Posted by c96sthl
finally it landed at UK.

it is definitely a nice phone....very solid build.

I accidentally drop it a few times which normally will lead to squeking sound but not for this phone

the structure is so robust....and the camera quality!!! awesome for a 5megapixel

Posted by dancingfate
I have a Noble Black one and it didn't come with a lanyard...

Posted by Rookwise

On 2009-10-07 06:36:11, c96sthl wrote:
finally it landed at UK.

it is definitely a nice phone....very solid build.

I accidentally drop it a few times which normally will lead to squeking sound but not for this phone

the structure is so robust....and the camera quality!!! awesome for a 5megapixel



Its not available in the UK just yet. The release date for the UK was originally 28th September but it has been put back until the end of October along with the release of another Greenheart phone (Naite) and a Greenheart bluetooth headset.



On 2009-10-07 06:58:05, Rifqi_Aziz wrote:
I have a Noble Black one and it didn't come with a lanyard...



They don't come with a lanyard/wrist strap as standard. The seller I bought the phone from included it in the box as a freebie.



On 2009-10-07 02:47:00, Bonovox wrote:
I am tempted by one but not till its been out for a couple of months.



Its been available since May 2009 matey which is 5 months aready. did the same with the T700 last year. By the time the UK got it the phone was just over 6 months old




Posted by Bonovox
This phone is so far the smallest I have seen with a Xenon flash. Very good

Posted by eduardo0789
Hi. Good Review. I have had this phone since July 2009. Great phone. I've got some videos to share:
One is about the video quality, the other one about the camera features and the last one about the user interface

User Interface

Camera features

Video quality


Posted by mriley
@eduardo0789

Have you found anything you dislike about the phone?

Posted by eduardo0789

On 2010-04-23 00:30:23, mriley wrote:
@eduardo0789

Have you found anything you dislike about the phone?


Lack of wi-fi. It's a let-down for me. The User Interface is OK but I loved the SYmbian UI however, I do love the Sony Ericsson Facebook 2.0

Here's a video of the application
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiShdl-K08o


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