The C902 was the first in the "C" for Cyber-Shot™ range of phones. Previously all Cyber-Shot phones were part of the "K" series.
Physically, the C902 is very much old-style Sony Ericsson at its best. It's a classic-style handset, but ultra-slim at just 10.5mm. The keypad is an old-fashioned one that has good-size square keys giving tactile feedback and enabling fast texting. It feels like a quality handset too, with a combination of metal and plastic, and an elegant finish.
The screen is small by today's standards. This is partly because of the touch-sensitive shortcuts added to both sides of the screen. These are used to activate the camera and switch between still and video. They can also change the autofocus mode, flash and other camera settings.
Let's take a peek at the camera next. The camera is actually concealed beneath a mini sliding cover. When you slide the cover open, the phone switches to camera mode. The camera is a 5 megapixel beast with autofocus, image stabiliser and flash. The autofocus uses face-detection software, so it will automatically focus on a face in a picture. The image stabiliser software we're less convinced about, but it may help to avoid camera blur in low lighting. The camera also has the BestPic™ feature which can automatically take nine photos in a second, so that you can then choose which one to keep. An Accelerometer feature senses which way up the phone is being held, and will automatically rotate your pictures into portrait or landscape mode. The LED flash used for the C902 is more powerful than a standard one, but isn't as good as the xenon flash used on some Cyber-Shot phones. Video recording is comparable with the best of the K series phones, and video calling is available too, on a 3G network. A new "Storyteller" application lets you create presentations from pictures and show them on Facebook and other social networking sites.
Although its a Cyber-Shot phone, the C902 has great music capabilities too. The media player is fully featured, with support for album art. Sony's MegaBass™ ensures that you get rich sounds out of the small speaker. The PlayNow™ feature lets you personalise your phone by downloading an MP3 ringtone (you have to pay for downloads, however.) MP3 and AC ringtones are supported. TrackID™ can identify a song from a few seconds recording. An FM radio with RDS is also included. You can plug in a stereo headphone, or use an optional Bluetooth Stereo Headset. The memory is average by modern standards at 160 Mbytes but the phone supports Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) cards up to 4 GB, which is enough to store 1,000 music tracks. For some reason though, there's no support for microSD cards.
Connectivity is adequate, with support for Bluetooth and USB. The USB connection enables the phone to act as a USB mass storage device, so moving music and images between phone and PC is drag-and-drop simplicity itself. As already mentioned, this is a 3G phone, with HSDPA support enabling an "always-on" internet connection with download speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps - comparable with a home broadband connection. As well as being 3G, it's a quadband GSM phone, so should be usable anywhere in the world.
Battery life is adequate, but ultraslim phones tend to have shorter battery lives than conventional phones, which isn't surprising. The smaller screen size does help to reduce power consumption, and we don't think that the battery life will be an issue for most users.
We had hoped that the C902 would be free of bugs, but a number of users have reported problems with the phone freezing or crashing occasionally. It's not the best camera phone around, for example the Sony Ericsson Vivaz comes with an 8 megapixel camera and can record HD video too.
By the way, a couple of people have asked us what the difference is between the C902 and C902i. There's no difference. Just Sony Ericsson confusing everyone by calling the same phone by different names in different countries!
General 2G Network GSM 850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900
3G Network HSDPA 2100- C902i Only
Announced 2008, February
Status Available
Size Dimension 108 x 49 x10.5 mm
Weight 107g
Display Type TFT, 256K colors
Accelerometer sensor for screen auto rotate
Sound Alert Types Vibration, Downloadable Ployphonic, MP3, AAC
ringtones
Loud Speakers Yes
Memory Phonebook 1000 x 20 fields, photo call
Call Records 30 received, dialed and missed calls
Internal 160 MB
Card Slot Memory Stick Micro (M2) upto 8 GB
Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G HSPDA, 3.6 Mbps
WLAN No
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared No
USB 2.0
Camera Primary 5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED Flash
Features Geo-tagging (cell-ID), face detection, image
stabilization, 8 illuminated camera touch keys
Features Browser WAP 2.0/HTML (NetFront), RSS reader
Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
Games Yes, Downloadable
Colors Swift Black, Luscious Red, Titanium Silver,
Cinnamon Bronze
Java Yes Mid 2.0
- MP3/AAC/MP4 player
- TrackID music recognition
- Picture editor/blogging
- Organize
- Voice memo/dial
Battery Standard battery, Li-Po 930 mAh (BST-38)
Stand By Up to 400 h (2G) / Up to 360 h (3G)
Talk Time Up to 9 h (2G) / Up to 4 h (3G)