Hands on: Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot C905

Following Sony Ericsson’s C905 announcement this morning, we had a bit of time to poke and prod at this 8.1 megapixel beast. Things were a bit chaotic, with just about every reporter in Singapore itchin’ to fondle it, so there wasn’t an opportunity to get an on-video hands on. Fortunately, we’ve got pics a’plenty.

As it’s obviously the phone’s key selling point, I spent most of my time toying with the 8.1 megapixel camera. The handset I handled wasn’t on the network, so anything that required voice or data wasn’t available.

Photo quality was far, far above the average camera phone’s clunker cam. For day-to-day and informal use, it’ll get the job done. There were a few times where camera quality was inconsistent, with a few shots appearing a bit washed out or exhibiting the standard camera phone blue-ish tinge. However, with Sony Ericsson having at least 3 more months to polish up the color management before the Q4 launch, they might be able to knock these issues out. For the most part, however, photo quality seemed just fine.

Unfortunately, the testing environment was far too bright to test low-light shooting. As a note, the shot Sony Ericsson chose to show as a low-light example wasn’t exactly flattering — so don’t get too excited about taking artsy shots next time you hit the club.

Jumping into the photo configuration menu was simple and straight forward. The automatic brightness balance toggle was all of 4 clicks away(Menu, down, check, confirm), and seemed to work quite well — as did the rest of the photo enhancement features.

Presumably because of the combination of a slider form factor and the hefty amount of optics, the handset is pretty deep in the chunky zone. That said, it felt incredibly solid. The weight was well distributed, and the slide mechanism was nice and buttery.

It won’t go and dethrone your digital SLR, but it could quite easily nix the need to carry a point-and-shoot for those spur of the moment shots. Though the price and regional availability are unknown, expect the C905 to launch in Q4 of 2008.