If you are looking for a phone with a good camera in the Rs 15-20k price range, Sony Ericsson’s C903 Cyber-shot might be the best bet. The slider phone has received great previews and reviews from almost all sites as capturing fantastic shots.
The device features a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, and image stabilisation. Video recording, though, is restricted to a paltry QVGA resolution at 30 frames per second. A built-in photo-editing application will give you plenty of options to play around with. The phone also has integrated social networking features, letting you upload your new photographs to your blog, photo-sharing site, YouTube, etc. What’s more, the C903 gets support for HP’s Snapfish service that allows users to order for printouts of photographs that are delivered directly to the doorsteps.
To make taking pictures easier, the 2.4-inch TFT screen (256K colours, 240×320 pixels resolution) comes with an accelerometer to auto-rotate its orientation when you hold the phone sideways. The scratch-resistant surface protects your screen, but also leaves behind a lot of fingerprint smudges.
The internal memory of the phone, used for basic tasks, is restricted to 105MB. So all the pictures you click can be stored on a Memory Stick Micro card of up to 8GB.
The C903 has support for 3G, Bluetooth with A2DP, GPS and A-GPS, and stereo FM radio with RDS; Wi-Fi, however, is missing.
As with all Sony Ericsson phones, we suspect the battery life exaggerates a bit when it claims it can provide 10 hours of talk-time and 400 hours of standby time.
The C903 Cyber-shot is retailing across India for Rs 18,850.
