Interesting article. I’ve always been a die hard Ericsson/Sony Ericsson fan since 1995 and have never bought any other brand. My most recent model is the much lauded K750i and served me well for 4 years. Mine was from the first batch and produced exceptionally good pictures, but I later discovered that the W800i, which was essentially the Walkman version (and also the first Walkman SE phone) of the K750i – took even sharper macro photos despite both models sharing the same 2MP auto focus digital camera.

My K750i was my trusty partner and two years later it survived a nasty fall onto the concrete pavement with only superficial scars and nothing else. I did change the original black cover to the silver one for a fresh look.

By the time Sony Ericsson had already introduced myriad models – most of them slated below the (then) flagship K750i, in the non-Symbian OS category. At one time I was tempted to upgrade to the K800i, but it wasn’t much of a vast leap in advancement compared to the K750i so I passed.

Recently, I finally decided to taste the much touted HSPDA/3G and video call experience and was baffled by the mind boggling number of new and recent models from Sony Ericsson. I had no idea what I was looking for – I didn’t want a CyberShot phone as I didn’t want any phone to rival my two existing Canon PowerShot digicams; nor did I prefer a Walkman phone either. I have a proper Sony Walkman NW-A808 MP3/MP4 player and I felt that nothing beats the sound quality of a dedicated Walkman.

Any SE phone with a stylus is out of the question as that would render my Palm T|X redundant. So I was looking at the C702 for its GPS features, something out of the ordinary. Seller told me that the C702 been around for a while – “Look, here’s the new G705 that’s just introduced late 2008, it’s not much more expensive than the C702″.

I took a look at the G705 and was pleased to learn that it had WiFi as well as GPS. It was the quickest decision in buying a new cellphone I have ever made in my life! Gone were the days when Ericsson/SE made few models and it was fairly easy to narrow down your choices.

Thanks to your honorable mention of the G705u (albeit mine is the plain vanilla G705), I felt that I’ve made the right choice in selecting the G705. I didn’t realize the resemblance to certain Nokia models until I read your informative article.

If there’s a gripe with the G705, it’s the lack of auto focus and macro capabilities, something that I wish that Sony Ericsson had included. I used my previous K750i’s camera to take close up photos of wrist watches at the stores, rather than general photography.

Auto-focus and macro mode would have made the G705 the “perfect” SE phone, but understandably doing so will affect sales of its CyberShot models. Photography is one of my hobbies and I am a firm believer that a phone cam will never outperform a proper digital camera, no matter what the phone cam’s pixel count is.

Interesting writeup, thanks! :-)

cheers,

Quartzimodo.

Fallacy of volume and revenue: The iPhone difference
http://counternotions.com/2009/01/30/revenue/

In any argument advanced to show why, for instance, Nokia is trailing Apple in the smartphone market, some will always counter by pointing to Nokia’s volume dominance in units shipped, which dwarfs Apple’s by a factor of 25X. Nokia’s revenue is about 1.5X higher than Apple’s as well. What’s more interesting for shareholders, however, is the fact that Apple’s profit is more than 2X over Nokia’s…Indeed, for every phone sold in this scenario, Apple makes over 55X in profits compared to Nokia…

i think the biggest point here is how does SE standout and do something unique. I think PSP brand would help them do that. In fact the company should rebrand itself, PlayStation Mobile.

It is not technically easy because they are two completely different platforms which along with cannibalization could be the reason sony rejected the idea. But it is a project worth investing on….