Sony Ericsson G705
The G705 looks like a nicely designed slider, but without any new technology or a smartphone OS to lure us to it, the G705 will have to be priced carefully, or we expect it to be lost amongst the crowd.
Upside
Believe it or not, the G705 will be only the third Sony Ericsson (SE) mobile phone to feature both Wi-Fi and a built-in GPS receiver. Considering that nearly every mid-to-top range Nokia handset featured this combination last year, not to mention many Windows Mobile phones and the iPhone 3G, it's great to see SE keeping up with the Joneses, even if they aren't exactly innovating new technologies to jump ahead of the crowd.
The good news is that Sony Ericsson intends to make the most of including Wi-Fi and GPS; the G705 ships with Wayfinder navigation software pre-installed, and features DLNA media streaming over wireless networks — similar to the streaming seen on the C905 Cyber-shot camera phone.
The G705 looks sharp too, though its design is unsurprisingly similar to so many SE phones to have come before it. At 14mm thick the G705 won't stretch your tight black jeans too much, and the slider form is still as popular as ever. Its QVGA display is nothing to write home about, but SE screens are often clear and colourful.
The G-Series of SE phones is harder to place than the C-series Cyber-shots and the W-series Walkmans. SE phones whose moniker start with a G are web capable, with the G705 featuring HSDPA downloads, but besides this feature it's hard to see why the G705 is better than other phones with an internet connection for browsing the web.
Downsides
Our favourite Sony Ericsson pet-peeves are alive and well in the G705: M2 memory card expansion and no 3.5mm headphone socket. The Xperia X1 gave us hope that SE was turning its back on these incompatible proprietary technologies and making way for slots that work with the microSD cards and headphones we already own. However, so far this doesn't seem to be the case.
Price will also be a big consideration as we'd consider most of the SE phones released in 2008 to have been overpriced. The Xperia X1 was the most expensive handset of the year without jewels or the name of a sports car attached to it, and even the low-end K660i was more costly than its low-end feature sheet warranted.
Overall
The G705 looks like a nicely designed slider, but without any new technology or a smartphone OS to lure us to it, the G705 will have to be priced carefully, or we expect it to be lost amongst the crowd. Big thumbs up to Sony Ericsson for including DLNA media streaming as this is poised to become of this year's must-have phone features. Expect to see the G705 on shelves in the second quarter of 2009.