Launched last February 7 at Barcelona, the G-series mobile phones is Sony Ericsson’s newest line of high tech smart phones aimed at the mass consumer. Despite its relatively low market price and intention to corner the budget smart phone market, the G-series mobile phones still boast of amazing features and specs that you would normally only find in very expensive high end palmtops.
Being the cheapskate that I am, I decided to go with the Sony Ericsson G700, since it’s the little brother of the G-series (and therefore the cheapest).
The term little brother can also be taken literally, with the G700 measuring only 106 x 49 x 13 millimeters. The G700 is very compact and lightweight, which can be a little bit on the negative side since its most notable feature is its touch screen capability.
For people with large fingers like me, the touch screen can be difficult to use since you are liable to keep hitting the wrong screen area. Luckily, Sony didn’t remove the traditional keypad controls. This is also useful for people who are paranoid about the phone screen, and refuse to touch it if they think the sweat or food on their fingers will stain the screen and possibly ruin its sheen.
Another glaring negative aspect of the G700 is its relatively low storage capacity, with only 160 MB of phone memory. Considering the fact that the Sony Ericsson G700 is being marketed as a smart phone with multimedia capabilities, 160 MB is too little.
You wouldn’t be able to fit 1 high quality full-length movie in there, much less add your entire mp3 collection. The storage capacity limits can be circumvented because of the expansion slot but doing so would bring up the total cost of the phone, since it uses Sony’s Memory Stick Micro, which is more expensive than your run of the mill SD or MMC flash card.
But if you do have the desire and budget to buy an extra storage card (even though other phones do not need it), you can enjoy up to 8 Gigabytes of storage space. That brings the G700’s specs to iPhone levels. In fact, with an 8 GB memory stick, the G700 is essentially an iPhone, with better third party software capabilities.
Last but not the least, I find the absence of Wi-Fi support puzzling, since a large number of Sony’s products have native Wi-Fi support built in, and they are usually quick at supporting the technology, even going so far as to use it as the connectivity means for their Playstation Portable.
The G900 supports Wi-Fi, though, so maybe the omission of WiFi is intended to bring the costs down, and to make the higher end product more appealing for the consumers who have extra money to spare.
At the end of the day, the Sony Ericsson G700 is a great budget-priced smart phone that has capabilities that will rival its more expensive competitors. While it does have several flaws in terms of missing features, they are certainly not dealbreakers and most of them can be justified.
I would still highly recommend the G700 if you want a high quality smartphone but don’t have the budget.