Preview: Sony Ericsson G900
Posted by xell | June 1st, 2008 
It has been on the market since this Monday: The new touch-and-go UIQ3 smart phone G900, a powerful package of WLAN, 5MP camera with Auto- & Touch-Focus as well as a photo light and a 2.4″ touch screen combined with a regular keypad to bring UIQ to the mass market.
The G900 you can see here is my little precious since Tuesday and it does great so far. The Dark Brown colour really suites it well. The QVGA display is bright and clear and a breeze to handle. I won’t give that much away for now as we’ll post an in-depth review of the G900, once Sony Ericsson sends us the review phone.
I’ll leave you with impressions of the new menu icons, the media menu and the new panels standby.
The G900 is available nearly everywhere now, pricing is set around £275 / 350 € / $525.
Filed under: G series, Preview, UIQ, Upcoming
(20 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)
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which of the button executes taskmanager?
6:57 pm on 6/1/08Is the flickering in messaging app still present?
I assume you are talking about banding in the screen due to lack of colours? It is still present.. you can see in the picture with the music player were the album art is present
8:12 pm on 6/1/08@teamet
No! I’m talking about the slow load time of opening messages due to flickering
8:53 pm on 6/1/08First start of Messaging takes about 6 seconds. Once in the memory, it almost instantly loads.
The taskmanager is started with the symbol in the top right corner.
11:09 pm on 6/1/08@xell
I mean opening a message or starting new SMS. Older UIQ3 handsets take several seconds to open new SMS even if messaging is already in memory.
I mean which hardware button to lauch taskmanager. not that icon in topright corner because it’s difficult to reach with thumb.
11:30 pm on 6/1/08Just wondering about the availability of this and the other new phones (g700/g900/c702/c902) - none of the “g” series are listed on SE’s Web site. Will they be coming to any US carriers, or can us Americans only get them by ordering online? I’ve seen a lot of different prices around, but I don’t know whether they’ll be subsidized by a carrier or whether different versions for different markets will have the different features.
11:49 pm on 6/1/08I find (standard) UI really really ugly and horrible.
Just what is SE thinking?
It is a major step *downwards* from my P990i, which I begin to appreciate more and more now!
Maybe the UI is much faster now, but I don’t like going back years in time with what looks like a black&white UI…
9:08 am on 6/2/08what do you mean by balck & white UI? this is substantillay better /nicer then nokia’s symbian i have a black n82 and am dying to jump to this….
11:12 pm on 6/2/08How is the screen in direct sunlight? Is the screen washed out or is it usable?
3:32 am on 6/3/08So does anybody know if this phone will be released for USA ? Right now I see it only supports GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 but not 850 which is used by USA carriers. I really hope that U.S. version of this phone will come out soon, because I’m in love with this baby…
11:17 pm on 6/4/08Hi,
10:49 pm on 6/7/08Is it easy to surf on the web with the WLan ? Can you go on every web page ?
Is there an application that you can see the weather with, etc. ? Is there a way to use MSN messenger for example ?
Thanks in advance for your reply
Hi Benjamin
The upcoming firmware update for the G900 will introduce Opera Mobile 9.5, which adds Flash Lite 3.0 functionality. That means there’ll be just about no restrictions on your web browsing - you can even watch YouTube videos in the browser, if that’s what you want. Opera Mobile 9.5 also comes with web Widgets, and one of them is a weather widget, although there are plenty of applications out there, if you can’t wait for Opera Mobile 9.5. You can easily use it with one of the multiple IM clients available, also supporting MSN.
11:03 pm on 6/7/08Just got this phone but cannot for the life of me make it sync with my laptop (or any PC that I own)! it’s driving me round the bend, does anyone know how to make it work? I have intalled, uninstalled, reinstalled, downloaded from web, and so forth - all to no avail. the sync gets so far and then jumps to ‘failed to sync’. shame cos I like SEs the best and this one is nice, esp ergonomically.
6:48 am on 6/9/08Deb,
Here’s what you do then, if you’ve tried everything. Go to the Computer management tool in control panel, and choose Device Manager.
With the G900 connected, you’ll manually have to remove any G900 drivers (usually in Ports, System devices and USB-controllers). You can remove them by right clicking, and select Remove. Once that’s done, you remove the G900, restart the computer, and try again by first inserting the cable in G900 and then the computer, choosing Phone mode on the G900.
If that doesn’t work either, redo the procedure above, but reinstall the PC suite software once you’ve removed the five device drivers from Device Manager. Let me know if it helps, ok? I had the same problem, but that was due to the software conflicting with an older version I had.
7:14 am on 6/9/08i feel poor clarity pictures! is it 5 mp?
11:53 am on 6/20/08well,.. something wich never expected, i got the g900, but two days and i still havent figured out why it wont start,. power on, and it reaces the language selection screen, and then once any language is selected, there is no response,.. i can hear the tap when i touch the screen, but the buttons on the screen or the keypad wont respond.. so much for the g900
4:04 pm on 6/25/08Sounds like a faulty device. Get a new one as soon as possible.
10:10 pm on 6/25/08Can try this site to download msn application
http://www.clickapps.com/getj2me.htm?pvid=20935
As for language, u need to bring it back to sony to install your local locale language.
Problem:
2:50 am on 6/27/08media always looking for update media file
i’m having trouble with getting my computer to recognize my g900 =(
2:25 am on 7/13/08hi,
I’ve got the same problem, my pc knows that it’s connected, but it tells me “no mobile connected”
(sorry about my english … i’m french!)
i ve already install/uninstall/get the latest software “pc suite for SE”
but it doesn’t work
please help me!
thanks a lot
11:12 am on 7/16/08A newbie french..
Same problem with me, my G900 can not be recognized in PC Suite in Phone mode, it can only be recognized in Filetransfer mode. Have reinstalled PC Suite several times, deleted ports etc without success. I am getting crazy of this problem!
Could the problem be conflicts with my previously PC suite which was installed 1 year ago for my old SE W810i ???
5:40 pm on 7/19/08Any one having the same problem??? I just bought this new Sony G900. nice phone by the way. The camera function seems abit odd, sometimes it work just fine and some not. Like when you leave it on standby and after a while when you use the camera function, it just doesn’t work anymore. Even when you use the dial to go to camera and click it it doesn’ open. any help please…
5:16 pm on 7/25/08Does G900 supports Japanese language?
12:55 pm on 8/18/08Hi,
12:43 am on 8/19/08Im planning to buy this fascinating moboile but,I heard about some Battery problems in the G900, Is that right?
Moreover, some people say that it’s 5mp is not of a good quality!!??
Please reply….
thanks in advance
Hi xell, nice handset, planning on getting one myself.
Can you please tell me what’s the name of the theme/skin in the photos here showing the menu ?
10:21 pm on 8/24/08It looks awesome way better than the standard G900 theme.
Hi Christi, it’s called “UIQ Wave”, you can get it here: http://www.uiq.com/my-uiq/theme/uiq-wave/
12:52 pm on 8/25/08Thanks, nice skins over the uiq page.
Since you have the phone i’ll ask you some questions as i have found different opinions over the net regarding G900’s certain functions.
- The main thing i’m concerned is the main menu. It’s kind of a waste of space of having only 3×3 icons. I would have preferred 3cols x 4rows or more shown (as at normal SE s). I have seen from SE’s simulation
http://www.sonyericsson.com/trythephone/g900/
that there is an option to create a folder in the main menu.
Can you tell me if i can move other applications from different menus in my own folders and if i can personalize my folder’s icons ? (something like taking the Games and putting them in Games folder or Office folder containing the Office app and PDF+ and such)
Also is it possible to change the icons positions or are they fixed in position ?
- Another thing that i like about SE is the big clock in the stand-by menu. I understand that this is not the case for G900 as it has Symbian w+ UIQ and not the A200 OS. I have found a similar app Clockss:
http://www.saxoft.com/get.php?page=clockss maybe you’ll find it usefull,
but it isn’t quite as the original SE. Just wanted to ask you if the original SE clock is on G900 also?
- the same question goes for the pictures viewer if it can show more cols x rows of thumbnails images.
- a feature that i like in music phones (walkmans) is SensMe. As i understand the G900 has a special
Walkman installed, touch orientated, similar to the one in W960 but with less features so i found on this
site (http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=173969 see comments from user strizlo800 I
think) that you can install the W960’s walkman and get more features. Nothing about SensMe though (as i understand W960 doesn’t have it).
But some folks talk that it’s in the latest Sony Ericsson Media Manager (v1.1):
http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=154972&start=300 and that at least one of them
installed it on a W960 so i think it should work on a G900.
Have you tried it or heard someone to install it ?
- another feature that i wanted to ask about is if it has support for GPS services (the
Location Services from other SE models). I have found a external SE GPS receiver
(Activator GPS HGE-100 Sony Ericsson) and wanted to know if G900 has support for
GPS services or i have to install software packages (like Google Maps or navigation ones).
- And since this has been a long post i’ll finish with another question
5:46 am on 8/26/08How is the camera speed: opening, shoot-to-soot time and quality compared to a Cybershot phone
(either old K’s or new C’s) ?
I have read over the net that it is somewhat slow and picture quality is a bit lower than a Cybershot
but that a software upgrade to the latest firmware will make it work a lot faster (nothing for quality).