Sony Ericsson launches the G705
The Sony Ericsson G705 is a multimedia cell phone.
(Credit: Sony Ericsson)Sony Ericsson isn't at CTIA Fall 2008 but it launched a shiny new cell phone in London. The Sony Ericsson G705 offers a hefty crop of features in a slim slider design in both black and gold.
Inside you'll find a 3.2-megapixel camera that can capture YouTube-compatible video. The high-end shooter offers a load of goodies, including a digital zoom, a flash and video light, picture blogging, and PictBridge photo printing.
Other offerings include stereo Bluetooth, a music player, an FM radio, support for Java, a speakerphone, Wi-Fi, messaging and e-mail, USB mass storage, personal organizer features, 3G (UMTS and HSDPA), an accelerometer, a full HTML browser, a voice recorder, instant messaging, phone-as-modem capability, Assisted GPS, and PC syncing. And of course, it makes calls, too.
In all, that's an impressive assortment of features, and the 262,144-color display looks top-notch. In some ways the G705 has a lot in common with the Sony Ericsson G700 and G900, which the company launched earlier this year at the GSMA World Congress. But unlike its predecessors, the G705 does not appear to have a touch screen.
As a quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) handset, the G705 should arrive in worldwide markets, the Americas included, by the first quarter of next year. Orange will get its own variant called the G705u. That will be Sony Ericsson's first phone to support UMA technology.
Kent German is a senior editor for cell phone reviews at CNET. When he's not testing the newest handsets on the market, he's blogging about cell phone news for Crave. In his On Call column, he answers reader questions and gives his take on the rapidly changing mobile industry. E-mail Kent. 
After only three months of use, the list of significant deficiencies is long. Some of the communication features simply don't work. That's true for ActiveSync and conferencing.
Furthermore there are significant ongoing costs (estimated for one year around 1500 US Dollar) as the phone dials-in without knowledge/permission of the user.
Important features such as ActiveSync, conferences, Handsfree are unusable. The build-in camera is poor, no flash, unsharp photos.
Flight mode is out of reach and can be set only if you reboot the phone.
The silver color peels down from the buttons, looks ugly.
Phone crashes from time to time and you have to reboot it every three days. Reboot is slow, up to two minutes.
The instruction/user guide is useless as important things like meaning of icons are not mentioned. Topics are described superficially without any value.
Sony Ericsson support is incompetent and not able to help. Software updates not available so far.
This phone is one single empty promise! Disappointing!
If you do the comparison to the SE P1i which was also not a real highlight, the G705 is the worst phone ever.
I strongly advise: Don't get the G705!