The Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot family welcomed two new members in February. We already gave you a glimpse of the 5-megapixel C902, and now junior has the stage all to itself in our Sony Ericsson C702 review. The two sharpshooters clearly have different targets. The yummy camera features like Auto Rotate, BestPic and Photo Flash, along with the TV Out, were obviously reserved for the 5MP Cyber-shot C902. Sony Ericsson C702 on the other hand is keen to impress with GPS and splash and dust resistance. Its 3-megapixel camera takes advantage of geotagging, and features face detection, red-eye reduction, autofocus and dual LED.

The C702 also bundles up HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, FM radio with RDS, Media center, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP and the respectable 160MB of built-in memory.

Splash and dust resistant

Built-in GPS receiver

3 megapixel camera with active lens cover and dual LED flash

Face detection and geotagging, fast autofocus

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, HSDPA (3.6 Mbps) in the European version

Fingerprint resistant case

FM radio with RDS

Bluetooth (with A2DP)

Tracker sports application

Memory card slot for M2 cards (up to 8GB M2 cards supported)

Controversial looks

No office documents viewer

Awkward volume/zoom rocker

No TV out

Sony Ericsson C702 is a new Cyber-shot bar. Enough has been said already about the new Sony Ericsson naming convention. Suffice to say, it's now C for Cyber-shot.

Another interesting fact is that this is the first splash and dust resistant Sony Ericson handset. The C702 also features the GPS-based Tracker sports application. Clearly, it's a phone for the youth and the sports minded. We're reviewing the Cool Cyan variety (yeah right, someone had to tell us it's cool), but there's a Speed Black alternative for the not so easily trusting.

Sony Ericsson C702 is not among the slimmest phones, at 15.5 mm thick, yet relatively lightweight at 105 grams. Generally, we are pleased with the ergonomics of the handset.

The Sony Ericsson C702 has a casing of rounded edges giving the somewhat chubby bar a nice solid feel in hand. It gets even better for the nice rubbery finish of all the cyan surfaces. By the way, the whole casing is fingerprint resistant, the screen the only area vulnerable to smudges.

The 2.2" display has the keypad crammed down the front panel. The 256K-color QVGA display does well in terms of brightness and contrast, and doesn't seem to have reflection issues. Yet, it doesn't fare well under direct sunlight.

Above the screen, the secondary video-call camera is placed, along with the earpiece.

Below the display are the control and navigation keys, grouped in three square patterns. The D-pad's in the middle. On both of its sides there are two rocker-styled sets of buttons.

The left one features a soft key and the Activity menu key, with the tiny convex knob of the Call key embedded amidst. Symmetrically on the right, we get the other soft key, the correction C key and the End key.

The glossy finish and good elevation set the Call and End keys apart from their surroundings and improve tactility. The round confirming center of the D-pad could've been more comfortable and less recessed within the square frame, which does look like the D-pad in K850, only smaller and not integrated within the alphanumeric keyboard.

The dedicated Call and End keys are becoming standard in Sony Ericsson, along with the three-soft-key layout. The proprietary "Back" key is absent in C702, replaced by the right soft key. User-friendliness is greatly improved, except maybe for those who go back a long time with Sony Ericsson handsets.

The alphanumeric keypad of Sony Ericsson C702 has its ups and downs. Crammed down the bottom of the front panel, with slim and long keys, it doesn't offer the best in ergonomics. The keypad is a pleasure to look at in the dark though. The transparent keys have pleasant blue backlighting.

The right column of keys serve quick camera controls as in K850. In Camera mode they're used for setting the Shoot mode, Scene mode, self-timer and flash. Icons with light blue backlighting explain the function of each key. As opposed to K850 however, they backlight all the time, not only in camera mode. We don't see much point in that, the keypad does feel messy.

The left side of the C702 hosts only the M2 memory card slot. It's properly sealed with a rubber cap to ensure the handset's splash and dust resistance. More rubber is to be found around the battery department when you remove the battery cover.

The right side sports the volume/zoom rocker key and the camera button. Too slim and of little elevation, the volume rocker was quite hard to press in our test unit.

The regular Fast port for connecting the charger, headset and USB cable is at the bottom side of the handset. In our test unit it was utterly exposed. We're not sure if there will be any kind of protection in the release version, and how that goes with the promoted splash and dust resistance. Topside of the C702 there's only a tiny On/Off key, which is also used for changing the active call profile.

The highlight at the back is a oblong nest with the active lens-cover of the 3 megapixel autofocus camera. On its sides are the loudspeaker grill and the Dual led flash. The back panel is all matt plastic, save for the camera lens cover, which has a specific brushed aluminum finish. The cyan-colored battery cover has dimple-patterned surface and quite pleasant rubbery feel.

At the very bottom of the battery cover there's a huge lanyard eyelet - it does look the size to tow a car by. Next to it is the special battery cover latch of the splash resistant Sony Ericsson C702.

Anxious to get that lens cover open, aren't you? It hides the 3.2 megapixel lens and a self-portrait mirror. On the sides of the camera module are the loudspeaker grill and the dual led flash.

The hard to open back cover (yep, the splash and dust resistance mantra goes again), hides a standard Sony Ericsson BST-33 950 mAh Li-Pol battery. Right beneath it is the SIM card bed. The regular Sony Ericsson layout means the SIM card is easy to squeeze in and hard to remove.

The battery is quoted at 300 hours of standby time and up to 7 hours of talk time in GSM-only networks. The same unit is used in Sony Ericsson K550, W850, W880, W890 and K810, to mention a few. In the short time of heavy testing we were quite hard on the C702, but that can't be indicative of the real-life battery performance. Judging by our experience it would most probably get you going for 3 - 4 days of moderate use.

While Sony Ericsson C702 offers good reception, call clarity was an issue with our test unit. Sound in the earpiece is somewhat muffled, a probable consequence of the materials used to reinforce the vulnerable parts of the splash and dust resistant phone. Since we do not have a simiar Sony Ericsson handset as a reference point we're not sure how that might be handled in the retail version.

The user interface in C702 has the well known Sony Ericsson feature phone styling, spiced up with a few recently introduced features, we've discussed in previous reviews.

The main features in the C702 user interface include the optimized Media Center, Flash Lite 2.0 support, 4 types of main menu views, and the three-soft-key layout. Unfortunately, the auto rotate capability seen in K850 and C902 is missing here.

As most previous models, the C702 comes with a dedicated Flight mode. When turning on the phone, you may opt to start it directly into Flight mode. The Sony Ericsson C702 cannot work in Flight mode unless a SIM card is inserted, unlike competing Nokia S40 models.

In active stand-by mode the screen displays information about the network signal, battery strength, current date and time, plus the next alarm due. Pressing the navigation key in any of the four directions can start a user-programmed feature or application. The main menu itself is a 4 x 3 grid of animated icons, each of which can be directly accessed by pressing its corresponding alphanumeric key. All sub-menus are in list view with tiny icons on the left side. Response is fast in every submenu and application. Nothing new in the standard stand-by and default menu so far.

The first thing to mention is the changes in the main menu structure we already saw in Sony Ericsson C902. The menu can now be diversified with a couple of alternative views: rotating, single icon and From Theme.

The rotating view shows three animated front icons on the display, the center one showing the active selection. The other two icons are half-hidden, just as an indication of what comes next. Five other menu icons can be seen in the dim background.

The icon view displays a single icon at a time and a vertical bar with position mapping. Neither of those views works with shortcut keys. The Grid view only allows quick numeric keypad access - a good enough reason to forget about the other options once you've tried them.

In our Sony Ericsson C702 there is only one theme preinstalled, but be sure that more will be added before the phone hits the market officially.

The well-known Activity menu has a dedicated shortcut key on the keypad. The Now running tab of the menu offers multi-tasking - for example you can run two Java applications and listen to the radio or to the music player simultaneously. The Activity menu also offers quick access to recent events, the web menu and the My Shortcuts menu, which contains a list of frequently used features and can be modified to the user preference.

The phonebook can store up to 1000 entries with a total of 7000 phone numbers available.

The phonebook interface makes good use of the three-soft-key layout, as seen in many handsets since its debut in Sony Ericsson K850. In contacts you can directly open any contact with the middle soft key. The old-school More key is renamed Options and is now on the left side, while in former models, it was inevitably stuck in the right. The third soft key corresponds to "back". Another practical use of the middle soft key is the Send Message option, available when a contact is open and a number is highlighted.

A good feature is the Smart Search, which lists all available contacts in the phonebook starting with the digits typed in the standby screen. The search engine looks up both letter combinations in names and phone numbers that start with the digits entered. The Smart Search can also be switched off if not needed.

Also present is the Send All Contacts option that transfers the entire phonebook to another compatible Sony Ericsson device.

As usual, you can choose whether the SIM contacts or the phone contacts should be default for the phonebook. Displaying both lists simultaneously is impossible.

On a different note, a nice option allows you to auto save to SIM any new contacts that you're saving in the phone memory.

Contacts can be ordered by First or Last name. They are searched by gradual typing of the desired name. When adding a new contact, there are 7 phone number fields available. This is the first tab of fields for the new contact.

The second one is for email and web addresses. The third is for assigning a picture, a custom ringtone and a voice command. The fourth goes for Title, Company, Street, City, State, ZIP, Country information. The last, fifth tab, is for additional information and birth date.

When you add the birth date, the phone prompts adding it to the calendar and setting a reminder, which we found to be a handy feature.

The Calls log is divided into four different tabs. They are: All, Answered (Received), Dialed and Missed. The maximum number of records is 30 altogether, shared across the separate tabs. When there are several calls made to a single contact, only the last call gets displayed.

Along with the standard messaging functionality, Sony Ericsson C702 offers the Manage Messages and Manage Email features, plenty of settings for accounts, and the option to assign categories to messages. These features are embedded in the standard Sony Ericsson interface and have become standard for each new release. The Manage Messages application consists of three tabs. The first one is All Items, There's also an On Mem. Card and an In Phone tab, each including Drafts, Inbox, Outbox, Saved messages, and Sent messages folders.

This menu allows messages to be moved to memory card or phone memory, arranged by categories, date, size, and contact, as well as other functions for improved message handling.

All messages, except emails, use one Inbox. No matter what kind of message has been received, it goes to the shared Inbox. Only emails have their own dedicated Inbox.

Users may opt to sort messages by category list, if a specific category has been defined for a message. Six of them come predefined: Business, Favorites, Follow Up, Fun, Holiday, Important, but categories are fully customizable as well.

You can also delete all messages in a given category. Furthermore, messages in categories can have their own sorting with Contact, Date, and size the available filters to choose from.

Much like in W890, in the general inbox there is no indication if a message has been assigned a category. The same holds true for messages that are opened. Generally Manage Messages, together with Categories, offers wide-ranging customization options and unsurpassed message handling.

When composing a message, the character counter will alert you when you're 20 symbols short of the 160-character limit. The T9 dictionary goes without saying.

The email client in C702 supports dozens of settings and all types of encodings. C702 can save attachments, no matter if they are supported or unknown file formats. Email messages can be sorted by size, date and time. Support for push email is available too.

Office documents as Word, Excel and PDF cannot be opened, of course.

Viewing a message in fullscreen mode and changing the font size (small, medium, large) are handy options. There is a separate Manage email application, with the same structure and features as the one for SMS.

The time proven Media center is the core of the multimedia features in the phone. It is important enough to have a dedicated shortcut on the left soft key in standby.

The Media center menu lists the Photo, Music, Video, Games, Web Feeds, TV and Settings icons. The current pick is highlighted and the count of included files is displayed. You may opt for portrait or landscape screen orientation.

Sony Ericsson C702 is equipped with the Sony Ericsson Music Player 3.0. The player supports MP3, AAC, and AAC+, WAV, WMA, M4A and MIDI file formats and sports the MegaBass equalizer preset. The player can naturally be set to run in the background. If you are not willing to use the media player step-by-step structure, you can directly play a file through the file manager with its classic flat tree structure. 

Sony Ericsson C702 doesn't offer additional player skins. Extras, as Shake control and SensMe are not supported by C702.

If you are willing to find a particular song, but know just a part of its name, don't worry, just type it in track list and the phone will automatically find and display it. If you're not using some of the music options, you can disable them in the options menu.

The video player, previously found in the entertainment sector, is now accommodated in the media center as well. It supports fast-forwarding and rewinding, as well as playing clips in slow motion. The interface is simple but stylish, although it fails to impress from a functional point of view.

The game section houses two games - the Brain Juice and the FotoQuest Fishing; both provided by the Digital Chocolate, Inc. Both games are very good and rather amusing. The FotoQuest Fishing takes you underwater in the role of a scuba photographer where you get to do assignments on capturing rare and beautiful fishes on film. The second game, Brain Juice, we see for the first time in C702. It is quite entertaining and involves solving mathematical problems, memory games and pattern recognition exercises.

The TV department in the media center allows you to watch online video clips directly from YouTube. All you need is to properly set the streaming settings. Recently featured, most viewed and top rated clips are just a few clicks away. Sadly, searching a clip is not supported.

The integrated FM radio of Sony Ericsson C702 has memory for 20 preset stations and supports RDS. You may opt for switching off the RDS, using TrackID to find a name of a song or turn Mono on/off.

Some other multimedia applications include MusicDJ, VideoDJ and PhotoDJ. VideoDJ is for making video clips from scratch or editing existing recordings using special transition effects and adding background music. It can be a very amusing application. MusicDJ is a very simple application for creating custom polyphonic melodies. PhotoDJ is convenient software for image editing, including features as auto level, light balance, bright/contrast, color balance, effects, etc.

Another piece of multimedia software is the PlayNow 5.0, a convenient and easy-to-use direct link for downloading ringtones, full track music, games, themes and wallpapers. PlayNow offers content for mobile download and the users can preview content before purchase.

By combining the PlayNow catalogue with applications like TrackID users are presented with a My TrackID list and TrackID Charts by country, created by TrackID users around the world. These charts are based on what songs other users are searching for and want to hear the most. PlayNow™ supports MP3 and Windows Media DRM file formats.

The Sony Ericsson C702 has a 3 megapixel autofocus camera with a dual LED flash, self-portratits mirror and active lens cover. The double purpose alphanumeric keys are a welcome enhancement to the camera handling. The D-pad can also be used for switching between still camera and camcorder, while scrolling up or down changes the exposure compensation.

The cool Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot SE v2.0 camera user interface is no news anymore, and it works like a charm in C702. The camera user interface main features are the pop-up sub-menus enhanced with icons and small photos, for even more intuitive performance, and the Multi Menu packing all the available settings.

Spiced up with Face detection, geotagging and macro mode, the camera capabilities of the C702 easily catapults it to the ranks of some of the best Cyber-shot handsets.

The face detection works well when the two eyes are visible. We tested it with tree people in a frame and Face Detection kept the tree faces in focus.

The built-in GPS allows geotagging as we mentioned earlier. When a photo is taken geographical identification data is added to the image, so that the location where the photo was taken can be shown on a map.

The other settings are extensive and include shooting mode (normal, panorama, frames, burst), scenes (auto, twilight landscape and portrait, landscape, portrait, beach/snow, sports, document), picture size (3, 2, 1 MPs, VGA resolution), focus (auto, face detection, macro, infinite), light, self-timer, metering mode (normal, sport), white balance, effects, and settings multi-menu with the other camera settings.

The photos of the 3.2 megapixel camera are pretty good, with fine detail and nice level of sharpening. The images are well balanced with mild contrast. We have some issues with the focus in macro mode, but do remember that this is not the final version of the camera firmware. Generally, image quality is above Sony Ericsson K810.

The videos taken with C702 are captured in QVGA resolution at 30fps in MPEG4 file format. We like the quality and smoothness of the recorded clips but we can't help wishing for 30fps video at VGA resolution, although even the high-born Sony Ericsson C902 doesn't have that either. For those interested in the details, an average 30-sec clip has is about 1.5MB in size. The other data is as follows: AAC mono at 16.000kHz, 29.83 fps and 375 kbps data rate.

The options for the video camera are pretty much the same as those for the still camera with very minor differences.

The Photo gallery is accessible through the Media center. Generally, the Photo gallery is a convenient tool for managing a vast collection of camera photos with great customization capabilities.

The Latest Photo section provides quick access to most recent images.

Next, Camera Album is a thumb list for each month of the year. When a month is open, it reveals a 4 x 3 grid of thumbs of photos. Scrolling down shows all the photos taken in the respective month. The highlighted photo is a bit larger for better viewing.

The Pictures section opens again as a 4 x 3 grid of thumbs with non-camera images, like the preinstalled wallpapers. When exiting the full screen view of a picture, it smoothly zooms out to thumb view.

Photo Tags is a feature for displaying previously marked favorite photos.

Also here is the Pan and Zoom option and the slideshow function, revealed when you further scroll down the submenu. Slideshows in C702 are just fine - before they start you are asked to pick a mood and the handset plays the animated slide show with background music to suit the chosen mood. The transition style of the slideshow also varies according to the mood.

Sony Ericsson C702 uses the traditional Access NetFront HTML browser of the latest 3.4 version. The main improvement here is the integrated virtual mouse pointer. It is a real pleasure to work with.

Another interesting and practical feature is the "Find on page" option. When selected, a rectangular window at the bottom of the screen appears. The search is done by gradual typing and the first match is immediately highlighted. More results are available after hitting the find key.

Other than these improvements, the browser does the usual good job and has enough of the other familiar options - you can view the pages fullscreen with no menus showing and you can even browse your Web pages in landscape mode. It supports content created for HTML 4.01, xHTML 1.0, CSS and Java script, WAP 2.0. The supported security protocols are SSL/TLS.

You can also browse sites in pan & zoom mode, and it works much like zooming photos. There's a connectivity sub-menu added, where you can set the preferred connection, default page, or local connection. The NetFront web browser offers an RSS-feed reader, accessible through the main page of the browser.

Generally, the Smart-fit function of the browser does well fitting the web content onto the screen, but you may not find it so cool if you prefer to browse sites in the standard way. Scrolling is fast once the page has loaded completely.

The Sony Ericsson C702 is a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone with HSDPA (3.6 Mbps). C702 also supports Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP profile, which means that you could use a stereo Bluetooth headset with it. The handset also has the Human Interface Device (HID) Bluetooth profile allowing the phone to be used as a remote control for PC and other Bluetooth-enabled devices. Further on, the phone could be used as a Bluetooth modem for Internet access on a PC or notebook. Another extra is the integrated GPS receiver with A-GPS function, which we'll discuss later on.

The phone has five modes in a USB connection - show menu, phone mode, media transfer, print and mass storage. The new one in C702 is the "show menu". It displays the available USB modes when the phone is connected to a computer via USB. If you use a specific mode most of the time, you may opt to set it as the default one. If in the current connection you are interested in another mode, pressing the back button will display the four available modes.

With Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) you can transfer media files and synchronize playlists when the phone is connected to the computer using the USB cable. It is possible to use MTP in Media transfer mode or Phone mode. MTP is supported by Windows Media Player 11 and higher in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

In Sony Ericsson C702 the built-in GPS gets used not only with Google Maps but with the proprietary fitness application called Tracker.

Available for free download and compatible with a variety of mobile OS and Java-enabled handsets, the Google Maps for Mobile comes preinstalled in the C702. With Location services you can get help finding your way, view information about your current location and save your favorite locations. To use all features of the Location services internet access is required.

After defining a start and end location, the possible routes are being calculated with overall guidance, based on the available information in the database. With the built-in GPS, Location service gets full GPS functionality, as well as A-GPS for faster satellite lock. This makes it possible to use navigation on the go, with turn-by-turn guidance.

Two different views are available - Satellite and map view. Traffic information is another important feature here. The user interface is nice and intuitive.

The Status info application displays the current activity in km/h for a 60 minutes period. The GPS connection status is indicated on the second tab of this application.

Of course, saving your most recent routes is as easy as it could be. Within several clicks, a title, description and position is all you need to save a favorite location.

The Log application in the Location services tracks and saves each position request, which is accessible at any time afterwards. Each entry in the log is saved in descending order by date and displays the date and time, as well as the exact GPS position.

The phone also features the sports application Tracker, which allows you to keep track of your speed, distance, route, and calories during training. Using the Tracker doesn't require connection to the Internet, and there are no costs for using it. When the Tracker application is started and "Start training" is selected the application looks for available satellites. Users can choose between time, distance, route based or no limit trainings.

The menu of the Tracker application consists of Start training, Routes, Results, Summary, and settings submenus. Under Routes the routes covered so far are stored. The distance covered is shown in either meters or kilometers. Each route can be viewed in a graphic map.

Results sorts all the activities in a calendar month view. Sessions saved for the particular month are indicated by a small icon. The same holds true when day view is selected. Each result can be analyzed in graph or replayed. The graph shows the average speed and the activity total time.

In the settings menu there are plenty of customization options for the Tracker - units, energy consumption, personal profile, auto save routes, etc. In the personal profile you are prompted to enter details as gender, height, weight, and year of birth. Having defined a speed zone when starting a training session, you will be prompted with phone vibration and on-screen text to speed up or slow down to keep within the preset speed.

We liked the Tracker application - it proved a handy piece of software. Bear in mind that it requires access to satellites and cannot be used in covered areas such as indoor gyms or the like.

The Sony Ericsson C702 offers the traditional time-management features. There is an Organizer icon in the main menu and it contains several applications: File manager, Alarms, Applications, Video call, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Light, Calculator, and Code memo.

The Calendar offers monthly, weekly and daily views. When you enter a birth date in the phonebook, the phone prompts adding it to the calendar.

Tasks can be two types: simple Tasks and Phone calls. Notes are written similar to messages and can be displayed on the home screen, too.

There are five alarm slots available. Each one offers a lot of options - you can opt to repeat the alarm on chosen days of the week, as well as everyday. Text and a picture can be added to the alarm. Furthermore, the alarm's behavior can be defined in case the time it is due to go off comes while the phone is in silent mode.

The Voice recorder has no limit to recording length, making the free memory available the only restriction. The Calculator is the regular Sony Ericsson application. It offers the basic functions, no bells and whistles. The stopwatch and countdown timer are also the well known basic applications.

The dual LED light on the back of the phone can also be used as a torch, thanks to the Light application. The LEDs can be on continually or for a period of one minute only. They can also send out an SOS signal.

As far as the additional applications are concerned, the Sony Ericsson C702 comes with AccuWeather Light preinstalled. You can get local weather forecasts but you have to download the needed data online.

The FaceWarp is a fool-around piece of software, used for adding silly faces to portrait shots.

A midrange cameraphone for the sports minded, the Sony Ericsson C702 sure brings excitement to the company’s Cyber-shot line. With HSDPA and a good media package keeping company to the capable 3-megapixel shooter, C702 has the entertainment sector duly covered. Add the sturdy casing and GPS-supported extras (the Tracker application is more than welcome), and you’ve got the right gadget for those who like their calls with a pinch of adventure.

Sony Ericsson C702 debuts along with C902, and the two handsets are worthy reinforcements to the Cyber-shot ranks. In both we see tweaks of the user interface, but it still feels like more than a refresh is needed. Another drawback is the video resolution limited to QVGA. But that’s only a fraction of the otherwise good camera performance. The C702 design is not all cheers. The solid feel in hand and the nice-to-touch surface are definite winners, but opinions were divided on looks.

Sony Ericsson C702 and C902 are a good example of diversifying the Cyber-shot portfolio by catering to different user needs. It’s a matter of priority to choose between the sleek full-metal 5-megapixel shooter C902 or the rough and sporty C702.