The Sony Ericsson G900 is physically identical to the G700 with a 2.4" 262K-color TFT display of QVGA resolution. However the G900 has more to offer than its sibling - bringing Wi-Fi support and a 5 megapixel auto focus camera it looks set to cause high-tech high-end excitement.

As with the G700, UMTS support with video calls is also on board, along with stereo Bluetooth and an M2 memory card slot. Sony Ericsson also made a big deal of their Notes applications that allows you to organize your life with electronic yellow Sticky Notes (they come in other colors, too).

Sexy is the last thing to call Sony Ericsson G900, but we couldn't resist trying some creative photography on it. It does pull off an occasional beauty shot.

The Sony Ericsson G900 measures 106 x 49 x 13 mm and weighs only 99 g - those are the exact same dimensions as the G700, which makes us wonder how Sony Ericsson achieved the same weight and dimensions given the extra features.

  

The Sony Ericsson G900 uses the same 208 MHz processor as previous Sony Ericsson UIQ smartphones. It's also got 128MB of RAM - much like the Sony Ericsson W950, W960 and P1 smartphones. The user interface clicks quite fast and turning off the available transition effects makes it even faster.

The G900 display is not as large as the W960 but proves good enough for its purpose (and its price tag). Above the display there is only the video-call camera and the earpiece.

Much like the G700, the Sony Ericsson G900 surprised us with its transreflective display. As a result, the legibility under direct sunlight is great, way above any other previous Sony Ericsson smartphones. It still has poorer colors and contrast than most high-end Sony Ericsson feature phones, but in terms of sunlight legibility it comes really close to the all-time champions Nokia and Apple iPhone.

The keypad of the G900 is nice although not as texting-friendly as the one of the G700. The alphanumeric keys are quite large. The navigation D-pad and the soft keys around it offer pleasant response too.

Speaking of soft keys, with the G700 we had two context keys just below the display that allowed supreme one-handed stylus-free operation of the handset. With the G900 we don't have these anymore - what's more, they haven't been replaced by other keys - the G900 is simply two soft keys short. Maybe that's where they shaved off the extra weight (just joking, of course). Now you're left with the virtual keys on the display only.

At the sides of the Sony Ericsson G900 there are further changes to the UIQ smartphone style used so far. There is no scroll wheel for example - a beloved feature by all UIQ fans. But even this way single-handed operation still remains easy enough.

There is also a dedicated lock/unlock key for the keypad - the old-fashioned way of using a key combo is still present though, so the hardware key is just an option.

A flaw with the design is that the camera key is too sunk and with almost no tactile feedback. Effectively, that makes it a nonsense to use.

Next to the charger slot on the left side you will also notice a tiny status LED much like the one on G700 - it blinks to indicate missed calls and unread messages, and lights constantly when the battery is low or while the handset is charging.

Unlike the Sony Ericsson G700, where the M2 memory card slot had a nice rubbery cap and was accessible from the outside, with the G900 the slot is on the same spot but under the battery cover (shaving more weight, aren't we?). Removing or inserting a memory card without the help of a sharp pointer such as the stylus still proves almost impossible - the card sinks really deep.

Speaking of the stylus - it's tucked in at the upper left corner of the handset. It's almost the same as the one of the G700. It again is not telescopic and proves a little short.

Removing the back cover proved somewhat hard. It's the same pry-it-open type that we saw in our recent Sony Ericsson lower mid-range roundup, as well as in G700.

The G900 has a standard Sony Ericsson BST-33 Li-Po battery with a capacity of 960 mAh. It's rated at up to 380 h of standby time and up to 12 h of talk time. Those figures seem rather optimistic for a battery of such modest capacity, but we couldn't confirm the real-life performance.

In conclusion, the Sony Ericsson G900 comes a little short of achieving the ergonomics and user-friendliness of G700. The design has been sacrificed too, to stay faithful to the conservative trend. But overall we are pleased with its size, form factor and usability.

Sony Ericsson have put a great deal of effort in optimizing the UIQ user interface for thumb use. Some controls have gotten bigger - especially the multimedia and camera ones. You have a vast array of user-configurable shortcuts at your disposal to make everyday tasks easier. The Notes application has also received an upgrade and is now among the phone's main organizing features - a welcome change as we prefer notes over to-do lists for keeping track of our daily schedule. The new task manager also makes it easier to control and switch between the currently running applications.

The Notes application has been upgraded with the Sony Ericsson G900 and is now pitched as a serious organizing application. It has even got a dedicated shortcut key on the keypad.

The notes you create now resemble the sticky notes some of us like to stick around their desk or on the fridge. They can combine drawings, written or typed text and they can change colors for easier sorting.

The options don't end here - now you can add alarms to your notes, send them via MMS or Bluetooth, upload them to your blog or file them in separate folders, such as Business, Personal or Urgent. There is however a downgrade too. You cannot use different colors of ink for your drawings as it used to be in the previous UIQ smartphones.

Those upgrades are welcome but the need for a dedicated Notes key on the keypad still remains questionable to us.

The task manger that comes with the UIQ interface has also been changed. Previously, opening it presented you with a list of recently opened applications, and the actual list of running applications was hidden on a second tab. Now the recent applications tab has disappeared, and the list of running applications appears as a pop-up, really neat and convenient.

Sony Ericsson G900 comes with the Media Center that we've seen on some of the latest Sony Ericsson feature phones. It provides one-click access to your photos, music, and video. You are able to sort music by filters as year, genre, albums, tracks, playlists, podcasts, etc. If you want to find a particular song, but know just a part of its name, don't worry, just type it in, and the phone will automatically find and display it.

The Media Center also supports changing the screen orientation. And best of all, both Sony Ericsson G700 and G900 have the MegaBass equalizer preset, so now even Walkman fans can be content.

The video player has large controls allowing easy thumb operation.

Both Sony Ericsson G700 and G900 have built-in stereo FM radio tuners with RDS support and the Sony Ericsson TrackID music recognition service. You need to plug in the headphones in order to use the radio, as they serve as an antenna.

Browsing images is as fun as on the Sony Ericsson W890. The Media center photo gallery is a convenient tool for managing a vast collection of camera photos with great customization capabilities. Photo Tags allows you to tag an image with a custom tag of your own thus making filtering easier.

The slideshow function is readily available as soon as you open any image fullscreen. Before they start, you are asked to pick a mood and the handset plays the animated slideshows with background music to suit the chosen mood. The transition style of the slideshow also varies according to the mood.

The UIQ camera interface we've come to know from previous models was poor on user-friendliness. The Sony Ericsson G900 however comes with a brand new camera that is really intuitive, it's full of helpful hints and most important of all - it's optimized for thumb operation. Unfortunately, the menus available on the viewfinder cannot be operated with the D-pad as a back-up option.

The Sony Ericsson G700 3 megapixel camera lacked auto focus and some advanced camera settings. The situation with the G900 is entirely different. With G900 you get everything the Cyber-shot users get.

With the Sony Ericsson G900 you get digital image stabilization, full Scenes mode, Panorama and Multi-shot shooting mode. What's more, you have the Touch focus feature that allows you to select the subject to be in focus when you are framing your shot.

The most important settings are available straight from the viewfinder, the additional settings menu gives access to options such as picture size, white balance, effects, storage location, and shutter sound (can be turned off).

We are not that pleased with the camera performance of the Sony Ericsson G900. Firing up the camera is somewhat slow at around 7 seconds, while the shot-to-shot time at high-quality is about another 6 seconds. That's with the auto preview option set to off - and of course you have to remember that the auto focus slows down things a bit. It's also very likely that Sony Ericsson will fix that in the retail version of the handset.

As far as the Touch focus is concerned, we were eager to test it out. It turned out that the feature works just fine, but we find it more of a marketing gimmick. You can get the same effect by the old trick of focusing and reframing. The trick includes focusing dead center on the subject that needs to be in focus and then keeping the shutter key at half-press you simply reframe the scene to get that extra artistic off-center look. It's as simple as that.

Nevertheless here's a sample that the Touch focus feature works exactly as advertised.

The G900 video recorder however is not upgraded and it still maxes out at 30 fps at QVGA resolution, which just passes acceptable by our standards.

Here is the 30fps Sony Ericsson G900 sample camera video. It's a good guess that video quality or at least the zoom freeze will be fixed later on.

Sony Ericsson G900 has one crucial advantage over G700 and that is the Wi-Fi support. Add the capable web browser and UMTS support, and the G900 turns out a nice web phone package (among many other things). We would have liked it better if it had HSDPA support, but obviously keeping the cost down has been a priority with both the G700 and G900.

The G900 web browser performs fast and has enough configuration options to make mobile web browsing real fun. You can move the current page around by dragging it with your thumb but it's even faster with the D-pad. With the D-pad, the browser offers supreme speed when scrolling and panning. You can also use the fullscreen or tabbed browsing to make your life easier. Zooming and text searching is also available.

Unfortunately the fullscreen mode is not as full as the one of G700, but that seems to be just a prototype bug - so go easy on this fellow.

The Sony Ericsson G900 doesn't score as high as the G700 on ergonomics - the memory card slot location and the absence of the two context keys tip the scales in favor of the G700. Yet, it still allows one-handed operation with almost no need for stylus.

The Sony Ericsson G900 has borrowed the best of the Walkman and the Cyber-shot worlds (excluding the xenon flash and the accelerometer) and put Wi-Fi support and touchscreen display on top. With excellent build quality and a presumably easier to swallow price tag (EUR 300) than the Sony Ericsson W960, it surely sounds like a sweet deal.