Review of the Sony Ericsson G700 Business Edition

This time Sony Ericsson decided to be special. It’s G-series phones are designed to appeal to a different audience. The G700 is available both with and without a camera. The latter is known as the G700 Business Edition. Lets see if the Sony Ericsson G700 Business Edition lives up to the promise in this review.

Look, Design, Feel (8/10)

The nice candy-bar design of the Sony Ericsson G700 fits your pocket nicely. However, we do think the business edition deserves a bit slimmer profile, as 13mm is too much bother for a business user. Weight of the G700 Business is no problem at 99 grams. There are dedicated keys on the side for Notes and Messsaging. The side also presents volume control keys and a key-lock button. The G700 Business Edition is available in an attractive metallic mineral Gray color. The 2.4” QVGA touch screen was better than most found on WinMo phones. The resistive touchscreen on the G700 Business Edition has both its advantages and disadvantages. The phone feels quite comfortable for everyday notes-taking, it lacks a QWERTY keyboard but makes up for it with Handwriting Recognition.

Features (8/10)

Though not a feature-rich phone, the G700 Business Edition provides some distinct features on the Symbian UIQ platform. The phone nevertheless features multimedia and fun on the move. There’s an FM Radio with RDS and multimedia player with support for AAC/MP3/MPEG4. The music player also supports TrackID function. Another fun feature is the Alarm with a Radio wake-up function. There’s 160MB of onboard memory on the phone and can be expanded by the M2 (Memory Stick Micro) Slot present. The StickyNotes and Picture editor applications are good for everyday use. Sony Ericsson’s Blogging application is also present on the G700 Business Edition. The document editor can open and edit most office documents. The G700 Business Edition also features a PDF viewer. There’s support for Push E-mail, Instant Messaging, HTML browsing and an RSS reader.

Connectivity (6/10)

The G700 sadly falls short of connectivity. There’s only Tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900) and UMTS 2100 on this “Business” Edition. There’s support for GPRS but no EDGE. There’s UMTS nevertheless for faster connectivity but Business users today are used to Broadband speeds on their phones (Thanks to HSDPA). While lack of HSDPA might be excused, the G700 Business Edition breaks the code by lacking Wi-Fi. The only wireless local connectivity method it supports is Bluetooth 2.0. We must strongly disagree with the “Business” branding of this phone because of these issues.

Performance (8/10)

Sony Ericsson shoots the G700 Business Edition with a 950mAh Li-Po battery. It is rated for a 12-hour talk time and over 2 weeks standby. We could surely rely on the G700 Business Edition for heavy daily use. While it lacks the battery-sucking features like Wi-Fi or 3.5G, the G700 makes up for them with decent battery backup.

Value for Money (5/10)

An unlocked G700 Business Edition costing over 700 dollars at some online stores is ridiculous, in our honest opinion. If you strictly like the features on this phone and absolutely want no camera on your business phone, we sure recommend it. However think twice before spending this much on a connectivity-handicapped phone.