This is the cheapest till date Smartphone being announced by Sony Ericsson. The G700 series was announced at10th February 2008 at World GSM Congress, Barcelona. The phone is one of the 7 new phones launched by the company. It’s a bar shaped phone based on the UiQ 3.1 and Symbian OS, version of which has not yet disclosed. The device is Sony Ericsson’s attempt to bring its range of Smartphone more close to public.
The G700 doesn’t really look like a Smartphone rather it looks much similar to the company’s feature phones. The back has look of a low-cost phone, but is comfortable to touch. The back features exposed camera and dual LED lamps for flash purpose which looks similar to the one in P1i. The speaker grill is situated just under the battery compartment.
The screen is 2.4 inches and boasts of 262k color with QVGA 240×320 pixels resolution. Though it is not as good as it is on the P series phones, but it manages very well. The display though is a nightmare under direct sunlight. Being smaller than the most of the phones based on UiQ, the ease of use is greatly crippled. The cost cutting measures have reduced the size of screen as well the availability of WIFI and auto focus on camera which is otherwise a 3.2megapixel sensor unit making the close-up shots impossible. The camera has image stabilization facility. Video is recorded at QVGA resolution at 30FPS. The secondary camera with VGA resolution is used for video calls.
The weight of the device is mere 99grams and the thickness being only 13mm which makes it come very close to motorazr in terms of size and aesthetics. The device retains touch screen and the interface has been customized to suit day to day needs like putting up sticky notes on the display of the screen. The device runs on a 208 MHz ARM processor with 128MB of RAM which ensures that it will be won’t hang and be quick. In built memory is 160MB which is extended by M2 card up to 1GB. Connectivity is through GPRS/3G in 2100MHz band only. This means that it won’t run on the 3G networks of USA. It also has Bluetooth 2.0 with support for stereo headset. Though with smaller screen display, Sony Ericsson has tried to enlarge the icons so that it’s possible to use the phone with thumbs.
The keypad is the generic alphanumeric with a D-pad for navigation as well as dedicated keys for shortcuts and messaging. The new shortcuts feature is very useful as it can help you organize your most frequently used contacts notes, appointments and shortcuts to favorite applications. The task manager has also been revamped with the recently opened applications tab being removed and only running tasks being showed. The photo gallery, music and videos are made accessible through the media center which is one extremely organized way to browse through your multimedia collection. The interface is very similar to the new walkman branded phones. 
The search facility has also been greatly enhanced as you can tag the photos into categories and then sort the photos based on those categories/keywords as well as the searching of a particular song is possible even if you don’t know complete name of song, but just some words of it. The video player is very cool; it has very big buttons in horizontal mode which can be pressed by thumb. The controls are transparent and gradually fade away when not being used. The web browser is the same as the ones in previous versions of UiQ i.e. Opera 8.x though the navigation is very fast with the hardware D pad buttons. It is expected to cost around EUR 250, though Sony has also announced another phone G900 with WLAN, 5megapixel camera with auto focus with cost of around EUR 300. The handset is expected to be available by march-end, 2008.
