The battle to rule all camera phones - Sony Ericsson C905 vs. Samsung INNOV8

Mobile phones with 8 megapixel cameras are where it's at right now. Traditionally, Sony Ericsson would own that territory, and they threaten to again with the Sony Ericsson C905. But they have competition in the shape of the Samsung Innov8. Read on to see which one will win!

The back story - how Sony Ericsson more or less created the world of camera phones

It's fitting, when you think about it, that Sony Ericsson should be the ones at the forefront of the coming paradigm shift in camera-equipped mobile phones. Come on, it was them who began it all, long ago, in 2002. Lest we forget, they were the first phone-maker to unveil a mobile phone that had a camera in it, in the British marketplace. That handset was the Sony Ericsson P800, but it didn't get the mass market penetration Sony Ericsson would've liked, what with it being an amazingly (compared to other mobile phones at the time) top-end smartphone. But, their most iconic phone in history was soon to hit the market, and that one WOULD get great market penetration. That was the Sony Ericsson T610, and it moved the goalposts. There you had a device that stood proudly over the rival mobile phones around it. It was compact, it was slim, and customers went MAD for it. The key thing was... the Sony Ericsson T610 also had a built-in camera, and that it was actually the first phone to go to the wider market, and make people go, 'Wait a sec, we actually do want mobile phones with cameras in!'

So, let's look first at the latest evolution in their camera phone portfolio: the Sony Ericsson C905.

Sony Ericsson C905 - Cyber-Shot perfection?

You just can't deny power, and something is for definite: the Sony Ericsson C905 has much more raw power than any other mobile phones you can get in the UK. And why is that? Well, it's the first camera phone to be unleashed upon the UK that has an 8 megapixel camera. Yes, you read that right. 8. That's a disturbingly high pixel resolution, and it means that the Sony Ericsson C905 gives you the power to take the absolute most incredible images you've ever experienced, from any camera-equipped mobile phone, in the history of everything ever. Oh, and of course, remember that Sony Ericsson have amped it up with Cyber-Shot awesomeness, and that will make the images coming out of it even more sumptuous. Combine that with a stunning multimedia player, WiFi, HSDPA and built-in GPS, and the end result is that the Sony Ericsson C905 is, without doubt, one of the best camera phones ever made.

Samsung Innov8 - the pretender to the throne

The Sony Ericsson C905 doesn't get things all its own way, though, because there's another mobile phone out to steal its thunder: the Samsung Innov8. The question is, though: which of these mobile phones is the one you should go for? Well, there's one distinct advantage that the Samsung Innov8 has over the Sony Ericsson C905, and that's because the Samsung Innov8 is a full-on, Symbian S60-powered smartphone. That lets you add on loads of third party software onto the Samsung Innov8, or view and edit Office documents, and so on. But, that power comes at a price. The Samsung Innov8 is quite a bit bigger than the Sony Ericsson C905. Noticeably bigger, in fact, than a lot of mobile phones, and when you factor in that their cameras are dissimilar in quality, and the Sony Ericsson C905, to my mind, looks better, I would say that it makes the C905 a much smarter buy than the Samsung Innov8.