Sony Ericsson C901 GreenHeart

Available now
7th June 2009

The Sony Ericsson C901 GreenHeart is a "greener" revision of the original C901 announced earlier this year, a 5 megapixel 3.5G phone which is on a somewhat limited release worldwide.

The C901 is a Cybershot branded phone, but unlike the most recent devices from Sony Ericsson, the C901 uses Sony's proprietary Memory Stick Micro cards instead of the more common microSD cards. The camera itself has a 5 megapixel sensor, Xenon flash, autofocus, smile detection, red-eye reduction and multishot capabilities, and the C901 has a 2.2" 240 x 320 pixel display, 3.5G support, stereo Bluetooth and an FM radio. Of course, there's a multimedia player, web browser, email client and all the usual features that you would expect to find in a "Cybershot" branded mobile phone.

What makes the C901 GreenHeart different from the standard handset is primarily a environmentally friendly manufacturing process, and in this respect it is a little different from the Naite which concentrates more on reducing CO2 emissions in use. The C901 GreenHeart uses a high proportion of recycled plastics in its design (including the bundled wired headset), ships in reduced packaging, and the C901 GreenHeart uses a special non-toxic paint process to colour the handsets. Sony Ericsson are also stepping up efforts to take back unwanted handsets for recycling, rather than allowing them to go to landfill or languish in drawers.

One problem that many other "environmentally friendly" phones have is their relatively poor technical specification. The C901's 5 megapixel camera and support for 3.5G make this a fairly high-specification device. Why is this important? Well, we think that one of the greenest things you can do with your mobile phone is to buy a good one and keep it for longer, and when you have finished with it, recycle it. The specification of the C901 GreenHeart should be good enough to keep you happy for a couple of years, so in this respect the phone is greener too.

Sony Ericsson say that the C901 GreenHeart should be available during Q2 2009 (which effectively means June) in just one colour scheme of Ocean White. Sony Ericsson did not give any guidance on price, but our guess is that it will be somewhere in the region of €250 SIM-free.