The Sony Ericsson Cybershot range of camera mobile phones has today swelled to include a new 5.0 megapixel handset, the new Sony Ericsson C902 is the latest in a long line of camera focussed phones form the manufacturer and follows in the footsteps of many previous models that broke the mould of phones with cameras.

The Sony C902 has been made avialable on O2 contract deals in the UK and is already available as a free handset when consumers agree to sign up to either an 18 or 12 month contract, retailers are even offering free gifts with the Sony Ericsson C902 at this early stage by using their left over network commissions.

The manufacturer has only produced one other mobile phone to feature a 5.0 megapixel camera in the past, this being the Sony K850i which was released in 3 colour variants, a blue, green and silver version which in this handsets case actually related to coloured accents rather than the overall colour of the exterior casing.

This step away from the K-Series range which has always been applied to Cybershot phones makes complete sense as the manufacturer has now turned to releasing C-Series handsets in line with the ‘C’ in Cybershot, an easy transition but perhaps a little delayed?

The Sony Ericsson C902 is branded with the Cybershot name, and the 5.0 megapixel camera offers auto focus and face recognition software. Sony Ericsson has placed shortcuts to the most helpful camera shortcuts around the screen of the phone which can be touched to access things like zoom, flash and effects. These touch sensitive icons can quickly enable you to select the shortcut you need, for example turning on the flash or enabling macro mode. The C902 also supports HSDPA Mobile Broadband, has an FM radio with RDS support and Bluetooth 2.0.

The Sony Ericsson C902 is also a 3G enabled phone allowing for face to face video calling with compatible handsets aswell as fast download speeds of movie trailers, news and sports reports and new mobile content such as games, ringtones, music and videos.

The biggest difference betwen the older K850 and the new C902 is that Sony Ericsson have put some real thought into protecting teh high quality lens, users can now use a slide feature to open and capture cover the lens whien not in use, a feature that other manufacturers should really take notice of. It is a basic problem that after owning a mobile phone for some time teh exposed lens gets clogged with all manner of grit and dust purely as there is no cover protecting it.

The C902 has been initially releasedon O2 in the UK but further network rollouts are expected very soon, in particular onto the Orange network which will double the amount of tariffs on offer and make finding the correct package for a consumers usage requirements that much easier.

The Sony Ericsson C902 is due to be released in a further red casing at some point in the near future by Vodafone, although there is no official launch date at present the network has added the red edition to their coming soon pages on their website.