Sony Ericsson Shows Off Affordable Cedar Phone

Sony Ericsson showed off a new phone named Cedar last week, and to be honest its rather plain. Don’t let the lack of enthusiasm fool you though – this is just a low budget device aimed towards consumers who don’t want to break the bank when upgrading. Cedar will be available in two colors, Black/Silver and Black/Red, and has certain features from Sony Ericsson’s GreenHeart strategy – including recycled plastics, a low power consumption charger, an e-manual, waterborne paint and compact packaging.

Notable features of the Cedar include a 2.2 inch screen (262K colors), bluetooth, FM radio, 2 megapixel camera (video recording @ VGA 30fps), and Widget Manager 2.0 which allows you to access Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. Does anyone still use Myspace?

As stated previously, Cedar is a 3G phone and with that it has access to the web (via a Netfront 3.5 browser), e-mail, Exchange ActiveSync, YouTube, IM, MMS, SMS, and so forth. Music lovers will enjoy the well designed media player and a standard 3.5mm audio jack that supports nearly every type of headphone and earbud out there. Battery life is pretty respectable at 12 hours and 30 minutes in GSM mode with 420 hours of standby, while UMTS (3G) talk time comes in around 5 hours and 475 hours standby. Cedar should arrive to most markets around the third quarter of 2010 – check out more photos at Sony Ericsson’s Picasa gallery of the Cedar, or further specifications at the press release.