Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini and Mini Pro

Available now
14th February 2010

Marketing departments can be idiots, something that's plainly obvious when it comes to the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini and Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini Pro, two exceptionally wordy product names that are likely to cause confusion amongst consumers.

The XPERIA X10 Mini and Mini Pro are two interesting devices in their own right - a pair of very compact Android phones, the Mini and Mini Pro have been styled to look like the original XPERIA X10, but they are clearly not the same thing. Perhaps they should have been called the XPERIA X8 and X9, but clearly marketing thought that would be too simple.

The names are one thing, but these two devices themselves are likely to polarise opinions.. because those technical wizards at Sony Ericsson have just made what is probably the world's smallest Android handset. But is a tiny Android device actually going to be useful?

Let's start by looking at the smaller of the two devices, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini. Weighing just 88 grams and measuring only 83 x 50 x 16mm, the X10 Mini features a 2.55" 240 x 320 pixel touchscreen display on the front and a 5 megapixel camera on the back. Despite the tiny size and light weight, the X10 Mini packs in WiFi, GPS, 3.5G support, microSD expandable memory (2GB supplied as standard), multimedia player, FM radio and a 3.5mm audio socket. Inside is a 600MHz Qualcomm processor and 128MB RAM. Talktime on 3G is a shade under 4 hours with up to 15 days standby time.

In other words, the X10 Mini offers precisely everything you would expect to find in an Android phone, apart from the small screen and diminutive size. There is no doubt that this is an impressive achievement.

The XPERIA X10 Mini Pro adds what appears to be a quite well designed slide-out QWERTY keyboard, bringing the device up to a much heavier 120 grams and 90 x 52 x 17mm in size. Although we have seen lighter messaging devices, we can't think of one that adds so many other features.

So, apart from the screen, the X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro are a pair of no-compromise Android touchscreen phones that can do pretty much everything that bigger ones can.. expect for the screen. You see, the screen is really the problem here. A 2.55" display is only a fraction larger that what you would find in something like the Nokia N79. The actual XPERIA X10 comes with a whopping 4" display with more than five times the pixel count.. and in our view, the tiny screens on the Mini and Mini Pro just don't cut it.

However, it could well be that there's a large slice of the market who are looking for exactly this type of phone, after all you assume that Sony Ericsson did so some market research before launching it.

Both the XPERIA X10 Mini and Mini Pro will be available in Q2 2010. The Mini comes in Black, White, Lime, Pink, Red and Silver colours; the Mini Pro comes in a rather more sober choice of Black and Red. No guidance on price was available at the time of going to press.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini and Mini Pro - Promo Video

See these two compact Android devices in action with one of Sony Ericsson's promo videos:

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