Sony Ericsson Xperia Active

Available now
22nd June 2011

There are lots of smartphones on the market, and there are quite a lot of rugged phones on the market too.. but there are not many rugged smartphones around. Luckily, if you are in the market for such a device, there is now the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active.

Closely based on the hardware found on the new Xperia Mini, the Xperia Active is an Android 2.3 smartphone with a 3" 320 x 480 pixel display, a 5 megapixel camera with HD video capture, 3.5G and WiFi support plus GPS and all the usual Android features. You'll notice straight away that it is a slightly odd looking device because there's an anchor point for a strap or a lanyard.

Although this is a compact device, it is still very powerful with a 1GHz processor under the hood combined with 512MB of RAM, the same sort of thing that you would find in a high-end Android device.

There are two areas where the Xperia Active is different from a standard Android phone. Firstly, the Active is dust and water resistant up to 1 metre for 30 minutes. It also has a unique "wet finger tracking" capability, so that it can be used if either the screen or owner is wet. You can attach the Xperia Active to yourself with a wrist strap or arm case, and each pack comes with an interchangeable soft cover.

Secondly, the Xperia Active has been bundled with a range of outdoorsy and fitness type applications, including a GPS based barometer, a heart rate monitor that can be used by a compatible accessory, and a tracking application called iMapMyFitness.

On top of these unique features, the Xperia Active will do everything that any other Android phone will do, so you can surf the web, check your email or play Angry Birds when you're not working out. The limiting factor here is likely to be the smallish display, but as we said before this is a powerful device and games and other demanding applications should run smoothly.

The standard sales package includes a 2GB memory card, arm case, wrist strap and a sports stereo headset in addition to the usual bits and pieces.

Sony Ericsson say that the Xperia Active should be available during Q3 2011. No guidance was given on price, but we would expect the Xperia Active to retail for something in the region of €250 to €300 at launch.