Sony’s Android family: Xperia are quite the rage right now. And not without reason, the devices are incredibly fun to use and quite value for money. The star child of this family is the Xperia mini pro which though tiny packs quite a punch. Let’s see what this baby brings to the table.
The Sony Xperia x10 mini pro is a truly tiny device featuring a 2.55 inch LCD capacitive touch screen. The touch screen is extremely responsive and provides a nice haptic feedback when pressed.
A sample picture captured from my Mini Pro
Review of My Sony XPERIA X10
The phone comes with a 5 mega-pixel camera which takes stunning pictures and even manages to take videos at a resolution of 640X480. The camera pictures are beautifully rendered and full marks go to Sony for the camera. The internal specs of this device are identical to the Xperia mini, the only thing that sets it apart from its sibling is the presence of a slide out QWERTY keyboard.
The keyboard is what the mini had been missing as the tiny screen isn’t ideal for typing purposes and the mini pro takes care of that. The keys are very well spaced and although tiny they surprisingly take very little time to get used to. The only thing odd about the keyboard is the non offset rows of keys and the very oddly positioned shift key. Due to the presence of the keyboard the mini pro is slightly thicker than the mini but it still fits in quite nicely in the hand thanks to Sony’s signature human curvature design. The device has minimal buttons like the camera launch button and the volume rocker but they serve their purpose effectively.
The Power of Android OS
But enough about the hardware, this phone’s main power lies in the Android platform it is running on. And in case you’ve been wondering if Android can really be fully utilised on the device’s tiny screen, rest assured. The interface is extremely interactive and a pleasure to use.
Screenshot of Twidroid widget taken with droCap2
The X10 mini pro has all the bells and whistles that an Android phone is expected to have and runs almost all the apps available on the Android market. The only apps that don’t run are the ones that require really high resolution screens which you can’t really expect in this price range anyways.
The phone currently runs Android 1.6 but an Android 2.1 update is expected very soon (tentative date being the end of October). That would surely give another boost to the device. The phone comes with the usual software package found on most new phones like email client, photo viewer, music player etc.
The excellent music player deserves special mention. The smartphone also comes with PlayNow which is Sony’s own content delivery service. The phone comes with a very useful file sharing interface for sharing files between the device and the computer called Media Go. It makes file sharing quite simple and sets the mini pro apart from other Android devices which more often than not don’t feature desktop media sync suites.
The phone also features A-GPS which lets you use the device as a global positioning system. It does feature Bluetooth but weirdly it doesn’t allow you to share gallery objects using it. The good news is that this is one of the things that the 2.1 update aims to take care of. The battery performance of the phone is quite good and the phone delivers a steady two days of charge on moderate use with a couple of apps running in the background.
As a standalone phone also the device performs amicably with good sound quality and appreciable noise cancellation. So there you go that’s the mini pro for you. At a little over $300 (Rs. 15000) the phone is a steal and you wouldn’t come across a better smart phone for that price. So don’t let size matter and grab one without hesitation.
