Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini – Humbling the Mighty X10
In an effort to bring the fabulous mystique of the XPERIA X10 to a wider market Sony has come out with a more pedestrian model in the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini.
How easy it is for Sony to bring the lofty and mighty to the ground is well exemplified in minimizing the superlatives of the X10 into its Mini version that should arrive in the 2nd quarter of the year. One wonders if there’d be enough market left for another average looking and average featured Android handset when most X10 fans will have saved enough to get the real thing which is now being offered free at T-Mobile for a 2-year Pay Monthly plan of just ₤35/month.
Standard Features
As another pedestrian Android smartphone, the Mini is as capable a handset as any with features that are a good but humbled shadow of the X10. It’s still a 3G phone on the dual band UMTS with HSDPA/HSUPA as well as a dual band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G.
It has the same WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, GPS, microUSB 2.0 and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It even has stereo FM radio the X10 missed out. And just when other Android smartphones are now using the latest 2.1 Éclair version, you still get the old Android 1.6 Cupcake OS with the Rachel/UX user interface carrying the same Timescape and Mediascape apps that let you see all your media and communications trails in one place, respectively.
Minimized X10 Features
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini justifies its name quite convincingly when put side by side with the X10. Nearly all the superlatives on the X10 has shrunk and about the only remarkable thing about it is that it will come in six vibrant body color choices – silver, red, lime, pink, black and pearl white.
Another is its shrunken body profile sporting a slimmer and smaller touchscreen monolith measuring 83 x 50 x 16 mm and weighing a mere 88g to make it possibly the lightest touchscreen smartphone on the planet. With nearly a quarter of the weight and a third of the X10 size lopped off, we can understand shearing off the features to mini dimensions as well.
• Firstly, its minimized features can now let go the powerful 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon on the X10 to make room for less muscled Qualcomm MSM7227 processor clocked at 600 MHz.
• After compacting the body, the landmark setting 4-inch display on the X10 gets humbled to a mere 2.6-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with QVGA resolution common in smartphones last year. At least it you get a more brilliant 16 million color support. An accelerometer and a scratch resistant surface are still there.
• From 8 to 5 megapixels, that’s what happens to the camera resolution when the body gets slimmer. It also loses image stabilization and face/smile detection, though you still get autofocus, LED Flash and geo tagging, Video recording resolution is likewise minimized from WVGA to VGA in the same 30fps.
• Phone memory on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini is another minimized casualty from the generous 1 GB on the X10 to just 128MB in the Mini. You still get microSD expandability up to 16 GB. Even the talk times are minimized from 10 hours to just 4 hours.
Why not pick up the best Xperia X10 Mini deals at Moby1 by selecting them from the best mobile deals on offer in the UK. It is a particularly good website to go to if you are looking for a mobile phone with free gift.
