Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini

As far as fun phones go, with the Xperia X10 Mini there’s never a dull moment. It’s petite and ready to party. Take a closer look.

Form Factor
Here’s what I liked - it’s small and easy to operate with just one, hand and comfortable to hold thanks to the 'Human Curvature' form. The 2.5-inch (240 x 320 pixels) capacitive touchscreen is scratch resistant. It’s lightweight and can fit just about anywhere. A 3.5mm handsfree socket is located at the bottom near a micro USB 2.0 port neatly hidden by a flap. Volume keys are on one side just above the camera button. A hot swap for the microSD card as well as the SIM are located under the rear panel which incidentally comes in a variety of colors, three of which are included in the package. The battery of this handset cannot be removed so if the handset hangs there’s no quick fix.

The one issue was that I was unable to use most other handsfree kits and stand-alone earphones with the Mini. The bundled set (canal type) though is comfortable to use. 

Features and Performance
Interface
The Android OS (v1.6) runs on the Mini’s Qualcomm MSM7227 600MHz processer making the UI extremely zippy. Sony Ericsson’s TimeScape UI (seen in the X10 ) works well here. The Four Corner UI is convenient and simple to set up and use.  It offers multiple desktops but can only have a single widget per page. The UI is smooth and easy to navigate easily with just your thumb. It’s well designed. And looks and feels very much QUALCOMM’s Brew Platform rather than Android.

Media
Music quality is great. The player is simple and capable of providing loud and clear tones even without any settings. The Infinity button enables you to get additional information on each track from corresponding YouTube videos to other data with the press of a key. The FM radio didn’t work out too well. Reception was not very good even in areas where I usually get great reception. TrackID is also available for getting data on songs via external source or the radio. The handset supports 3GP and MPEG4 files even if they’re in iPhone resolution. Of course the screen size and resolution doesn’t make it easy to watch for too long, irrespective of how clear it is. A couple of games have been preloaded and of course if you want more, the Android Marketplace is a great place to look.