Entertaining phones
Both Sony Ericsson and Samsung hosted clashing pre-show press events on the Sunday evening before MWC 2010 starts and we, like, it seemed, the rest of the show, opted for the former.
Amid the obligatory marketing hyperbole we got three new handset launches from Sony Ericsson, with one clearly being the flagship. First we had the Vivaz Pro - the Vivaz with a QWERTY keyboard at the cost of only 2mm extra thickness, then the Xperia X10 Mini - a smaller X10. Then we had the dénouement: the Xperia X10 Mini Pro - a smaller X10 with a slide-out keyboard.
Rikko Sakaguchi, EVP at Sony Ericsson, said of the X10 Mini Pro: "You will never need two phones again," and that applied, as much as anything else, to the other two launches at the event, as the third launch was effectively a combination of the other two.
We had a quick play with the X10 Mini Pro and it's the smallest QWERTY smartphone we've seen. The UI has some clever features, geared - surprise, surprise - towards social networking. There is an ‘infinite button' which shows a bunch of extra information about a contact when pressed and it will be available sometime in Q2 in a bunch of different colours. If the price is right, we can see it being quite popular among younger smartphone users.
The other notable aspect of the Sony Ericsson presentation was the appearance of Sony CEO Howard Stringer, to talk about how chummy Sony is with its mobile phone joint-venture. Sir Howard teased a much greater future level of cross-compatibility between Sony Ericsson phones and Sony consumer electronic devices and services like PlayStation Network.
Furthermore, the general theme of the Sony Ericsson presentation was entertainment and we can expect a lot more cross-over between the two companies in future. Here's the X10 Mini Pro - it's around the size of a business card.
