The handset is 16mm thick though, so while it won’t fit into your wallet like a credit card does, it will squeeze into all but the smallest of pockets, and at 88g you’ll barely notice it is there.
Our review sample came from Orange and had an exclusive and rather nice lime green backplate. It is free on contract. You can also pick it up from other operators and SIM free for around £230 (we found ours at Play.com).
Now, getting right back to basics, that size means, quite obviously enough, a small screen.
It delivers 240x320 pixels in just 2.55-inches. So, quite obviously, one thing you aren’t going to be doing a lot of with this handset is Web surfing even though Sony Ericsson has worked hard to make this task efficient.
The WebKit Web browser offers a thumbnail of a whole page over which you drag a magnifying window in order to see what you want to zoom into.
Scrolling is efficient too thanks to the capacitive screen, but if you’ve used a large screened smartphone you’ll likely feel that browsing is a very squeezed experience here. Oh, and there’s no Flash support.
There is also a bit of an issue with text entry. The screen simply is not big enough to accommodate a mini qwerty keyboard. Sony Ericsson has again tried to be helpful here with separate slide-out screens offering different characters.
One delivers smileys (scroll up for loads of the critters), @, brackets and other important symbols. Another is a basic 1 to 9 pad, the third your alpha keypad.
Multitap and Quicktext (predictive text) are both on offer and we found the system remarkably quick to get to grips with. We’ll be looking at the X10 mini pro in due course, and that has the added element of a slide out qwerty keypad, but suffice it to say here that if you are an infrequent texter and mobile email user you might find the Xperia X10 mini works for you.
We said at the outset that the Xperia X10 mini runs Android. Sadly it is version 1.6. Why Sony Ericsson can’t populate its handsets with the most up to date version of Android we can’t understand. We sincerely hope an upgrade is coming very soon.
On top of Android Sony Ericsson has overlayed its own user interface. There are multiple home screens which can carry widgets – only one each, but when you add a new one you get a new screen for it. On the main home screen is something called corner control.
This boils down to customisable icons, one in each corner of the screen, for launching oft-used apps. It’s a super idea which works really well. In fact, we’d have liked more shortcuts along some of the straight edges of the screen.
We remain unconvinced by the Timescape app we first saw in the original Xperia X10.
Yes, it shows your texts, calls and Facebook messages in one place, but we didn’t like it on the X10’s big screen and on this one it just feels like too much data to handle. We’re happier with separate apps, to be honest.
Sony Ericsson hasn’t stinted on features despite the small overall size of this handset. It is a 3G phone with GPS (with geotagging support for photos), Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. A 2GB microSD card augments the 128MB of on board memory.
A 5 megapixel camera with light and auto focus has a side button for quick launch and easy use. With the handset being so small we did find our fingers straying over the lens at times – you’ll need to take care with that.
Audio output is of very good quality through the provided speakers and there is a 3.5mm headset jack on the bottom edge.
The 600MHz processor seemed up to the tasks we threw at it. With such a small screen to manage it has to work less hard than is often the case and we were happy with its performance.
Battery life is quoted at up to 4 hours of talktime GSM and 285 hours of GSM standby (3.5 hours and 360 hours on UMTS).
The battery is fixed inside the chassis – you can’t replace it, but the good news is that it seems to perform fairly well. We got two days of medium level use out of it – but heavy GPS, Wi-Fi or music listening will mean daily charging is needed.
In the end, whether or not you like the Xperia X10 mini is going to be about personal choice. If you have large hands you probably won’t like it at all. Whatever your hand size, the small screen and fiddly text entry could be deal breakers.
But anyone with average to smaller hands should not dismiss it without giving it a go. We think you might be pleasantly surprised.
Specification :
Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
HSDPA 850 / 900 / 2100
Announced 2010, 1Q
Processor Qualcomm MSM7227 600MHz
Platform OS Android - Android OS 1.6 donut (available upgrade 2.1 eclair)
Dimensions(mm) 90 x 52 x 17
Weight (g) 120
Display Type TFT touchscreen, 256K colors
Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.55 inches
Memory Internal 128MB
Expansion microSD (TransFlash) up to 16GB, 2GB included
Audio Format MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
Video Format MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
HSDPA Yes
3G Yes
EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
Bluetooth Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots)
Infrared (IrDA) No
USB Port Yes
WIFI/WLAN Yes, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
Data Cable Yes
Camera Type CMOS, 5.0 Megapixel
Digital zoom Yes
Max. Resolution 2560х1920 pixels
Flash Yes
Night Mode No
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