Barcelona -- Sony Ericsson has jumped aboard the Android Train at the Mobile World Congress 2010. Of three new handsets announced, two use Google's phone OS, and only the poor, dull Vivaz still uses the tired Symbian OS.
The Android phones are the Xperia X10 Mini and Pro. The main difference between the two tiny handsets is the slide-out QWERTY keyboard on the pro model. In fact, so similar are these handsets that even their mother, the bigger Xperia X10 releasewd last year, has trouble telling them apart.
Both have touch-screens, small at just 2.55-inches and with a decidedly last-century VGA resolution (240 x 320). They also have 5MP cameras, A-GPS, the standard Webkit browser and, on top of the usual Android OS, a lot of customization.
The most obvious tweak is Timescape, which is a kind of floaty cover-flow view for contacts, pictures, missed calls or pretty much anything that can be put in a list. Imagine the bits of information on a series of translucent pieces of paper, hovering in space, and you have the idea. Whether this is useful or not is debatable.
The touch screens are also less than perfect, with a slightly laggy feel that comes from resistive touch. But then, these are clearly aimed at the non-smart market: Android OS 1.6 isn't going to attract any of the geeks buying the Droid or Nexus.
This fragmentation of the Android range so early in its life is bound to lead to problems, with so many different devices with differently tweaked skins running on top. The irony is that, with its new Windows 7 Phone, Microsoft has moved from this fragmented position into a much more Apple-like approach, with minimum hardware specs and tight relationships with manufacturers and carriers.
Xperia X10 Mini and Pro [Sony Ericsson]
