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The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini Pro gets the “pro” appended to distinguish it as the variant with a sliding tactile full-QWERTY keyboard you find in other serious business- targeted smartphones.

The MWX press release has Sony Ericsson’s EVP and Chief Creation Officer Rikko Sakaguchi declaring that “There has been an enormous buzz around Xperia™ X10 so it is really exciting to be already unveiling compact versions of this powerful proposition.”  In short, they recognize the hype surrounding a much delayed XPERIA X10 and would like to cash-in on that with a couple of inferior models.

They certainly will appeal to a market that prefers a more pocket-friendly handset. There’s still no pricing information but with a decidedly more modest set of features, it had better be priced much lower than the rumored 600 SIM-free price point of the X10 which is already overpriced compared to emerging smartphones with better features.

X10  Features

People now familiar with the X10 features should be familiar with many of the hardware and software specs on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Mini Pro. It’s is a 3G on the dual band UMTS with HSDPA/HSUPA and is a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G.  Onboard is the same WiFi 82.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP,  microUSB 2,0, a built-in A-GPS, stereo FM receiver with RDS, Bluetooth A2DP and 3.5mm headphone jack.

The Mini Pro enjoys the same Timescape that combines all your messaging, calling and SNS updates on Facebook and Twitter in one screen and Mediascape that does the same drawing together all media content from the PlayNow music store and YouTube.

Outside of these, the Mini Pro takes some liberties to fit many of the stand-out features of the X10 into its shrunken body.  It certainly lives up to its name as a Mini.  And for a “Pro,” you get a QWERTY slider.

You get to settle on a 600 MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor instead of the powerful GHz Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon used in the X10
There’s now just a 5-megapixel camera instead of the sumptuous 8-megapixel resolution of the X10. You won’t get image stabilization and touchfocus features. The press releases indicated a video recording capability but no details so we figured it’s nothing to brag about unlike the WVGA video recording at 30fps on the X10.  But the camera still gets LED flash, autofocus, geo tagging from it’s a-GPS and video light.
The 4-inch Wide-VGA display that was a feast to the eyes is now a diminutive 2.55-inch display.  We don’t know if 16 million colors against the 64k colors on the X10 is enough to compensate for that, but you still get the same resistive touchscreen with gravity accelerometer and scratch resistant surface.

The Mini Pro’s phone memory shrinks from a generous 1GB to a mere 128 MB in the Mini Pro but you still have microSD expandability of up to 16 GB.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro Unboxing by Noah It’s so tiny! Android, touchscreen and slide-out keyboard: It’s the SE X10 mini pro. In Noah’s giant hands. Forums: forums.phonedog.com Win Free Phones www.phonedog.com More Videos: www.phonedog.com