Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini Pro

That oddly cute Android phone gets a deserving QWERTY keyboard, thus making it lot more usable

Tactile QWERTY keyboard, Compact design, responsive UI, Good audio via bundled in-earphones, Good 5MP camera, Impressive feature-set (Wi-fi, GPS, 3.5G)

Tiny low-resolution screen isn't ideal for power use, Old version of Android (1.6), A bit heavy

We recently tested the XPERIA X10 Mini, which struck to us as an odd-ball handset amongst the incrementally populating mid-level Android phone range. Although we appreciated many a things about that phone, from a functional point of view, the X10 Mini fell short due to one major reason -- the screen size. Everything from web-browsing to reading mails to typing on that non-QWERTY num-pad wasn't as ideal as other big-screened Android phones in that range.

In the end, the X10 mini felt like plane with a high-power engine inside that has its wings clipped to make it look pretty. We were eagerly waiting for its slide-out QWERTY wielding cousin, the X10 mini Pro to resurrect this downer feeling of ours. And today we have it in hand. Let's check out the good and bad of that QWERTY board addition.

Note: Since the X10 mini and Mini Pro are identical internally and similar looking externally, we will only cover the differences between the two. To know in-depth about the phone, I'd suggest you read the previous review before hand.

Major Differences in Design:

Overall, both the phones are almost similar looking. Despite the addition of the sliding QWERTY mechanism, Sony Ericsson claims that the thickness of the Mini Pro has gone up by just 1 millimeter. But when placed next to each other, the Mini Pro seems about 3 millimeter thicker. When held in hand, it does feel bulkier too due to the increase in weight by almost 30 grams. But the phone is still pretty petite when compared to 3-inch+ touchscreen phones of today. The QWERTY part has a kick-slide mechanism that pops out as soon as you apply little pressure to the sides. The durability of the slide feels firm.
 

 

Let's get down right to it -- the QWERTY keyboard was the magical unicorn I was hoping it to be for this phone. Although the keys may seem tiny, they are tactile, well-spaced and arranged quite smartly. The 4-row key structure has that perfect amount of length and not too much width that reduces thumb movement. It was intuitive to type on them from the first moment onwards. All the characters that you'd need day-to-day are placed at the right spots. I also appreciate the left and right arrow keys on either sides of the space-bar, which will be helpful while moving the cursor on screen. The symbol key brings up lesser-used characters along with a good collection of smileys. It was a good experience to have long Gtalk conversations on the QWERTY, and then falling back on the on-screen num-pad while using the phone single-handed. Bottom line: Two thumbs up to the keyboard.
 

Another thing I liked was restoring the ear-piece to the center position like most phones. The X10 Mini had the ear-piece towards the left end which made you adjust the position while holding it to your ear at times. You won't face that problem with the Mini Pro. Removing the battery cover now reveals a removable battery which is another welcome addition. The battery power is lower by about 20 mAh than the X10 Mini's non-removable one. However, unlike the mini, the Mini Pro does not get any multi-colored back covers to match your clothing.

The swift-running UI on the aged Android 1.6 OS, the tiny fonts on some of the applications that would make many eyes squint, it's all the same as the X10 mini. While the bad is unfortunately there, on the brighter side so is the good. It still comes with those decent in-earphones that sound much better than that trash that's usually bundled with some "music" phones that you get these days. The 5 megapixel snapper is snappy as ever; capturing good quality images during daytime or night.

Battery life

A phone with that small a display and low resolution wouldn't draw as much power as bigger HVGA resolution displays in Android phones. We've stopped expecting multi-day battery life from such phones anyway. If it lasts a day on heavy usage, that's good. If its anything less than a day, that's bad.
 

Despite a small display, the X10 mini's small size allowed its chassis to hold a comparatively low-power 950 mAh battery. Now that phone lasted us for a day with moderate usage. The X10 Mini Pro, with its 930 mAh battery sunk to zero even before one day passed by just two-hours of phone calls and an hour of using Google Talk and browsing the net over 2G.

Now this would possibly be due to the high brightness setting we'd kept. Frankly speaking, a lower setting makes the screen look pale and almost unreadable in bright sunlight. So, if you tone the brightness down considerably then the X10 Mini Pro would possibly survive an entire day's use; which is acceptable. But as you can judge from our tone, we expected a little better. 


The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini Pro sells for Rs. 16,500. That feels slightly expensive when you compare to the HTC Wildfire, which sells for the same price. The Wildfire will give you a bigger screen real estate which will aid readability and Android 2.1 with HTC's 'Sensual' UI. So, if you're going to use mobile Internet regularly, then a bigger screen will ideally be the way to go.

 

But if you don't care too much about function and are willing to let some go for the X10 mini's cuteness, then it is a pretty good buy. We absolutely enjoyed having that QWERTY keyboard around, and if you're going to do even a little more than casual typing, then we'll highly recommend the extra Rs. 1,500 investment to get the Mini Pro instead of the plain-jane Mini. The phone has good audio and camera performance too. This tiny bundle of joy won't disappoint on many counts; if you're willing to throw in the moolah.