It is officially out. Just over the weekend, Carphone Warehouse has announced that they have the X10 Mini Android smart phone available for anyone interested, and considering that this is the very first mid range Android smart phone made by Sony Ericsson, plenty of fans are certainly interested.
The only drawback to the X10 Mini is that fact that the operating system used in the device is only the Android 1.6 operating system. So far, there is still no update to version 2.1 Éclair, and rumors are pointing at a potential September release date for the update (as that was the same announcement for the original XPERIA X10 which also uses Android 2.2).
With version 2.2 Froyo already out for the Nexus One, it certainly seems that the Android fans of Sony Ericsson are going to be left behind. Hopefully, an update to the new OS will be released pretty soon.
At just 83mm tall and 50mm wide, the X10 Mini is truly living up to its name. It is not as slim as some might like, but at 16mm, it is more than easy to grasp in the hand comfortably. Despite the small size, the phone still packs a pretty good touch screen display, and at 2.55 inches, this 240 x 320 pixel screen provides sufficient viewing space for browsing online or viewing short videos.
The camera is a 5 mega pixel snapper, which is not much of a down grade from the original 8 MP camera. It still packs a pretty impressive image resolution and its 30FPS video recording capabilities is more than enough for many users.
The device runs on a Qualcomm MSM7227 600 MHz CPU –sufficient for many apps, but not quite sufficient for running really resource heavy functions. Overall, the X10 Mini is a great package, and anyone who wants the same set with the addition of a slide out QWERTY keyboard need only wait a while longer for the X10 Mini Pro.
