I guess most of you have heard about the keypad problems the first shippings of the S500 had. Sony Ericsson stated that it was some sort of chemical reaction on the black/green version that made the keypad crack. However some yellow ones also had this problem, and it can’t be due to the green paint on these! So, as you most likely know, I recently got a S500 for my mom and generally she’s pretty pleased with it. But, but, but… A couple of days ago I spotted the keypad problem on this one, too! I couldn’t believe it, but it was definitely cracking. So yesterday we went to a shop and had it sent to some repairer to fix it (and while we were at it, I told them to fix the loose slider, too! ). It’ll be back in a few weeks and in the meantime she’s using my old K800.

For those of you who are still waiting for the review of S500, it’ll come online soon! But at the moment I’ve got a lot of other things that are more important
Picture from Esato

[UPDATED] A couple of days ago Sony Ericsson announced the K770, which is also known as the mysterious Victoria. The K770 doesn’t feature any new stuff and can be considered as another version of K810 (minus the xenon flash) or a Cybershot branded version of the T650. This means that it features a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and Cybershot branding, a 1.9 inch display with QVGA resolution and can show up to 262.144 colors, has 3G and triband GSM.

It’s only 14.5 millimeters in depth, which makes it quite thin. Although the model number ID might sound pretty high-end, it won’t be considered a high-end phone.

It comes bundled with a 256 MB M2 memory card and has 16 megs of internal memory. It isn’t much storage room for music lovers, but if you decide to use it for music, you can also use Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support for stereo music sound via Bluetooth. There’s also a FM radio with RDS. Lastly it also comes with TrackID so you can trace down the music playing.

It’ll come in two colors (although it might appear in more colors later this year); Truffle Brown and Ultra Violet. Personally I like the violet one best, but after seeing the live pictures from Planete Nokia I also like the brown one. What do you think? It’ll hit the stores sometime this autumn on “selected markets”.

Update: Mobileburn’s Samuel Chan has gotten his hands on a showoff unit of K770, and has shot some great photos of it. To check them out, go here. It’s moments like this, when you wish you’d a D SLR camera…

There’s also Phonedaily who have got a unit and has shot some photos of it. To check this one out, go here

John Bernard, former marketing manager at LG, is now changing his job position and will now be the global marketing director at Sony Ericsson. The work place will now be in England, according to mobiletoday.co.uk.

Bernard left LG for about a month ago, and are now starting at Sony Ericsson this monday. He has been on a gardening leave since his exit at LG.

Several sites had predicted this move. Especially because Bernard confirmed, that he had signed a contract with a manufacturer in the top 4, and that this manufacturer was the only one of the top 4 who had the this position in Britain.

Bernard had been in charge of the marketing of the LG Prada as well as the Chocolate-series and marketing of these phones.

Source: Mobile Today

JUSTAMP reports that a new Sony Ericsson Walkman phone clamshell will soon be announced (within 5 days, would be my guess, since there’s an announcement coming at the 14th this month). I have no ideas about where Maximus got the pictures from, however this is what he writes:

Well…it looks like we will be seeing a new clamshell Walkman from Sony Ericsson. It appears to be low end judging from the size, look and 1.3 mega pixel camera. It has touch sensitive keys like in that VAIO media player (kinda…) and a relatively large speaker next to the camera. It also has a similar color scheme to the grey W580.

Looks like we’ll have to wait to find out what it is!

With the extreme drop Motorola has experienced (about 9% loss of market share) this year and Samsung only gaining one percentage point (which makes them the second largest mobile phone manufacturer), I’m certain that Sony Ericsson will make it to the top two within the next two years. Sony Ericsson has had a really great profit and has gained about 3 percentage points within one year. Impressive. If they keep it up, they might be able to become the world’s second largest mobile phone manufacturer within Christmas, 2010. By that time Nokia should have already passed the holy 40% market share.

So, what do you think?

Just Another Mobile Phone Blog reports that the K550 will soon come in a red-ish color. It’s being marketed as “purple”. The specifications are the same, and whether this is real or not is yet to be decided. It looks very much real, though.

At the same time as the new P990 firmware got released, the last firmware update for W950 got out, too. This one is called R6E28 just like the new P990 one, and will fix most bugs from earlier firmware versions. It’s available on SEUS, so go get yours updated now! So far there’s not much information about it, but it’ll come sooner or later, and when it does, this post will get updated.