Archive for July, 2008

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Sony Ericsson increases UK market share

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Mobile News International reports that Sony Ericsson has increased its UK share by 5 percent, to 25 percent, for the fourth week running. This makes Sony Ericsson the second largest handset manufacturer in the United Kingdom.

The five percent gain comes mainly from launch of the C902, which we’ve just published a review of, on contract, as well as cheaper phones, such as W350 and W380, on prepay. In addition to this, Sony Ericsson’s W580 and W910 are selling well on cheaper contracts.

According to Mobile News International’s sources, Sony Ericsson expanded too quickly, resulting in the release of many unneccessary phones. Last year, Sony Ericsson announced 15 phones more than the previous year. Sources claim each phone require over 100 extra engineering and marketing staff. This sounds like one of the most reasonable reasons as to why Sony Ericsson is looking to cut 2,000 employees.

We wouldn’t be surprised to see Sony Ericsson stepping up its game later this year. Sony Ericsson’s president, Hideki Komiyama, has officially said there’ll still be financial problems to a certain degree in Q3 this year, but Q4 should be different. Especially with the launch of such phones as C905, W595 and W902.

Source: Mobile News International

Posted in market-share, news | 14 Comments »

useb|de Presents JavaOne, Take Two.

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

We posted about a new device leaked in a video from the JavaOne conference back in May.

Due to the rather low resolution of that video, details were rare. Now useb|de managed to get their hands on a better version of that video – check out a composition of screenshots after the jump!

(more…)

Posted in exclusive, future, rumour | 12 Comments »

Review: Sony Ericsson C902

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

We’re ready with yet another review! This time it’s the Sony Ericsson C902, Sony Ericsson’s best cameraphone on the market at the moment. The thing that impressed me most about the C902 was its superb build quality and its very nice feel.

Without further ado, here’s the review! [click me]

Update! The translated review in German has been posted here.

Posted in c-series, review | 8 Comments »

Exclusive: New K330 and W890 colour variants

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

A few new product colour variants should be appearing soon, including a new white colour trimming for the K330, and a gold one for the W890, a bit like the gold version of W880, that was introduced about a year ago, although only the backside is golden on the W890 version. More pictures after the break. (more…)

Posted in exclusive, new-colour, w-series | 50 Comments »

Say hello to the G705

Monday, July 28th, 2008

The arabic community se4m.com is well known for providing pics and information on upcoming Sony Ericsson phones. Today they strike again as they present us the first pictures of what is supposed to be a new G-Series slider.

The device sports a 3.2 megapixels fixed focus camera with an LED. Other features include a built-in GPS, 2.4 inch display, and it runs the A2 software platform. It will also have built-in WLAN!

We expect this phone to be announced together with Remi in about a fortnight.

All pics after the jump.
(more…)

Posted in g-series, new-phone, rumour | 134 Comments »

Got star potential? Sony Ericsson digs your life captured

Monday, July 28th, 2008

Sony Ericsson just recently launched an entirely new website called “Life Captured”. It’s a Cyber-shot campaign / contest that can make it possible for you to star in a movie or make a movie in a new film project, called “Life Captured”.

Sony Ericsson has hooked up with Mike Figgis, known for directing a large number of movies, and is giving you the chance to tell your life story with your camera phone, and create a film from these snapshots.

Five winners will win a C902, and will be invited on a VIP trip to the the film’s premiere at London’s Raindance Film Festival in October this year. Finally, one winner will be revealed at the premiere to win a grand prize, also to be revealed at this premiere.

You can find the website here, with lots of information on this contest. It all sounds very exciting, so do let us know if you sign up!

Posted in camera, campaign, competition, cyber-shot, fun, news | 4 Comments »

Updated USEB review grade system

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Last night I got the crazy idea of upgrading our review grade system. Crazy because it meant I had to stay up till 3.00 – 3.30 AM in the morning to write most of the codes used, and make sure everything was working just fine in all browsers.

I know that our previous grade system wasn’t exactly the best, and the scores may have been a bit unfair or unexplained because of that. Hopefully, this shouldn’t be the case any more with the new one. The new system consists of no less than 43 factors, that will all have an influence on the final grade, now dubbed USEB Score, which will be given in percent, and displayed with a very brief comment below. Each grade category represents a set of factors, that will be displayed, if you press the category title. If you don’t need the additional info about the grades, everything is nicely hidden.

To make things a bit more interesting, we’ve also added space for SPMark 06 Java benchmark scores, so everyone can see how the phones perform. This is where we need your help! For rather obvious reasons, it’s impossible for us to add SPMark 06 Java scores for all of the reviewed phones. If you can run a full benchmark on one of the below listed phones, please post your results in a comment below, and we’ll add your scores to our review. The phones are;

  • C702
  • C902
  • G700
  • K660
  • P1
  • W380
  • W760
  • W890
  • Z770

If you want to help us out, but haven’t got the application installed, it can be downloaded for free, right here. Thanks in advance.

We will start updating the previous large-scaled reviews today, starting with the W760 review.

Posted in review, useb | 34 Comments »

Review: Sony Ericsson W760

Saturday, July 26th, 2008

Our review of the Sony Ericsson W760 is finally here! I’ve put in quite a lot of time on this review, and the result is a 5,000+ word review of one of Sony Ericsson’s strongest offerings to date. Although it’s hard to dislike W760, there are a few disadvantages that can’t be overlooked, as discussed in detail in the review.

We hope to have a translated version of the review available shortly over at our newly launched German website.

Update! The German review is now available over here!

Read the review here – enjoy!

Posted in review, w-series, walkman | No Comments »

Now launching: useb|de

Friday, July 25th, 2008

usebde logo

USEB has become one of the best – if not the best – blogs dedicated to Sony Ericsson, offering news, rumours & reviews.
Unfortunately, not everyone in the SE community is good enough in English to enjoy all aspects the USEB offers. That’s why we launch our first local site to test the waters for such a service. Being German myself, it’s the most obvious step to start with a localized German blog offering the same content we have here, but translated like no online tool is able to.
You can find useb|de at blogde.se-nse.net to get an impression of it.

Do you have ideas for other localized versions? Feel free to comment.

Tell your friends about us,
xell.

Posted in useb | 16 Comments »

Taking a look back at Paris (and a bit on Beibei)

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

Now that both have been cancelled after a long development period, we thought it wouldn’t hurt anybody to shed a bit of light on these phones.

Paris was going to be Sony Ericsson’s first slider in the P-series line-up. While it was partly based on old hardware, Sony Ericsson had made several software enhancements that would significantly speed up the phone. In addition to this, the Paris would have been based on UIQ 3.3. Anyway, what I wanted to show in this blog post was that Sony Ericsson realized that the business segment no longer has to be connected to boring colour schemes. It can be black and grey while still looking like a million bucks! I’ve known about the three colour variants for Paris (black/blue, silver/red, and black/orange) in about two months now, and this was one of the things that I liked about it – they’re trying to break the habit of “one colour variant” business & enterprise phones. Let’s hope they’ll keep it up in upcoming S60-based business phones. (more…)

Posted in exclusive, g-series, p-series, prototype, rants, uiq | 52 Comments »

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