Sony Ericsson - the brains behind Bluetooth, however self-centered that may sound - is planning to announce three awesome-looking Bluetooth headsets on the 17th this month. These three all offer superior battery life and - in my opinion - look very slick.

They’ve all got some features in common. These are up to 800 hours of battery life in standby mode (that’s over a month of battery life!) or up to 11 hours of talk, auto-pairing, digital noise reduction (DSP), auto volume-leveling, removable ear-hooks, as well as Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rates (EDR) for a faster and more stable connection.

HBH-PV-715 seems to be the cheapest of the three, and is - once again, in my opinion - the better looking of the bunch as well. It’ll come in either the pictured white trimming or a black one.

HBH-PV-720 is the headset for the more sophisicated and fashionable of us. You can personalize its look with StyleUp covers, and it comes with a pouch and a silver necklace.

HBH-PV-740 is the professional headset for the business man or woman. It’s the only one of the headsets to feature a status display, and it’s the only one to come with a headset desk stand and USB charger. Apart from that, you also get the silver necklace with the HBH-PV-740.

No word on availablity or price on these ones, although the price will probably be in the range of £60 - £100.

Filed under: Accessories, Announcement, Bluetooth, Exclusive, Upcoming

(22 votes, average: 3.36 out of 5)

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We told you about the Snapshot series quite some time ago in a post about the new nomenclature of Sony Ericsson phone names, and today we’ll be unveiling Sony Ericsson’s first phone in this series - it’s called the Sony Ericsson S302 Snapshot.

The S302 Snapshot is a cheap camera-enabled quadband GSM phone with further support for EDGE networks. It’ll be available in Europe (S302) and China (S302c).

The S302 Snapshot sports a fair 2 mega pixel camera with fixed focus, meaning your shots won’t get past the snapshot-level, which is basically expectable from a product with that as its surname. It does, however, feature the more advanced camera interface from earlier Sony Ericsson phones, and considering it’s a low/mid-end solution, that’s not half bad. Further more, it’s got a photo light and it features PhotoFix as well, if you decide to use that.
Your favourite moments can be recorded on video, although it won’t be in that great quality, and the internal memory of only 20 megabytes is also somewhat of a hindrance if you had plans about holding your entire photo album on it. It is, however, expandable with a Memory Stick Micro card.

Photos and videos can be easily transfered via either Bluetooth 2.0 or USB 2.0 (notice the 2’s, did you?). If you don’t want to use either, you can post both your images on a blog, or print them directly with the built-in PictBridge support.

Other features worth mentioning are A2DP-support, media player, support for various audio codecs, PlayNow, TrackID, a built-in FM radio and the Access NetFront xHTML web browser.

The S302 Snapshot measures 101 x 46 x 11 (12) millimetres, and weighs a mere 79 grams, making it quite light. Its display is a 2-inch TFT-display with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels. The battery life is set to 7 hours of talk or 300 hours of standby.

The phone will be available in early Q4 this year, and announced on the 17th. It’ll come in Thunder Grey and Crystal Blue colour trimmings. Its price is yet unknown, but it’ll be quite low.

Filed under: Announcement, Camera, Exclusive, New phone, S series

(19 votes, average: 3.95 out of 5)

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The Sony Ericsson F305 is Sony Ericsson’s first Motion Gaming-enabled phone. Or well, no, that’s actually not true, but it’s the first to go by that name in particular. It’s a quad-band GSM phone with support for EDGE network speeds.

This low/mid-level phone sports some rather cool gaming features. The three pre-loaded games - Bowling, Bass fishing & Jockey - will enable you to use movements to play the game. Say, you load up the bowling game - how do you play it? Simply imitate the movement of the bowling ball throw with the F305, and you’ll be playing the game. Simple, isn’t it? It’s a bit like the concept behind Nintendo Wii, although I find it hard to believe this will work just as great as the Wii does. Other than the special gaming features, the F305 offers a set of PlayStation-like gaming keys just above the display, as well as a shortcut key to your games. If you’re in the middle of a game, but the battery is running low (meaning you’ve played almost 8 hours!), you can quickly plug in the battery Power Pack CCP-100 (extra accessory), and you can play for hours again. That’s actually a rather clever accessory, and I hope it’ll be available for other phones, although there’s a chance that won’t happen.

F305 features loud stereo speakers on the back of it, making your gaming experience even better. If you feel like challenging a friend of yours in a match, you can do this via Bluetooth on some games.

F305 has got a decent music player capable of playing the most standard audio compression codecs, including the über-compressed eAAC+ codec. The phone memory is a bit limited though at only 10 megabytes, so you’ll have to expand the memory with a Memory Stick Micro card. Your music can then be transfered via a USB connection. You can stream your music wireless in stereo, as the phone features the Bluetooth A2DP profile. You can also have a listen to the radio with the built-in FM radio, and recognize the music playing with TrackID.

The display on the front of this Polar White or Mystic Black phone is a 2-inch large TFT display with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels, and up to 262.144 colours. While the resolution isn’t exactly excellent, it’ll make the rendering of 3D games quicker, and more games are available for phones of this screen resolution.

The F305 measures a good 96 x 47 x 14.6 millimetres, and weighs in at just 97.5 grams, making it a bit heavier than it actually looks. F305 will be out in selected markets in Q3 this year. We expect the price tag to be relatively low, considering this is a low/mid-end phone.

The F305 will be officially announced on Tuesday 17th.

Filed under: Announcement, Exclusive, F series, Fun, Games, Uncategorized

(25 votes, average: 4.28 out of 5)

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I promised that I’d do a post answering most of the tons of questions asked in the comments of the Sony Ericsson C905 post. So, this is what I’ll be doing in this post. Note, that it’s possible there might be some slight changes in the final production unit.

Q. What kind of phone is this?

A. It’s a quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE phone (all versions) with UMTS & HSDPA support in the European version (2100 MHz) and American version (850 / 900 / 2100 MHz). We’re guessing it’s 3.6 Mbps HSDPA.

Q. When will it be available and at what price?

A. It’ll be available in early Q4. We expect the price to be around £400 SIM free.

Q. What’s the camera specifications?

A. It’s an 8.1 mega pixel camera sensor (3264 x 2448 pixels) with auto focus and face recognition, and many more advanced camera features. It’s got a xenon flash for still photos, and a photo flash (the improved one) for videos. Videos are recorded in VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels) QVGA resolution (320 x 240 pixels). It does not feature optical zoom. The focal length is 5.91 mm, and the aperture is fixed at f/2.8.

Q. What kind of display is it?

A. It’s a 2.4 inch large scratch-resistant TFT display made of mineral glass. The resolution is QVGA (240 x 320 pixels). It can show up to 262.144 colours (18 bit).

Q. Is this a smart phone? What’s the OS?

A. No, this is a feature phone, not running any sort of smart phone operating system. It looks like it’ll run a newly developed OS based on the older A2 platform, although this has not been confirmed.

Q. What’s the web browser in it?

A. Access NetFront.

Q. How much memory does it have?

A. 160 megabytes of internal memory storage, and a 2 gigabyte Memory Stick Micro (M2) comes bundled.

Q. Does it feature W-LAN?

A. Yes, it does, and with further support for DLNA. No details on whether this is 802.11b or 802.11b/g.

Q. Does it feature a 3.5 mm jack port?

A. No, it doesn’t feature a 3.5 mm jack port.

Q. Does it feature mobile TV?

A. You can have TV streamed to the phone via UMTS / HSDPA, but there’s no DVB-H support or alike.

I guess that was it

Filed under: C series, Camera, Cyber-shot, Exclusive, New phone, Upcoming

(28 votes, average: 3.68 out of 5)

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Shiho is the codename of the upcoming Cyber-shot flagship model from Sony Ericsson, and we’ve got everything about it! Its final name will be C905, and it’ll be announced along with some phones on the 17th of this month. In this post we’ll announce it for Sony Ericsson, and save them the trouble, plus give the competitors a little something to wee their pants about.

The C905 is the latest camera offering from Sony Ericsson featuring a fully spec’d 8.1 mega pixel camera with auto focus, face recognition, a new feature called Smart Contrast, image stabilization, BestPic, red-eye reduction, xenon flash as well as photoflash for both photos and videos. It’s got a video stabilizer feature as well. You can geo-tag your photos with the built-in GPS with further support for A-GPS, and the large camera resolution makes it possible to do prints in up to A3 sizes! Your photos will automatically flip to landscape mode, when you tilt your phone, as it’s got a built-in accelerometer. You’ll be able to watch your photos on a beautiful 2.4 inch QVGA-resolution scratch-resistant mineral glass TFT display. Feel like sharing your photos on a TV-set? That’s possible as well with the TV-Out Cable ITC-60, also to be announced on the 17th.

That’s not all, though… C905 will be the first feature phone by Sony Ericsson to sport built-in WiFi with DLNA-support, so all media in your home can be shared. It’s also got the latest in Bluetooth connections, supports USB 2.0 data transfers, and can be synchronized with Exchange ActiveSync.

The Sony Ericsson C905 measures 104 x 49 x 18 (19.5) millimetres, and weighs a massive 136 grams. It’ll be available in Copper Gold, Ice Silver & Night Black in early Q4, with a bundled 2 GB Memory Stick Micro M2. It comes in three variants, two with full support for UMTS and HSDPA in the certain regions (even America). The battery is good for 380 hours of standby or 9 hours of talk on GSM networks, or 360 hours of standby or 4 hours of talk on 3G networks.

Filed under: Announcement, C series, Camera, Cyber-shot, Exclusive, Upcoming

(102 votes, average: 4.49 out of 5)

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It looks like some have spotted the poll here on USEB, this time with the subject of what you guys think will be announced on the 17th. Many seem to think that Sony Ericsson will announce a few high-end smart phones, and I do understand why you’d think so, as just about every sign has been pointing to that. But stuff gets postponed, and that’s what has happened in the case of Beibei and Paris.

These phones will not be announced on the 17th, unless there’ll be a major change of plans just moments before the announcements on the 17th, although I extremely doubt this, seeing the announcement events are held in so many countries.

It’s sad, though, as especially the G702 (Beibei) looks to be an awesome phone. On the bright side, though, there has been talk about hardware upgrades, which I personally believe is true, and that should be the reason for the postponements.

It’ll be a mix of low-end and mid-end phones, and of course the camera flagship Shiho, which is awesome, by the way. More - or should I say everything? - on that one later this week.

Filed under: Announcement, Exclusive, Rumour, Symbian, UIQ, Upcoming

(10 votes, average: 3.6 out of 5)

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We just got our hands on the Demo Tour from the brand new Sony Ericsson device ‘Beibei’.

Filed under: Demo Tour, Exclusive, G series, GPS, UIQ

(21 votes, average: 4.14 out of 5)

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