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Having owned an X10 at one point I approached the X10 Mini Pro with some hesitation, would this be another Android handset from Sony Ericsson that didn’t live up to its promise or would it manage to break out of that mould?

Design

The X10 Mini Pro is similar in the looks department to its sibling the X10 Mini, but with one obvious difference, the inclusion of a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The slide mechanism feels solid and there’s a nice satisfying click when it locks into place.

The keyboard itself is perfectly adequate, the keys being raised and spaced apart slightly to make typing easier. The only real drawback to the keyboard is the size of it, but given the dimensions of the handset there really isn’t anything that can be done about that. For a keyboard of its size it feels good and responds well.

When closed the keyboard doesn’t add any noticeable bulk to the handset and over all the Mini Pro feels very snug in the hand, and so it should measuring just 90×52x17 mm. It’s size is one of the handset’s biggest attractions and it pulls it off. The Mini Pro is made from plastic, so whilst it does feel snug in the hand it doesn’t have that top-end quality feel to it that you would get with metal. This is somewhat mitigated by the use of a rubberised material for the back cover, which does have a higher quality feel to it than than the rest of the handset.

The front of the handset has the 2.5″ capacitive touchscreen and a few buttons beneath it. The buttons correspond to a Options button on the left, which also doubles as the unlock button; a Menu button in the centre, which brings up your apps and services, and a Back button on the right hand side. Just above the screen you can make out the usual battery of sensors modern smartphones have e.g. ambient light sensor, etc.

The top of the handset contains the Power/Lockscreen button and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The placement of the power button at the top is a lot more sensible in my opinion than the awkward placement on the back of the handset that we saw with the Vivaz Pro.

Moving onto the right hand side we see the volume rocker switch and the camera button, whilst the left side of the phone contains the mini-USB power/data port. Lastly the back of the handset contains the 5 MP camera and LED flash alongside the Sony Ericsson logo.

Interface

The X10 Mini Pro uses Android 1.6 (Donut), but with a customised shell placed on top of it. Whilst many may baulk at manufacturers using their own interfaces instead of the stock Android UI in the case of the X10 Mini Pro (and the X10 Mini for that matter) it is justified given the small dimensions of the handset’s screen. Simply put the custom UI here does a pretty good job of making best use of the available screen real estate.

The first thing you are presented with is the homescreen, which contains the four customisable shortcuts at each of its four corners and of course the Android status bar at the top of the screen. Panning left and right brings you to other customisable homescreens e.g. Timescape (more on that below). However, you can also pan upwards to bring up a list of your apps, which you can then pan through from left to right.

The use of the four corners of the screen for customisable shortcuts is one of those solutions that is so elegant in its simplicity that you will probably overook just how well it solves the problem of how to cram in extra functionality when you have such a small space to work with.

The status bar is essentially the same as on any other Android phone so I’m not going to spend a great deal of time talking about that. If you’ve used any other Android handset you will know what to expect here. If this is your first Android handset then the status bar is essentially your go to area for everything that happens to your phone. It displays text messages, system updates, appointments, etc.

Ok so let’s talk a little about these customisable shortcuts because they are a pretty big part of this handset and how it is used. Sony Ericsson have made it incredibly simple to configure these shortcuts, literally three button presses and you have a new shortcut. From the homescreen you just press the options button and choose ‘Arrange Icons’ and a list of your apps appears. You just drag whatever app you want to the shortcut location you want.

It might sound like I’m going on a bit too much about this feature, but it really does make what might otherwise be a very awkward handset to scroll through a pleasure to use.

Like other Android handsets the X10 Mini Pro has a number of homescreens that you can configure to your own preference. The default setup is for the main homescreen to display the time, whilst the other two display a Google search box and Sony Ericsson’s Timescape application respectively.

Timescape, for those who haven’t used it, is a stream of all your interactions with your phone and friends. It will display things like missed calls, tweets, Facebook status updates, etc and it does it in a rather attractive scrolling timeline that you can flip through. Whilst it can be a little laggy at times, for the most part it works pretty well and it’s certainly an eye pleasing way of keeping up to date with all your tweets, etc. More to the point it’s useful since it collates a lot of disparate information into one continous feed.

In terms of performance the Mini Pro was pretty zippy when first taken out of the box and certainly for a handset of its size and specifications responded very well. However, Android in general, tends to slow down a bit after a few months of usage when data and media and so on have accumulated and start to bog the system down.

Calling & Messaging

I always like to make a point of having a good look at how a handset handles the core functionality because really, the bells and whistles aside, we still need these devices to contact other people.

The call quality was good, clear and loud enough to make out. If I have any real criticism here it’s perhaps that the volume didn’t go up as far as I would have liked, but it was loud enough and certainly most people would find it acceptable. The handset held onto a signal well and I didn’t have any problems with dropped calls or dropped bars.

The dial-pad for entering your number is perhaps a little smaller than many would like, but not awkwardly so and given enough time with the handset you will likely get used to it. When making a call the screen will automatically switch off so you don’t start pressing buttons etc. A welcome improvement over the frankly shocking decision not to include a proximity sensor on the Vivaz Pro.

Messaging was a bit of a breeze too, especially using the pull out QWERTY keyboard. Entering text was quick and precise and given a bit of practice with the keyboard layout you should be able to build up a fairly brisk typing speed. This really is where having that keyboard is worth its weight in gold because typing out a message using the onscreen keyboard proved a little more taxing.

The onscreen keyboard is laid out like a standard mobile keypad and it uses predictive text to help you type faster. You can switch the predictive option off if you prefer and type out each letter manually (note my spelling mistake in the above screenshot when I did so, doh!), but there is no option for a full QWERTY onscreen keyboard as there simply isn’t enough space to fit it in properly. To be fair the onscreen keyboard wasn’t bad to use and with enough practice you could probably type messages quite fast using it, but given that the handset has a full hardware QWERTY keyboard you’d be crazy not to just use that.

Email is dealt with through the stock Android email app as well as a Gmail app for your Google account. The standard email app for non-Gmail accounts is the same as on every other Android handset, but with a rather annoying limitation placed upon it … you can only have one additional account. I have no idea why Sony Ericsson would do this given that many people have multiple email addresses these days, but there we have it.

Connectivity

On a phone the size of the X10 Mini Pro you could be forgiven for thinking that internet browsing is going to be a long drawn out painful process, but you would be wrong. On the contrary the Mini pro delivers a superb browsing experiencing considering the limitations imposed by its screen size.

The default browser is the standard Android webkit based effort and it works pretty well here with pages loading quickly and scrolling around them also nice and fast. The inclusion of onscreen zoom controls, whilst perhaps conjuring images of awkward scrolling, actually work well here and allow you to get around a complex page without too much effort.

There is a downside though and it can be summed up by saying that you don’t get a lot of functionality in the browser here. It has the basics sure, but you’re not going to find some of the more advanced features that you might find in other higher-end smartphone browsers. The options you do get include being able to share links, check files you’ve downlaoded, add favourites, reload a page and enter a web address. That’s pretty much it.

One other feature I did enjoy was the ability to search for a term you enter into the URL box. Instead of typing in ’se-nse.net’ and going directly to the site you could just type in ’se-nse’ and opt instead to just google that term. Not an earth shattering feature I agree, but I found it very handy.

It’s also worth mentioning the ability to add favourite webpages to your application list. This allows you to add a direct link to a webpage to the application drawer as if it were an app. You just press the link from the apps list and you will be taken to the website.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are both present and Wi-Fi is nice and simple to use as is the case with most Android handsets. It didn’t take me more than a minute to get WiFi setup and running. GPS is also present. Google Maps worked as effortlessly as usual and the Mini Pro had no trouble in pinpointing my location in an instant.

Camera

The camera side of things is one area where Sony Ericsson still shines brightly when compared to its competitors. Say what you will about other aspects of the company, but they can still turn out a good camera phone and you see that in the Mini Pro. Indeed, given the size and price of the Mini Pro you might have thought that the camera would be little more than a passing gesture. Again we find the Mini pro performing better than our expectations because its camera is actually a pretty decent effort as it turns out.

To say I loved the camera interface would be an understatement. Sony Ericsson have taken the rather bland default Android camera UI and made it into something that is both useful and fun. Like the homescreen the camera features the four corner shortcut options and they give you quick access to various features, such as scene selection or turning the LED flash on and off. Simple, but very effective.

As you can see from the pictures below the Mini Pro is more than capable of taking a good picture. The top one was taken using the standard ‘auto’ mode whilst the bottom was taken using the ‘macro’ mode.

Video recording was good too; the handset supports a resolution of 640×480. The quality is decent enough, it looked nice on the handset’s small screen, and even on a larger screen it was acceptable. This isn’t a high-end smartphone with HD video recording so don’t expect miracles, but what you will get is a decent enough level of video recording that should be acceptable in most circumstances e.g. down the pub.

Media

The X10 Mini Pro has the usual Android media options pre-installed so if you’re an existing Android user there shouldn’t be too many surprises here.

The music player has been spruced up with the handset’s existing blue design, but otherwise it’s the default Android option. Functionality is somewhat basic, you can organise tracks into folders or playlists and overall it pretty much just plays music without any real bells or whistles. However, Sony Ericsson have included the ‘Infinity’ option as seen on the X10. The Infinity option basically scours the web for more information on whatever is currently playing. It will look for things like YouTube videos or PlayNow links that might be related and of interest to you.

Of course being Android you can always opt to download and install a new music player if you like.

Playback was superb using the headphones; clear, loud and a pleasure to listen to. Using the handset’s built-in speakers the quality of the playback wasn’t as good as with the headphones, but, and it’s important to stress this, it was still good. I was genuinely surprised by how good the level of playback through the speakers actually was. The volume goes reasonably high and you could definitely use the Mini Pro to blast out some music.

The Mini Pro includes a YouTube app as standard and it does a good job of letting you access videos. The playback quality was fine on the handset itself, but given the small size of the screen you probably won’t watch to watch anything that lasts more than 10 minutes or so.

That leads us to a problem that the X10 Mini Pro really can’t solve, how to deal with visual media. In terms of pictures and video the Mini Pro will make a good stab at displaying them, but the screen is simply too small for anything other than casual usage. In other words you probably won’t want to keep a photo album on the device or put films onto it.

Battery

The battery is a 930 mAh job and unlike the X10 Mini the battery in the Mini Pro can be removed. It’s not the highest capacity battery on the market, but it is perfectly up to the job of keeping the Mini Pro running along. I found the battery life to be top notch, no doubt a welcome side effect of having such a small screen.

You will probably be looking at around two days, maybe a tad longer, with moderate to high usage. If you turn off some of the features such as GPS and WiFi and/or use it less frequently then you should definitely be looking at half a week or so.

It’s actually a welcome change from the higher-end smartphones on the market, which often get little more than a day, if that.

Applications & Services

X10 Mini users will be familiar with the pre-loaded apps on the Mini Pro since they are in fact exactly the same. Like other Android handsets the most popular, and arguably most useful, apps you will find when first booting up your Mini Pro are the apps from Google themselves. On the Mini pro these include Google Talk, Gmail, YouTube and of course Google Maps.

Sony Ericsson themselves have plonked on some useful apps and services, some of which we’ve already mentioned liked Timescape and Infinity. They have also included their popular TrackID app, which is basically Sony Ericsson’s version of Shazam. Once a track has been identified you are given an option to buy it from PlayNow.

Another favourite is Google Maps, which has become one of those ‘must have’ apps that just about everyone uses at some point. Most will probably be familiar with Google Maps already so suffice it to say that it works really well on the Mini Pro. Sure the small screen is not the best for viewing maps on, but it does wonders with what it has available. The maps loaded fast and pinpointing your own location was speedy and accurate in my experience.

Facebook is another heavy hitter that many, if not most, will likely use at some point. It’s the Android version of the app obviously, with all the foibles that may bring. Facebook on Android has suffered somewhat from a lack of polish and features when compared with the iPhone app, but to be honest the Android version has the basics and you will find the implementation on the Mini Pro more than adequate. The widget for the homescreen was particularly nice, showing a scrollable list of updates alongside a text bar for updating your own status.

There are so many apps for Android that if the Mini pro is missing some functionality that you desperately need chances are you can find an app for it. Having said that it is important to point out that the Mini Pro is running Android 1.6, which means that not all apps in the Market will work on it. The situation should improve a bit when Sony Ericsson does finally get around to releasing the much anticipated Froyo update (Android 2.1) for its range of Android handsets.

Conclusion

In short I liked this handset. A lot. Beyond the initial ‘cute factor’ of its size the handset consistently performed beyond expectations and delivered a high quality experience in a small, and relatively inexpensive package.

One of the recurring themes of this review has been how the Mini Pro surprised me with what it can do. Whether it was the camera being above par for what is basically a mid-range smartphone; the internet experience being first rate despite the small screen and lack of advanced features or the music playback being superb both with and without earphones, the Mini Pro punched above its weight time and again.

There is a lot to like about the Mini Pro, not the least of which is the QWERTY keyboard, which really makes text input a breeze. It’s well constructed and easy to use. The screen is responsive and accurate, call quality was great, the corner shortcuts are an elegant solution to the limited screen space, and battery life was excellent.

If it has a failing then it’s undoutedly the small screen size, which does make video playback and complex interactions a little strained at times, especially when you’re using it for any length of time.

The use of Android 1.6 is another low point for the handset, but Sony Ericsson are upgrading it to Android 2.1 so this is something that will be rectified in time. It’s just a shame that the upgrade isn’t going to be the newer Android 2.2. Even with Android 1.6 there is still a wealth of apps available, which further enahnces the Mini Pro’s functionality.

In reviewing this handset I asked myself the question ‘Would I use this?’ and I didn’t hesitate to answer ‘yes’. It’s a superb little handset that delivers in terms of both features and user experience and is well worth the money. If you are looking for an entry level smartphone or a phone that packs a bigger punch than the standard mid-range efforts then you should definitely consider the X10 Mini Pro.

Pros

• Good quality physical keyboard
• Above average camera
• Android OS
• Pocketable size

Cons

• Small screen
• Plastic costruction feels cheap
• Older version of Android