Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro Review

Sony Ericsson, a renowned name in smartphone segment has created a lot of buzz with its Xperia series of phones. The series featured devices which were small but delivered powerful performance. The phones of the series performed well in the market and their successors are looking forward to carry out the legacy. Sony Ericsson came out with X10 mini pro some time back which suffered from some of the major drawbacks.

The handset has now made its way back in form of Xperia mini pro which boasts of much better specs and features. Xperia mini pro has similar hardware as its bigger hardware siblings but is more mature. The launch of Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro has come at a time when there is intense competition in the smartphone segment. Check out our Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro review to know more about the phone.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Looks

Xperia mini pro mobile phone looks stylish and compact. With dimensions of the phone measuring 92 x 53 x 18 mm the phone feels compact and easily slides into anyone’s pocket. The presence of QWERTY keyboard makes the phone look a bit chubby which makes the presence of the phone feel noticeable in your pockets. The phone feels very much the same as that of Xperia X10 and is made entirely out of the plastic. The battery cover of the phone is very glossy which subjects it to smudges. Overall we were quite impressed by the looks and design of the phone.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Display

The phone boasts of a 3 inches HVGA touch screen. The screen displays 16 M colors of resolution measuring 320 x 480 pixels. Thanks to Sony’s Bravia Mobile Engine technology, the screen performance is of top quality as the colors displayed are sharp, crisp and clear. One of the major disadvantages of Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro’s screen is the poor viewing angles. When we viewed the screen from certain angles, the colors quickly got washed away.

However, we were quite impressed by the sensitivity and the sunlight legibility of the screen. The screen responded well to our touches and even in direct sunlight we did not face any problems reading the contents of the screen. Below the display, you get the hardware controls which are pretty well defined. All the keys are comfortable to use. The volume rocker button is at the top of the phone while the shutter button is at the bottom.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Keyboard

The phone features a sliding QWERTY keyboard. The keys of the keyboard are well sized, but if you happen to have big fingers, then you can face problems with the keys. The keys are well spaced and it is better than the original X10. Xperia mini Pro QWERTY did a good job when we texted or mailed.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Features

The operating system of the phone is one of its greatest features. The phone runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Because of this, web performance of the phone is of top class. The 1.2 GHz scorpion processor does a great job and we were also quite impressed by the memory of the phone. Though the internal memory storage is just 400 MB, the phone comes with a 2GB of microSD card. The memory can also be increased to a whopping 32GB.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Applications

Applications play an important role for any smartphone. Xperia mini pro is bundled with several applications such as Google Search, Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar etc. Thanks to the Youtube application, we enjoyed watching Youtube videos on our phone. Users can also download their favorite applications from Android market.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Gallery

We spotted a traditional droid gallery in Xperia Mini Pro Android 2.3. The gallery gave us cool 3D looks along with nice transition effects. Our complaint with the gallery is that it showed a downsized version of our images and the different albums and folders appear as piles of photos. You can sort the photos by date and finger scrolling and panning is supported by the gallery. The gallery also supports pinch zooming. One can crop the images in the gallery and can share the images with the help of Picasa, Facebook or MMS.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Camera Quality

The phone is equipped with a 5MP snapper which has a single LED flash along with a dedicated shutter key. We liked the UI of the camera. It has a bar with 5 shortcuts. Though the quality of the images is good, yet we felt that it could have been better. The camera has features like white balance, geo-tagging, image stabilization and touch capture. The colors rendered are quite good though we felt than in some of the areas the noise levels are very high.

Sony Ericssion Xperia mini Pro Video Quality

HD video recording with the phone is decent and the frame rate is quite good. The phone captures videos at 30 fps and is quite steady. The approach of the video recorder is same as that of Xperia X10 and Neo. The videos run quite smooth and the videos look good on smaller screen. On large screen they are not so good.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Connectivity

Connectivity is seamless with Xperia mini Pro. It offers a complete package of connectivity options with support for quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band HSPA offering download speed of up to 7.2 Mbps and 5.76 Mbps. Connectivity of the phone is also enhanced by the presence of Wi-Fi, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.1. The phone provides a provision for DLNA, there is a dedicated connected devices app. The 3.5 mm audio jack completes the connectivity options of the phone.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Multimedia

The phone is equipped with a FM radio which has a simple interface. The radio automatically saves stations and the audio quality of the phone is of top class. We were a bit disappointed to find that the video player supports only 3GP and MP4 videos.

Sony Ericssion Xperia mini Pro Accessories

During unboxing of the phone we found the phone to be equipped with the following accessories

• Charger
• Battery
• 2GB Micro SD Card
• User manual

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Web Browser

Because of the Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS and flash support, the web browser of the phone does a great job. The pages loaded were quite fast and we were quite impressed with the high quality video services.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Organizer

The phone comes in a great set of organizing options which includes a document viewer. It supports viewing of document files (Word, Excel, Power Point and PDF).

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Battery

The phone is powered by a standard Li-ion 1200mAh battery which provides a talktime of approximately 5 hours.

Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Pro Price

Price of the phone in the US is around $ 175. This is where the phone scores heavily over its rivals such as O2 – Samsung Galaxy Ace which is priced at approximately $ 250. Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro price in India is not yet known.

Sony Ericssion Xperia mini Pro Verdict

Among several of the smartphones that we have tested of Sony Ericsson, we found Xperia mini Pro to be very impressive. The robust specifications coupled with the compact nature of the phone make Ericsson Xperia mini Pro a worthy purchase.