The keyboard slides out with a simple movement and the typing experience is simple as is on many other Sony Ericsson recent handsets.
There has been some compromises made to get all the controls functions that you need, so the keyboard is arranged across a 4 x 10 key grid, and the lower row contains the spacebar, which is a good size. The quality of construction is good, and the strong base provides a strong platform and offers up precise typing.
Over half of the keys have different characters on them, which are accessed by pressing the blue button - providing access to numbers and all main punctuation. All the other characters are accessed through a symbol key.
The biggest adjustment was the leaving out of the full cursor keys and any menu keys. So, there is only a left and right cursor, with up and down being left off, but you just use the touch screen to scroll up and down. What is a fantastic is that the left and right cursors do make it easy to change text you've entered by simply pressing the line and moving to the correct place.
Although the X10 Mini Pro keyboard's diminutive size, it {does offer|allows|enables) extremely fast text entry mode. The UI alterations to cater for the X10 mini pro's functional display does acknowledge that you are using the keyboard, so that means there's a lot more space to see what you're writing, you can fill in online forms on the page.
Another great feature of the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro is that the most important pages will rotate to match the landscape aspect you'll be using the keyboard in. Although because there are so many Android applications out there, you're never going to get total integration success rate, although basically the core functions do.
The device itself measures only90 x 52 x 17mm and weighs 120g with the keypad adding to the thickness and the weight. The battery is now changeable battery, which wasn;t possible on the X10 Mini.
The small sized screen at 2.55 inches and 240 x 320 pixel, so it is both small and low in resolution. This is fine, because the X10 Mini Pro wasn't designed for surfing the web - but it was for people who wanted to message each other a lot.
Because the X10 Mini Pro has Android inside the user interface offers up a shortcut icon in each corner of the screen - these can be customised to suit your needs. You can add widgets by downloading them from the Android Market.
The option menu slides-up from the bottom of the screen, displaying a 9-icon grid. Here you can swipe left and right between pages to access all your applications.
Timescape comes pre-installed, which will pull your Facebook and Twitter feeds into one tile-based timeline.
The music player is great, but if we were to critique it would be nice to have some music control from the standby window. This is a small point as the music volume can be increased/decrease when the screen is off using the volume function on the right-hand side, again a useful control. The external speaker is great for the phones size too and there is an radio.
The bundled headphones are better than average and fit into the 3.5mm jack, which means you could use your existing headphones. Sony Ericsson have said that there will be accessories for the X10 mini pro, e.g. an external speaker. And what is great is that there's a 2GB microSD card comes with the handset to store your music.
At the back of the X10 mini pro is the 5MP camera. This offers cut-down features compared to many camera phones. You can choose between:
· auto,
· macro,
· twilight
· and sports.
You can also easily enable or disable the LED "flash.
The camera performs the same as the X10 mini, providing average given good light. The same applies to video with the maximum resolution being 640 x 480, captured at around 30 frames per second.
In terms of connectivity the X10 mini pro packs in everything you'd expect:
· HSDPA,
· Wi-Fi,
· Bluetooth
· and GPS.
The GPS means you get Google Maps with Navigation. Even though the X10 Mini Pro is small, you get all the features you need.
It's not easy to complain about the X10 Mini Pro when it provides a full range of functionality on a mobile that easily fits into a pocket, and that should appeal to some.
Summary
The sony ericsson x10 mini pro is a good phone that is totally functional and will satisfy many of the modern demands of a phone.The construction of the X10 mini pro is so strong and and the controls are a easy to use.
