Sony Ericsson mobile phone news from Mobile World Congress 2010

Sony Ericsson have been strutting their stuff at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the largest phone exhibition in the mobile industry calendar, showcasing three new handsets, which are variations on handsets already announced by the Swedish/Japanese manufacturer. The first of these is the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro.

We took a look at the Sony Ericsson Vivaz a short while ago, a handset that could make or break the battered reputation of Sony Ericsson, after recent problems with headline handsets like the Satio being withdrawn from sale by leading high street retailers. The Vivaz Pro offers everything the Vivaz has to offer, with the addition of a full, slide out QWERTY keyboard for faster typing and better data entry. To recap the strong feature set of the Vivaz Pro, the device offers 3.2 inch 16:9 wide touchscreen display, and can record video in High Definition quality. Where the Vivaz delivers an 8.0 Megapixel camera, the Vivaz Pro has only a 5.0 Megapixel camera, but support for things like face and smile detection and geotagging is still included. The Vivaz Pro has a good set of data connection options, including HSPA and WiFi, and there is also built in GPS support. The TV Out feature is a welcome inclusion, allowing you to view your HD videos and high quality images directly onto your TV screen. Despite the inclusion of the QWERTY keyboard, the Vivaz Pro is only 2mm thicker than the regular Vivaz, a little sacrifice for the enhanced feature.

The other two handsets announced by Sony Ericsson are variations on the recently announced but still to be released Xperia X10. The Xperia X10 Mini really lives up to its name, a small, compact Android device weighing in at just 88g, compared to the 135g that the regular X10 weighs in at. The tiny X10 Mini has a 2.5 inch QVGA touchscreen, and runs the Timescape UI over Android OS 1.6. The X10 Mini also boasts a 5.0 Megapixel camera with LED Flash and autofocus, includes GPS and we also find HSPA data connections and WiFi. The handset will be available in a variety of colour options, including Pearl White, Black, Pink, Lime, Red and Silver.

The other handset, the Xperia X10 Mini Pro is virtually identical to the X10 Mini, it just offers an additional slide out QWERTY keyboard to the handset. Following on with the Vivaz naming policy, it seems adding the suffix Pro to a phone indicates the inclusion of a QWERTY keyboard! And similar to the Vivaz and Vivaz Pro, the inclusion of a QWERTY keyboard on the X10 Mini hardly changes the thickness of the phone, adding just an extra 1mm to the dimensions, but weight increases to 120g. Both of the X10 Mini variants are expected to be available to buy during Q2.

Other news from Sony Ericsson was the announcement of some new stereo speakers, MS450 and HiFi headset, MH810 which includes remote media and call handling. There was also news of a whole new way of creating, and sharing mobile content on your Sony Ericsson device with news of Creations, in essence Sony Ericsson are providing a platform to allow users to create their own apps, themes and wallpapers, which can then be uploaded and shared with the Creations community. It is an interesting concept and should develop a firmer sense of community amongst Sony Ericsson users.