Sony Ericsson has taken the Xperia X10 Mini, bolted a QWERTY keyboard on the back, and made the world’s smallest Android phone into a ‘communication device’. In reality this just means it’s easier to type on the phone, and given it only packs a 2.2-inch capacitive screen, it’s a welcome addition.
It’s only 1mm thicker than the original X10 Mini, but there are a few slight changes: the battery is now removable (and lasts a good day and a half), it only comes with a 2GB microSD card and it does feel a bit chunkier in the hand.
It works in the same responsive way as the original – the TimeScape overlay is intuitive, thanks to customisable ‘corner icons’ supplemented by a dual-level menu screen; drag up to see rows of icons, and drag down to see your widgets easily displayed. SMS, MMS and webmail are all really easy to use, and Exchange is also included through RoadSync, although this is only a trial. We were impressed by the keyboard, as despite being dinky beyond belief it was far from unusable, with the only gripe being the space bar is a little hard to press when striking it dead in the centre, as you are wont to do most of the time.
Contact integration is still a little shaky: if you want to sync your friends’ Facebook and Twitter accounts to their profile on your phone, you have to wait for them to say something, open the TimeScape application to see all the ‘tiles’ of status updates and find the relevant one before you can link things together.
We would argue the tiled view on the X10 Mini Pro is a little redundant on the small screen, especially as you have to open the browser to view any Tweets or status updates
