Sony Ericsson unveils the new Xperia mini and Xperia mini pro

Sony Ericsson unveils the new Xperia mini and Xperia mini pro

• Introducing two powerful, versatile and compact smartphones
• Xperia™ mini – the world’s smallest HD video recording smartphone
• Xperia™ mini pro –intuitive fast messaging in a compact smartphone

May 5th, 2011, London – Sony Ericsson unveils the new Xperia™ mini and Xperia™ mini pro, the latest additions to its Xperia™ family. Building on the success of the original mini series, these innovative smartphones come packed full of features, powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ processor, and run the latest platform of Google’s Android™ – Gingerbread 2.3. Beautifully designed, Xperia™ mini and Xperia™ mini pro both integrate best-in-class imaging and display technology from Sony, including Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA Engine and HD video recording (720p).
The products offer a full multimedia entertainment experience. Xperia™ mini and Xperia™ mini pro enable access to over 150,000 apps on the Android Market™ and has a 3” scratch-resistant, multi-touch glass screen. The improved user interface allows up to 16 apps displayed on the home screen. Facebook inside Xperia™, a feature just announced for the Xperia™ family, provides a unique social media integration.
Xperia™ mini pro brings the optimized slide-out keyboard with smart functionality first seen on the Xperia™ pro to a compact smartphone. A subtle but fast Type & Send functionality eliminates the need to open a dedicated app for each type of message, and Smart Keyboard triggers predictive messaging actions automatically when the user slides out the keyboard. Xperia™ mini pro also comes pre-loaded with Office Suite and McAfee antivirus software, letting consumers manage documents and e-mails instantly and securely while on the move.

Steve Walker, Head of Marketing, Sony Ericsson said, “We wanted to provide consumers even greater choice across the Xperia™ range, while building on the success of the original mini series. These turbo-charged smartphones now contain even more power, enhanced functionality, a larger screen and premium features unique to Sony Ericsson. They are packed full of features, making them a perfect choice for consumers looking for all the benefits of Android and Sony in a beautiful and easy to use compact form factor.”
Sony Ericsson also unveils today a new integration, Facebook inside Xperia™, which will be included in the new Xperia™ mini and mini pro and soon to be available across the wider Xperia™ range.  Facebook inside Xperia™ integrates social connections throughout the phone, by making Facebook immediately accessible from the most used areas of the phone such as the picture gallery, music player, phonebook and calendar.  As people are becoming increasingly reliant on their smartphones for instant communication, Sony Ericsson is enabling people to ‘like’, share and comment more easily than ever before with Facebook inside Xperia™.
Sony Ericsson Xperia™ mini – Key features

• World’s smallest Android™ smartphone with HD video recording
• Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA® Engine
• Place up to 16 apps in the corners of your home screen
• Over 150,000 apps on Android Market™
• Facebook inside. Keeping your friends closer

Sony Ericsson Xperia™ mini pro – Key features

• Ergonomic keyboard and smart functions for fast messaging
• HD video and Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA® Engine
• Synch your email and view office documents safely on the go
• Place up to 16 apps in the corners of your home screen
• Over 150,000 apps on Android Market™

Sony Ericsson Xperia™ mini pro and Xperia™ mini  with HD will be available globally in selected markets from Q3.
Check out the Sony Ericsson Product Blog for more information: http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products

Facebook Lives Inside Xperia™ & Next Generation Xperia™ minis

Facebook Lives Inside Xperia™

Tonight we also announced our new integration of Facebook inside Xperia. This will be available both as a feature of the new Xperia mini products but also in a coming software update to the Xperia™ arc and Xperia™ PLAY that in most markets will start to roll-out already now during Q2.

So what is this Facebook inside Xperia integration all about then?

First of all – Facebook really has turned into something huge. There are reports out there stating that when looking at smartphone app usage as much as 50% of consumers app time is used in the facebook app. Truly amazing numbers.

What we’ve done is to create a solution where access to Facebook isn’t only tightly tied to that specific app. Instead you will be able to interact with Facebook in a lot of ways from different parts of your phone. This means it will be easy, faster and more intuitive to like, comment and share from your Xperia smartphone.

Some of the main features are:

- Single sign on to Facebook

When you start your phone for the very first time you have the option of logging into Facebook and thereby create this connection. That way you won’t have to log into Facebook or different apps like the Facebook app, Timescape or any of added integration points coming with this feature. This also enables all of the above to happen automatically unless you choose to turn specific parts off of course.

- Contact sync with Facebook

Just as with the current Facebook app you have the option of syncing your Facebook contacts into your phone book but we’ve added more Facebook info that you can access. So now if you want to see your friends’ status, photos or likes you only have to look them up in your phone book.

- Calendar sync with Facebook

Now also your calendar can be synched with Facebook so that you see your Facebook events and birthdays of all your Facebook friends directly in your calendar.

- Facebook photos in your phone Gallery

The Gallery application in your phone automatically shows your local pictures and e.g. your Picasa pictures. Now we’ve included in the gallery your Facebook photos and the Facebook photos your tagged in. So now you can find all these photos one click away and comment and like straightaway.

- Music player Like-button

When listening to a track in the included music player you now will have the possibility of clicking “like” on a song directly while listening. Whenever you do that a post will be posted on your Facebook wall. From that post your friends can click through and learn more about the specific song you liked, in some cases listen to it directly and also even buy it. It all works through the framework we’ve built over years on our Track-ID service.

- Media discovery widget

A widget is included that automatically shows you the videos and music that your friends have recommended on their Facebook wall. Everything your friends link to on services such as YouTube, Spotify etc will be shown there and you can easily view your friends favorite media by just a single click – great to keep entertained.

I’ve tried this out for a short while now and must say that the integration is really neatly done. It’s available in lots of places but in a very non-intrusive way and you also have the possibility to turn specific features on or off as you please.

Important differences compared to other initiatives are that this really integrates into your phone in many different places and does not focus only on easy sharing or posting on Facebook but also on reading and interacting with your friends content. Another important benefit of this is that it will be included in the entire 2011 Xperia range and isn’t limited to a specific model. Our aim with the Xperia family is to offer a broad range of choice but all of them will give you a great entertaining experience and with the wide appeal of Facebook I really think this suits almost all target groups and form factors.

I will come back with more demntrations on what it does but in the mean time you can always read more about it on our Facebook inside Xperia home page: Facebook inside Xperia
Written by Rikard Skogberg

Next Generation Xperia™ minis

 
Today I’m at a blogger event in central London where we just announced our latest additions to the family, the Xperia™ mini and the Xperia™ mini pro. I’ll try to write a post on the event itself more in detail tonight or tomorrow morning.

Our main goal with the Xperia family is to offer the most entertaining smartphones, and to do that with choice.

Therefore I’m excited to see these new products where we really offer massive experience and performance without comprise, just in a smaller form factor. I truly believe that even you who’d like a smaller phone do want performance and features like HD-video recording and the Reality display with Mobile Bravia engine to get the most out of your smartphone experience.

Compared to our first mini products these really represent major step-ups in all aspects from screen size and resolution to 1 GHz processing power, increased memory and Camera capabilities.

Truly mini from a size perspective but quite the contrary when it comes to performance and power.

Our plan is to have these in stores in Q3 and more details can be found on their respective product home pages and in our press room.

The product home pages for each product can be found here:

Xperia mini – World’s smallest Android powered HD video smartphone

Xperia mini pro – Android powered smartphone for easy messaging


Written by Rikard Skogberg