To help with the launch of the new Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 mini pro phone, SE have launched their first augmented reality campaign. The campaign highlights some of the key features of the phone and allows you to link the AR tags to your facebook page to show exactly how the phone would look with your own content / contacts. To try it out just go to http://www.sonyericsson.com/makeitreal. In addition if you try it out you will also stand a chance to win an X10 mini pro phone for yourself. As a side note the X10 mini has also just won the title of “European Mobile Phone 2010-2011” by the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA), and follows on from its earlier triumph as the Red Dot design award winner for 2010. If your looking at an iPhone alternative I can personally recommend the X10, I have had one myself now for a few months and has been a joy to live with, Sony Ericsson combined with the Google android OS is a stunning combination. Category:

I just found out more details on the new touch screen Sony Ericsson X8  Xperia handset coming out soon (approx late 3rd quarter 2010). As most readers will know I’m an avid Sony Ericsson fan and am currently lovingly taking care of the SE X10 touch phone.

The X8 is a going to be SE’s entry model into the Xperia Android market, and size wise it fits in between the X10 and X10 mini. At present Sony Ericsson are not sure if it will launch with Android 2.1 or 1.6 but either way it will be 2.1 eventually even if not at launch. The screen is a 3 inch capacitive touchscreen and will work in a similar manner to the X10 mini, in that the screen has four corner editable icons for easy one hand use and one touch access to applications.
Main Specs:

• 3.0 inch Capacitive touchscreen with 16,777,216 colour TFT
• 3.2 MP camera
• WiFi and Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)
• A-GPS with built in Navigation software and Google maps
• Sony Ericsson Timescape™ (aggregates and combines your contacts list with their relevant updated facebook and twitters accounts etc)
• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Micro USB connector
• 2 GB microSD™ card
• Processor: 600MHz
• Battery: 5 Hours Talk Time, 476 hours standby time
• Colours: White, Dark Blue, Aqua Blue, Pink, and Silver
• Price approx £180 sim free (Very good for an Android device)

Check out the short clip below to see the test phone in action. If you have an Android phone you should also check out this great new site Sony Ericsson made called mash-app.com. On the site you can save, share and search for your favourite android apps ! click here to check it out.

To read more about the X8 Click here

  My good friend and fellow gentleman Seth Rotherham over at 2oceansvibe.com is giving away a fantastic prize that has to be  won by this coming Monday ( 3rd May ! ). The prize is from Sony Ericsson South Africa and consists of 2 world cup tickets to the Brazil vs Portugal match, including Flights and accommodation ! All you need to do to enter is send in a picture of “Football Madness” in South Africa, this could be you or your friends dressed up, crazy football merchandise, pictures of the stadium, kids playing football etc etc. To enter just head over to 2oceansvibe.com (click here) and send in your entries to editor@2oceansvibe.com with the subject “Sony Ericsson 2oceansvibe Football Mayhem.” Keep up to date with Sony Ericsson on Twitter here, and Facebook here. (If you haven’t already be sure to check out their new stunning Google android phone, the X10 here) T’s and C’s: Open to SA peeps only.  The winner will be required to leave his place of work/home on the 24th of June till the 27th of June. Winners will be announced on Monday 3rd May (this coming Monday!).

For the last week Sony Ericsson made one of my wishes come true and lent me one of their first production model new Xperia X10 touch phones. I last wrote about this phone when it was announced last November and finally its here.

This in my view is the best phone Sony Ericsson have come up with yet. The basics are that its a full touch screen Google android based phone, with a host of clever custom SE software such as Timescape™ and Mediascape. The main gist of these software enhancements are to bring all your social networks together and make them work together in harmony, saving you time and keeping you up to date with what’s happening. With this I can say they have succeeded, in no small way thanks to the built in 1ghz processor (only a few years ago that was great for a PC !). Go to the X10’s home page to check out a demo for yourself here.

My highlights have been the following:

• Twitter and Facebook aggregating to phone contacts (i.e. When I look up a contact it shows me all their status updates, photo’s and events in one place)
• The 8.1mp Camera: This is a great camera, as well as taking great pictures it also picks up peoples faces and allows you to tag them to contacts right away
• Android marketplace: Much better that I expected, tones of games and other tools and gadgets to keep me happy.
• The design and screen: The phone’s screen looks great, and with the rubber textured back it’s very ergonomically friendly.
• USB charging, and easy syncing with your computer works great. Contacts can be backed up online and synced with facebook, Google, and outlook.
• Battery life is good for a handset of this type, think 2 days of normal use and 1 day of heavy online use (WiFi, bluetooth, & 3G data transfers drain it).
• Contrary to what I have read on other sites the touch keyboard works great (with the feedback enabled it makes it even better). I can only assume the other test handsets had pre-production software.

To sum it up if you’re in the market for a new intelligent phone handset that does it all, the X10 is worth a serious look. Email, photos, social networking, and lest we forget making calls are all a pleasure with the new Sony Ericsson X10.

For full specs go to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 page here.

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Probably the most anticipated phone from Sony Ericsson for years has been the new Xperia X10, and now it has a baby brother and sister in the form of the X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro. The only differences between the two are that the Pro has a slide out qwerty keypad, is slightly larger, and is available in Black and red rather than all the other colours for the regular mini shown below. First hands on tests show this phone is fast and pretty much good to go (click here for a hands on test video). These two touch screen Android phones feature Sony Ericsson’s new signature application Timescape™ which brings all communication together in one place so users can see at a glance text messages, missed calls, and Facebook™ and Twitter updates, without having to open lots of different applications.  The interactive music player also uses an “infinite button” to pull together all music content from the music store and YouTube™ – a smart way to search for new tracks from a favourite artist. The phones will be available for release in the second quarter of this year. Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these. If they live up to the hype the X10 range will be the phones that secure Sony Ericsson’s future as one of the world’s top handset manufacturers.   Main Specs:

• Android 1.6 operating system, with 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor
• 5mp camera.
• 4 Custom corner shortcut keys
• 2.5-inch QVGA touchscreen
• WiFi, Bluetooth (A2DP),
• Micro USB connector and 3.5mm headphone jack
• Sony Ericsson Timescape™, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®,
• A-GPS, Android Market™, Google Talk™, Google Voice Search™
• 128mb built in memory, 2GB microSD™ memory card inc in box

For the full Sony Ericsson press release click here 

         Sony Ericsson very kindly lent me their new Entertainment Unlimited branded phone called the Aino over the festive season and so I thought I would finally share with you my thoughts on it. To make things simple I have broken it down into my likes and dislikes. Likes: Firstly the Aino has a fab 3” hi-res touch screen, when the slider is closed the touch screen works very well allowing you to easily browse pictures, music, movies or radio. The keyboard and user interface are up the usual easy and logical to use Sony Ericsson standards. The phone also comes with a nice built in 8GB  Micro SD card, great Bluetooth headphones (great speakerphone too) and a very neat charging dock. It was also very easy to connect up to my laptop and sync all the contacts as well as working great as a mobile modem (wireless or wired took only a few minutes to set up). I didn’t get a chance to try out the Playstation 3 remote play feature, I’m more of an Xbox chap, but this feature allows you to stream music and films stored on your PS3 wirelessly to your Aino anywhere in the world !. Finally the Aino is also remarkably durable, after a couple of months heavy use it doesn’t even have a scratch on it.  Dislikes: The only slight problem with this phone is that the touch screen is for some reason deactivated when you slide out the keypad. Every person I showed it to tried to use the touch screen to navigate from around the menu, including me the first time. I guess once you know though you soon forget about it, but still think its a bit odd. The only other problem was when I first had the phone the software was very buggy, however after a week I updated it and now it’s been behaving nicely. Overall: A great phone if you want to get a touch screen / number keypad smart cellphone. The camera works well (see pics above) and as an entertainment unlimited phone I can honestly say its lives up to its name. More apps are constantly being released and the phone comes pre-loaded with facebook, Google maps and a nice selection of games. For full stats see below: Aino Touch Phone Specs

• 3 inch widescreen 16:9 touch screen and slide out Keypad
• 8.1 megapixel camera with Photo flash and intuitive touch focus, Video VGA 25fps
• Bluetooth™ stereo A2DP portable headphones included with docking base for phone/headphones
• 55MB Phone memory and 8GB MicroSD memory card included
• Remote Play for PLAYSTATION®3, Exchange ActiveSync®
• A-GPS with Google Maps™
• 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi, (Quad-band GPRS/EDGE and tri-band HSDPA)
• Talk Time: 13 hours, Standby time: 380 hours
• Dimensions: 104 x 50 x 15.5 mm, Weight: 134.0g
• PlayNow™ arena and Track id, Built in Step Counter and GPS tracker
• DLNA Certified™ (connect wirelessly to other electronic devices via Wi-Fi. i.e: See your photos on your TV)
• Media Go: Transfer your files from PC to phone wirelessly & automatically when docked (using Wi-Fi)

Sony Ericsson’s global Hopper Invasion campaign is well underway and thought it about time to give you an update on it (I first wrote about it here). The campaign promotes their new Entertainment Unlimited range of phones, namely the Satio, Aino and Yari. It all started a few months ago with a teaser site allowing people to create their own personalised online hoppers and a promo video showing 500 hoppers being let loose in Barcelona. They then did an online flash mob by taking over the yahoo.co.uk site for an afternoon using the personalised hoppers created by users online. (click here to see that) Next they created a fun interactive concept using twitter (with a unique hashtag), a warehouse full of deflated hoppers hooked up to pumps, and a dedicated website showing live video feeds from the warehouse. The general idea is that each time anyone on twitter types #pumpt the tweet is picked up at the warehouse and a hopper is given a burst of air in real time, all visible on the hopper website. The warehouse will stop pumping up hoppers on the 6th December and in the meantime Sony Ericsson are asking participants to tweet ideas for what to do with them. They will then pick the best one and make it happen. So far its becoming a great success, over 240,000 online hoppers have been created, and after just 7 days over 400 hoppers in the warehouse have been pumped up, and the #pumpt hash tag has been a trending topic on twitter. To follow the Hopper campaign on twitter click here, or to see the hopper live feed click here. (They also have nice Facebook and Picasa profiles set up)

   Recently the legends over at Sony Ericsson let me try out their new C903 Cyber-shot camera phone. The phone itself is pretty impressive, 5MP camera with Xenon flash and smile shutter, aGPS, and a host of other features (will list them below).  The unit I was sent is a polished white with cool blue lights that come on when the camera function is engaged, its looks great and as soon as I started to show it to friends one thing became clear, girls in particular loved the look and feel of this handset. So as I’m a nice chap I decided to lend it to a good friend Candice Heyns, who just so happens to be one of Cape Town’s great socialites, DJ, model, and manager of local hit band The Dirty Skirts. Below is a gallery of some of the pictures taken by Candice from the C903 on her travels around Cape Town and from a recent Dirty Skirts concert. C903 key stats

• 5MP Cyber-shot camera, Xenon Flash, Smile detection / Shutter, Best pic,
• aGPS, Bluetooth A2DP (stereo music streaming),
• 3G 7.2Mbps enabled
• Geo-tagging for pictures, TrackID, media player, Mega Bass
• Exchange ActiveSync®, YouTube player,
• 3D games, Motion gaming (think Wii like controls)
• 400 hours standby battery life, 10 hours talk time
• video calling, Slider phone,
• 130mb built in memory, expandable to 16GB with Memory Stick Micro™