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Review: Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro SK17i
Chandrakant 'ck' Isi, Sep 20, 2011 2149 hrs ISTA mighty midget.
QWERTY keypad; Snappy UI; Excellent sound quality; Well-priced.
Bulky; Unimpressive camera.
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Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro SK17i
MRP: 15,860
Street Price: 15,400 (Letsbuy.com; Saholic.com; Flipkart.com)
Sony Ericsson (SE) always has had a different approach towards Android, compared to Samsung and LG. While the latter two rely heavily on hardware, SE gives more importance to UI customisation. Despite mixed results, the company seems to be continuing with this approach. Its latest offering, is a successor to the Xperia X10 mini pro. With an all-new Gingerbread and a 1 GHz CPU, it has to be better than the X10. However, whether this new entrant is also marred by performance issues as seen in the case of the Xperia PLAY, remains to be seen.
Design And Build Quality
The Phone's retail package has the standard contents. Apart form the phone, you get a micro-USB cable, charger, earphones, and a 2 GB memory card that's never going to be enough for today's smartphones.
For SE, "Mini" means short, but not slim. Hence, the first thing you'll notice about this phone is its chubbiness. The device has a thickness of 0.7" (18 mm), which is almost double that of recent smartphones. Although you can't expect a mobile with a slide-out QWERTY keypad to be slim, this one is just too bulky for my liking. The device weighs 136 grammes - though it's not light, I won't complain about a few extra gs.
Below the 3" screen are present the standard Android keys, namely Home, Back, and Options. The first is a physical button, while the latter two are capacitive touch keys with backlight.
The sliding mechanism feels very sturdy. However, the keypad could have been better. Its layout is plain thoughtless, and the keys are too small for comfortable typing. The [F] and [J] key bump lines are present, but can't be felt easily.
The phone's chassis consists of glossy plastic on all sides and a pleasant matte finish on the back. Overall, the build quality is quite good. The design is not bad either, but like I've said before, it should have been slimmer.
The mini pro is powered by a 1 GHz Scorpion processor coupled with an Adreno 205 GPU, similar to what we've seen on the recently reviewed Xperia PLAY. Other specs include 512 MB RAM, a 5 megapixel primary and a front VGA camera, 32 GB microSD card support, GPS, 3.5 mm jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, and proximity sensor.
Display
The 3" screen is covered by scratch-resistant glass, though not the renowned Gorilla Glass. According to the company, the LED backlit display is fuelled by the BRAVIA Mobile Engine. The screen produces nice colours and contrast. Viewing angles are very good, with a slight loss of colour. Additionally, its readability under direct sunlight is impressive.
UI And Applications
The phone runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with SE's custom UI on top of it. To make up for the relatively small screen, the company has introduced a four-corner interface. It features a shortcut in all four corners, each housing four apps inside it. Although useful to some extent, it looks odd.
Similar to the iPhone 4, bumping two icons together creates a folder. You also get an option to choose the name and icon for the newly created folder. Additionally, pinching the screen brings up the Overview, consisting of floating icons that makes for good eye candy. Although not new, the Timescape still manages to impress.
The device comes pre-installed with Google Maps 5.2. However, the GPS receiver kept on flashing "Your current location is temporarily unavailable" until I turned on the A-GPS (Assisted GPS).
The Gingerbread-based browser is snappy and supports Adobe Flash 10.3. The page rendering was fast, and many online games were playable. However, YouTube videos above 480p are a no-go.
Coming to gaming, Asphalt 6, Plant vs. Zombies, and the like run without a hitch, but that's about it. Brothers In Arms 2: Global Front and Gangstar: Miami Vindication are out of the question.
Overall, the 1 GHz CPU performs well, and I didn't notice any lag or slowdown during the testing period. Multitasking was handled pretty well too. Finally, a smooth and reliable UI from SE.
Multimedia
The music player's UI is beautiful, and more importantly, original. There are plenty of equaliser presets to play around with. Sound quality through the earphones is superb, but the bundled set is quite uncomfortable.
The device's speaker is reasonably loud, and can be enhanced further using the xLOUD setting. SE has also included an FM radio, unlike many of its rivals.
The phone doesn't have a separate video player, but you can play videos though the gallery. It supports 720p MP4 files out of the box. However, you are better off with any third-party player if 720p DivX and XviD is your thing.
Camera
The camera interface is great; it displays settings on the right and the last five snaps on the left. Moreover, you can adjust the size of these two panels using a swipe gesture. The device also sports a good old shutter button.
The camera UI.
Unfortunately, the image quality fails to impress. Its attempt to produce vibrant photographs ends up in an unacceptable level of noise being added to the image. Moreover, in many cases, I found it was overexposing the bright spots.
The phone is also capable of 720p videos at 30 fps, which is standard for today's smartphones. The resulting clips are smooth, but contain artefacts. All in all, the device's camera performance is mediocre at best.
Telephony And Messaging
The phone features a visually pleasing and capable phonebook, which is very social by nature. You can add contacts from multiple accounts, and duplicates can simply be merged.
Signal reception throughout the testing was good, and I didn't experience any call drops. The earpiece is loud and clear, and the mic is sensitive enough to convey voices properly to the other side.
Coming to messaging, the phone displays all messages in threaded fashion. Although the company has provided a cute little virtual keypad, it won't get touched because of the physical QWERTY keypad. True, it's not for folks with big fingers, but it's still miles ahead of any virtual keyboard.
Messaging and calling.
The phone has a capable generic email client that can handle multiple accounts. It features a preview pane, previously explained in the Xperia PLAY review.
The 1200 mAh battery managed to keep the device up for almost 7 hours under heavy usage, which involved continuous media playback and hours of browsing. Although the battery life is not great, it's definitely very good by Android standards.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro is a snappy little droid. It offers a full QWERTY keypad and still manages to fall under the mid-range category. Moreover, its sound quality is excellent. On the other hand, the device is too thick by toady's smarphone standards. The onboard 5 MP camera is also not up to the mark.
Nevertheless, for Rs 15,400, this well-built phone is more than enough for day-to-day tasks. Since there is no other landscape QWERTY Android device at this price point, this product stands as a good deal.
Features: 4/5
Design And Build Quality: 3/5
Performance: 4/5
Value For Money: 4.5/5
Mojo: 4/5
Overall Rating: 4/5
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(16) Comments
Glenn jacob jac
,ghaziabad , on Jan 16, 2012 11:56 AM
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Anurag Prajapat
,Navi Mumbai, on Dec 05, 2011 05:55 PM
Chandrakant Isi
,TechTree, on Dec 28, 2011 05:39 PM
Shubham
,New Delhi, on Sep 24, 2011 01:44 AM
Chandrakant Isi
,TechTree, on Dec 28, 2011 05:31 PM
Glenn jacob jac
,ghaziabad , on Sep 26, 2011 12:11 PM
Anil
,Palakkad, on Dec 20, 2011 10:59 PM
s tigga
,ranchi, on Dec 11, 2011 10:32 AM
Slaven
,Split, Croatia, on Nov 12, 2011 03:48 AM
Abhishek
,Madhubani,Bihar, on Nov 18, 2011 08:08 PM
Amrit
,Gurgaon, on Sep 21, 2011 05:16 PM
Sourav
,Bangalore, on Sep 22, 2011 08:47 PM
sreekanth
,mysore, on Sep 21, 2011 12:20 AM
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,Mumbai, on Sep 21, 2011 11:44 AM
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