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Outwardly the Vivaz pro is pretty much identical to its sibling the original Vivaz, but look closer and there are some important differences and not just in terms of how the handsets look. The most obvious departure from the original Vivaz is in the Pro’s slide out QWERTY keyboard, which immediately sets your mind towards features such as heavy SMS use or social networking. That should perhaps be a clue as to the intent behind this handset.
Of course, this should be taken with a grain of salt seeing as Sony Ericsson have a reputation for delaying products and firmware updates. Plus, it doesn’t suggest whether all the phones will get the update (by the end of September) or a single phone like the X10. We can only hope that at the end of this long wait, the firmwares are stable ….
Source:
Sony Ericsson UK Twitter
Top 10 most eco-friendly phones
Sony Ericsson Elm: Eco rating, 4.3 out of 5
Nokia 6700: Eco rating, 4
Nokia C7: Eco rating, 4
Nokia 1800: Eco rating, 4
Samsung GT-S8500: Eco rating, 4
Sony Ericsson Zylo: Eco rating, 4
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro: Eco rating, 4
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini: Eco rating, 4
Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro: Eco rating, 3.9
Nokia E500: Eco rating, 3.9
We’ve been running a poll on which OS Sony Ericsson should drop for some time now and I thought it was about time to offer some comments on it. Let me start by explaining a little about why we put that poll up.
A Little Fish Is Better Than None
Sony Ericsson, as things currently stand, are supporting three separate mobile operating systems for their smartphone range; Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile. That’s a lot for any mobile manufacturer to support let alone one that has been through the financial troubles Sony Ericsson has not to mention the fact that Sony Ericsson isn’t sitting upon the same level of market share or mind share around the world as some of the larger brands. So why do they do it?
Ostensibly it’s to keep their fingers in as many pies as possible. It’s pretty starightforward logic that the more choices you offer the more market segements you cover. In other words if you cast a bigger net chances are you’ll catch more fish. The problem with this logic though is that Sony Ericsson just don’t seem to have the resources to pull it off well. To continue the net analogy, their big net has holes in it. In basic terms they have been releasing handsets that are, at best behind the curve, and at worst buggy and cumbersome to use.
Symbian: The Dinosaur In The Room
The general consensus, and reflected in our poll, is that Symbian is the weak link. It’s a platform most closely associated with Nokia rather than Sony Ericsson, but more than that, it’s a platform that is more associated with how smartphones were three or four years ago. That image means that right from the get go many have a certain perception of a Symbian smartphone. Add in shortcomings like the lack of any significant app store or the rather clunky unappealing UI and it’s not exactly a recipe for success.
Windows Mobile: The Also Ran (And Might Again)
Windows Mobile took a bit of a hit in our poll too, with 37% of respondents saying Sony Ericsson should ditch it. That’s a long way behind the 51% who gave Symbian the thumbs down, but still a very significant share of the vote. To be fair here Sony Ericsson does look to have called time on Windows Mobile, but that’s probably more of a case of them being forced to as it’s being retired by Microsoft themselves. Sony Ericsson didn’t have much success with their Windows Mobile products, but then in an age where smartphones are increasingly being bought by image and ease of use centric consumers rather than business users where they ever really in the running?
Android: The Way Forward
Then we come to Android, which just 12% of respondents say Sony Ericsson should ditch. Looking at it another way that’s a support level of 88%. Yet Sony Ericsson has placed itself firmly behind the curve on Android releasing a plethora of products running Android 1.6 with an upgrade to 2.1 on the cards. Android 2.2 is already out and 3.0 is just around the corner. Why the delay? Most likely the insistence upon using their own custom UI e.g. Timescape and Mediascape. That’s not to say those things don’t add value to the proposition, but the benefits are surely outweighed if it means that Sony Ericsson’s customers are left behind in terms of core functionality that the latest Android iterations would bring?
MOAR Android!
So where does all of this leave us? The aspect that is most striking is the level of support for Android and consequently the lack of support for Symbian. It seems fairly obvious to the casual observer that Sony Ericsson should call it a day on what is a rather tired old platform that even Nokia are floundering a bit with these days. Instead Sony Ericsson could divert those resources into Android and push itself to the fore of what has proven to be a platform capable of reviving flagging fortunes e.g. Motorola as well as establishing a solid mind share amongst consumers e.g. HTC. With Windows Phone 7 about to launch and Sony Ericsson looking to support that too it seems more sensible for a relatively small manufacturer to support the perennialy popular Android platform, whilst also hedging a bet on the new kid that is Windows Phone 7. Symbian has neither of those qualities at the moment and looks to be doing little more than gobbling up resource better spent elsewhere.
In short, out with the old and in with the new.
One of the bright spots for Sony Ericsson this year has been the X10 Mini, a little surprising perhaps given the expectations heaped upon it’s bigger brother the X10. However, running an older version of Android, WiFi problems, a ‘does it/doesn’t it?’ farce over multi-touch and no update (to Eclair) until September, the X10 has proven less than stellar in many yes. Enter the X10 Mini …
Its itty bitty teeny weeny size seems to make it ‘loveable’ in many people’s eyes and despite the fact that it’s running Donut (Android 1.6) and really isn’t anywhere near the top of the game in terms of specifications, customers do seem to have taken to it. Cementing that popularity the handset has just won the title of ‘European Mobile Phone 2010-2011′. The award is given by the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) and follows on from its earlier triumph as the Red Dot design award winner for 2010.
Sony Ericsson has managed to cram just about every Sony brand name onto a phone over the past few years. We’ve seen Cybershot branded cameraphones and Walkman branded music phones, in Japan they’ve even had Bravia branded handsets. One brand has been missing from the portfolio though and it’s the one that most people desperately want to see … PlayStation. According to information obtained by Engadget that may become a reality sooner than we think.
Sony Ericsson are apparently working on a new gaming platform for Android that could redefine Android gaming. The work involves developing not only the platform itself, but an entire ecosystem to support it as well as a gaming device that is said to be in the late planning stages and receiving input from Google themselves.
In terms of the handset it’s been described as a mixture of Samsung’s Captivate and Sony’s PSP Go. What that means is that it’s a slider phone (in landscape mode), but instead of a keyboard sliding out it’s game controls the user will see i.e. a d-pad, a ‘long touch pad‘, the familiar PSP buttons, and shoulder buttons. The display is described as being large, somewhere between 3.7″ and 4.1″ and will be WVGA or better. The onboard camera is a 5 MP effort, which is pretty much the industry standard these days, but which could be beefed up further before the final design. In terms of the processor it looks like Sony Ericsson is going with the tried and tested option of a 1 GHz Snapdragon.
The aesthetics of the handset are also covered and help paint a picture of what it actually looks like in place of an actual picture of the device. It’s mostly black with silver highlighting, but the slide out game control area is white and silver. The device is tentatively being branded as an Xperia device, but it should carry the PlayStation branding too. Engadget quote those who have seen the device as describing it as “pretty damn sexy“.
Ok so that’s the hardware side of things, let’s now turn to the software. In sharp contrast to the X10 range of handsets this new device will be running Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) making it one of the most advanced Android handsets out in the market. There will be, as you may have already suspected, a custom UI skin from Sony Ericsson. Interestingly there will be a new section added to the Android Market to house the games for the new platform this handset will usher in. The games contained within this new section wil only be available for this new Sony Ericsson handset, at least to begin with. Other Android handsets should have access to them too if they meet the necessary hardware specifications and button configuration requirements.
The games themselves are said to be in the same bracket as PSX and PSP games in terms of graphics. In other words Android is getting full blown 3D gaming. The current range of games being touted for inclusion in this new Market section are predictably older titles, but there are some new ones in there too. The titles include God of War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and LittleBigPlanet (Ixalon’s favourite!). There are also apparently plans afoot for game titles that incorporate augmented reality.
The big question at this point is of course ‘when’? Well that is, as ever, a difficult question to answer. Engadget are citing October as a possible release window for this handset, but they do stress that this is unconfirmed and as we all know Sony Ericsson are not renowned for getting products to market on time.
[Engadget]
Today over at xda-Developers Kabaldan has posted up a root method which works for both the x10 mini and the mini pro. There wasn’t as much hype and talk about these two small devices gaining root capabilities as the X10 had but I’m sure there will be now . Take a look here if you are interested in following this up http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=7418382#post7418382
You may remember that back when we had the R1FA016 firmware I was able to pinpoint this rather glaring bug in the X10’s radio setup which caused the phone to turn off the WiFi each and every time the phone dropped to no signal AND again when it reattached to the network. This was a particularly troublesome bug for me living in a poor signal area so I was especially pleased to see SE fix it with the recent R2BA020 firmware. Imagine my disgust, though funnily enough not surprise, then when I begin trying out my freshly installed R2BA026 update and witness the return of of this disastrous radio implementation.
My WiFi is once again useless as it turns itself off and on again constantly as my X10 struggles for signal and will likely have to downgrade back to R2BA020. In stark contrast to SE, I can only recommend that you avoid this update unless you wish to lose functionality.
Well done SE another triumph of wireless engineering, please sack whichever cretinous buffoon(s) that worked on this! Either that or stop tasking your firmware updates to the work experience kids you amateurs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here are the previous videos again as they show the exact same symptoms.
Mik
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