X10 Mini Pro Android 2.1 Update Review
11:38 AMAfter almost four months of launching the phone, Sony Ericsson has finally issued the much awaited Android 2.1 update to its range of Xperia X10 mini handsets, which includes the sony x10 xperia mini and the X10 mini pro. Let's see what all changes the new update has brought to these phones.
Let's start with the home screens. You will notice that apart from the new lock screen nothing much has changed. The lock screen now requires you to swipe right to unlock the phone and if you swipe left you put it in silent mode. This is similar to the way it is by default in Android 2.1 but Sony Ericsson has altered the look of the buttons to suit the rest of the interface. We did, however, prefer having to press the menu key to unlock the phone, as it was quicker and easier.
The homescreen is the same as before. You start off with the left-most screen and swipe right to access the others. The number of homescreens is still dictated by the widgets you have and you can drop down to just one if you don't have many set up. You still can have just one widget per screen even if you may feel that you could have squeezed in one more.
The widget selection is painfully limited on these phones. Also, you cannot have shortcut to application icons, folder or menu items as on other Android phones. All the applications have to be accessed from the main application list, which is still horizontal, making you swipe a zillion times to reach a newly installed app, which goes to the last screen.
Sony Ericsson has also loaded the phone with the same crappy applications that cannot be deleted and add to the number of application screens. They have also split up apps like alarm, stopwatch, countdown timer, etc. into multiple menu items when they could have grouped them into one the way HTC does. This again add to the number of applications screens, which by default is five and cannot be reduced. All you can do is move the most used applications to the first screen or the four corners of the screen, so that accessing them is quicker.
Android 2.1 added support for Live Wallpapers. You see that option when you bring up the wallpaper menu, but the list is surprisingly empty. Live Wallpapers were pointless to begin with but if they weren't going to provide them then Sony Ericsson should have just removed the option from the menu. The list of static wallpapers remains as before.
The built-in applications are all the same, except for the browser and the GMail app, which have received minor improvements. The browser now supports shortcut keys on the mini pro as well. So you can press the menu key in conjugation with one of the keys on the QWERTY keypad to do a specific function, such as opening the bookmarks or the download manager.
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