The Android announcements are starting to come thick and fast.Yesterday, Telecom nabbed Motorola's Milestone (aka the Droid) for XT.The same afternoon, I met with Sony Ericsson Oceania MD Brendan Johnston, who gave me a brief demo of the Xperia Mini.Andro
The Android announcements are starting to come thick and fast.
Yesterday, Telecom nabbed Motorola’s Milestone (aka the Droid) for XT.
The same afternoon, I met with Sony Ericsson Oceania MD Brendan Johnston, who gave me a brief demo of the Xperia Mini.
Android phones so far have had an iPhone-style all-touchscreen form factor, or a touchscreen plus slider.
The Mini - already released in overseas markets - stands out from the pack for being so small (see the snap I took above on my - cough - iPhone). It’s the size of a box of matches. Or at least BBQ matches, with a 2.6-inch screen.
The Mini’s due to be released here in a few weeks.
The bigger news, a new version with a slide-down keyboard, the Mini Pro, is also in the works. It should see global release shortly, including, all going well, New Zealand.
The X10i Mini Pro will look exactly like the X10i Mini pictured above, but be a touch thicker due to the slide-down keypad.
All Androids share a couple of drawbacks: the Android marketplace is still not nearly as good as AppStore (though it's getting stronger all the time), and none have true multitouch gestures (which are proprietary to Apple's iPhone, and tightly guarded by patents).
Still, the Mini has a knockout form-factor, which is guaranteed to draw fans (see the Mini Pro's tech specs and an online demo here).
The network is TBC, but like all Sony-Ericsson's Androids, the X10i Mini Pro will support 850MHz (Telecom XT), 900MHz (Vodafone) and 2100MHz (Telecom and Vodafone in urban areas) 3G frequencies.
Android software upgrades on the way
Sony overlays its own “four corners” software on top of Google’s Android OS.
That’s riled some reviewers. And it does slow things down. The Sony Ericsson Xperia 10i, for example, has just shipped in New Zealand (on Vodafone initially) with Android 1.6, missing out on the mapping smarts of Android 2.x.
There was good news here. Mr Johnston said that around Springtime, all Sony Ericsson Android models will be upgraded to Android 2.0 or later.
Models bought today - including the X10i - will be firmware upgradeable at that time.
Similarly, Telecom has reassured that the Motorola Milestone, to be released July 1 with Android 2.1, will be upgradeable to Android 2.2. As with Sony Ericsson's Google phones, it will be a firmware upgrade, with no over-the-air option.
