Sony Ericsson is apparently covering their bases with Android devices this year. The X10, although now somewhat underwhelming, is still a very nice, high-end smartphone. The newer Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro are solid, lower-end versions of the full-sized X10. But, that’s not enough for the Japanese-Swedish phone maker. To fill the gap between the X10 and its pint-sized variants, SE is said to be releasing a mid-ranged Android device, the XPERIA X8.
The XPERIA X8, code-named Shakira looks to sport the X10 Mini’s UI, rather than the full-fledged Sony Ericsson Timescape UI than that of the original Xperia X10. Being a lower-end device, we can see why they chose to use the slightly shaved down version of the UI. We don’t have any hard specs on the device, so we’ll be in the dark until something more solid comes along, but I can’t imagine the X8 to be anything breath-taking.
We can expect X8 to have a screen size of somewhere between 3 and 3.5 inches, likely with a 5-megapixel camera on the back, and a slower processor than the X10 – something along the lines of 600Mhz. This is all speculation, of course, but these specs would fall in line with the kind of average mid-ranged Android smartphones we’re seeing today. Let’s hope we don’t see some of the issues that have probably cause some potential customer to stray from the X10.
In either case, as nice as some of the Sony Ericsson Android phones currently on market today may be, I don’t think I’d ever own any of them. Sony Ericsson took way to long to get the X10 out of the gate, and now, even with some other options, it still seems like way too little, way too late.
Better luck next time, SE. We’d love to love you at the moment, but you’ve got your work cut out for you to give users a great Android device.
[Via: Phandroid]