Nokia C3 vs Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro

Nokia has recently launched its new messaging phone Nokia C3 in India which is equipped with QWERTY keyboard and superb social networking tools. Incidentally, the Nokia C3 is also the only phone in the Symbian S40 family to be equipped with Ovi Chat support and Nokia Ovi Mail

While, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro is the Sony's latest credit card sized Android phone with full slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The compact device represents a newer – and significantly smaller – use of the Android OS. We compare the vital statistics and key features of both these devices to find out which one is going to last long in the popularity race.

Screen
The Nokia C3 displays a 320 x 240 pixels, 2.4 inches TFT screen with 256K screen colours. It's both crisp and bright. It’s not brilliant, and it won’t win any prices but it’s significantly better than the screens we’ve seen on some mid-range devices, which cost a couple of hundred quid more – and this is definitely a good thing! Kudos, Nokia.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro comes with a 2.5 inch screen display. Browsing, composing texts and email and making notes is an absolute breeze on the Xperia X10 mini pro. The keyboard itself is well designed and easy to use, the keys are slightly raised and well spaced.

On the downside, the text preview window is absolutely tiny, which makes scrolling through a long email a real tedious task. It is compensated with the 20 homescreens, so you do have the option of spreading them out.

Winner: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro

Camera
The Nokia C3 packs a 2 megapixel camera. The camera doesn't have a flash and while it's okay in well-lit environments, it's pretty useless after dark or in poorly lit rooms.

The X10 mini pro's 5 megapixel camera is fairly decent, having both a flash and auto-focus. We found that taking snaps in both light and dark environments usually yielded pretty good results. However, the screen is so bloody small it’s actually quite difficult to judge the quality of your pictures until you’ve ported them over to a PC or Mac.

Winner: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro

OS
Obviously in a bid to keep the price dramatically low, Nokia has opted with Symbian S40 OS in the C3 – so, it's not the fastest thing in the world and there's absolutely no multi-tasking. For basic stuff such as navigating, playing games and loading web pages, it performed admirably. If you want more than that, you’ll have to pay more. Simple.

Possibly one of the most disappointing aspects of the X10 mini pro is that it uses Android 1.6, which is now, well, practically ancient. But, the smartphone may receive the upgraded Android version in coming days for better user experience.

Winner: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro

Connectivity
For connectivity, the Nokia C3 offers 2.0 mm charger connector, Bluetooth version 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate, High-Speed USB 2.0 and a 3.5 mm AV connector. There's also no 3G either, so you've only got Wi-Fi at your disposal. On the downside, we had a lot of problems with the Nokia C3's Wi-Fi, which refused out right to connect to three separate networks.

For connectivity, the Xperia X10 mini pro offers loads of apps and tools. It comes with micro USB connector, 3.5 mm audio jack, PC synchronisation, NeoReader barcode scanner, USB, Wisepilot turn-by-turn navigation, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Google Maps and aGPS. On the plus side, it comes preloaded with the 600MHz Qualcomm processor, with great performance, allowing us to navigate around the device, open up apps and even play a few games with little or no lag at all.

Winner: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro

Price
Nokia C3 out of its box you could be forgiven for thinking that you've been sent the wrong device – it looks expensive, has a beautiful metallic finish and a full BlackBerry-esque QWERTY keyboard. It will be unfair to ask for more at a cost of just Rs. 5,999. Whereas, the Xperia X10 mini pro is priced at Rs. 16,000, which is a good value for money for a very small Android device in the market.

Winner: Nokia C3

Verdict: The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro is the clear winner but it's still not the best of the Android phones available in the market. While, the Nokia C3 is a new entry-level phone with basic features at a budget price for the users.