Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro review: First look

Sony Ericsson launched three new products at Mobile World Congress 2011 - the Xperia Play, Xperia Neo and the Pro, aimed at business users and social networkers.

Here, we look at the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro - an Android 2.3 device with sliding Qwerty.

Sony Ericsson has taken a certain amount of intelligence from the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro here. The keypad is a little smaller than the Motorola Milestone's which is probably the best Qwerty slider out there, for typists anyway.

The sliding mechanism is smooth and the top row of keys is easily accessible - always a bonus when Qwertys are concerned.The buttons themselves are firm and a gap between each makes it almost impossible to tap the wrong one by mistake.

Above the sliding Qwerty keyboard is the 3.7-inch screen, with Sony's BRAVIA Engine for ultra brightness and clarity. It looks equally as good here as it does on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play or Arc.

Sony Ericsson is shipping the Xperia Pro running on Android 2.3 and its own UI lightly laid on top. This means there's still Timescape installed for all your social networking needs, but it's not so hard coded this time. You can escape from constant updates if you so wish.

There's also the ability to add folders just by dragging and dropping apps and files on top of each other, just like on the iPhone. You can choose whether you want to call these one of the preinstalled names or make your own folder name up. It's a really neat way of doing things, but it's so obviously trying to beat the iPhone that it's not that much of a highlight.

As the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro is meant to be aimed more at business users, our demonstrator was quick to show us the new email UI on the device.

It's a split screen where you can preview the email on one side and view the whole thing on the other side by selecting the email. Sure, it looks good, but everyone else has been doing it for a while.

The Xperia Pro also features a kind of prediction engine, where you can start a task and it'll attempt to guess your next move. For example, add a phone number to the device and it'll try and predict that next you may want to add the contact's social networking credentials or email address.

Again, a nice touch but we're not sure this will be wanted by the end user - it's a little too obtrusive and we like to do things when we want to, not when someone guesses our next move.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro is another nice-looking Qwerty device from the Swedish manufacturer. The Mini Pro was a popular device for those who wanted to go dinky and although the Xperia Pro is a little larger, it may still appeal to those who want an Android device running on the latest operating system, with a Qwerty.