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Photos: Sony Ericsson Xperia minis get less mini

Sony Ericsson's little Android handsets get bigger screens, beefier chips and more Facebook...
By Natasha Lomas, Contributor
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1 of 5 Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson's little Android handsets get bigger screens, beefier chips and more Facebook...

Mobile maker Sony Ericsson has refreshed its diminutive range of Xperia Android handsets, taking the wraps off a new Xperia mini pro, above left, and Xperia mini, right. The pair's predecessors, the Xperia X10 mini and X10 mini pro, were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress trade show in 2010.

Both the new Xperia mini handsets run the Android 2.3, or Gingerbread, flavour of Google's open-source mobile OS. Sony Ericsson said it has also tweaked its proprietary UI skin on the devices to allow up to 16 apps to be displayed on the devices' homescreens.

The handsets also feature deeper Facebook integration via a new feature called Facebook inside Xperia, which makes the social network accessible from the most used areas of the phone, including the picture gallery, music player, phonebook and calendar.

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The new Xperia mini pro, pictured above, resembles its predecessor, featuring a capacitive touchscreen that slides up to reveal a full physical Qwerty keyboard. The refreshed mini pro has a slightly larger screen than the earlier model, with a three-inch display, compared with 2.55 inches on the X10 mini pro.

Screen resolution has also been boosted - from 240 x 320 pixels to 320 x 480 pixels - and the handset itself is also slightly bigger and heavier than its predecessor. Device dimensions are 92mm x 53mm x 18mm, and weight is 136g.

There's also a beefier processor. The Xperia mini pro has a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, compared with the 600MHz Qualcomm chip in the old model.

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Here's a shot of the back of a pink version of the Xperia mini pro. The handset also comes in black, white and turquoise. The device packs two cameras: a five-megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera for video-calling. It supports HD video recording at 720 pixels.

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Here's a dark pink version of the new Xperia mini - the mini pro's Qwerty-less sibling. This updated handset also features a three-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels.

Device dimensions for the new Xperia mini are: 88mm x 52mm x 16mm, and weight is 94g.

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The Xperia Mini also has a five-megapixel camera that supports HD video recording but there's no front-facing camera for video-calls.

Sony Ericsson said the two handsets will be available globally in selected markets from the third quarter of this year.

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