Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini

Thickbuttons

If you really want a Qwerty Keyboard, you can install ThickButtons : http://www.thickbuttons.com/

I've tried it on mine, and it works, although the buttons are still a bit teeny to type on - I found I could type much faster going back to the 9 key predictive text system you get by default.

I've had my x10 mini for about 3 weeks now, and am, on the whole, very happy with it. The only quirks I've found is that it has a habit of losing wifi signal until you turn the wifi off and on again (though this may be related to my ancient belkin router, as I haven't noticed the problem when connected to other hotspots) and its weird habit of being a bit sleepy in the mornings when it wakes to sound an alarm, leaving you stabbing frantically at the snooze button trying to make it shut up until it registers the press

BeebPlayer

The BeebPlayer has been removed from the Market by it's author; http://davejohnston.posterous.com/?tag=beebplayer

Nice

My partner has just given her Blackberry curve up for the new Mini Pro - the same, but with a sideways slide-out keyboard. Most people would probably want the real keyboard instead, I would imagine. Nice device, though, but it does have a constraint or two. Some we've already noticed is the selective implementation of cut/paste and the inability to save a picture that someone sends you into your own gallery (you can add it to a contact or use it as a wallpaper, but can't save it). Hopefully that'll be rectified in a future release.

Alternate iPlayer app

There is another bbc iplayer app on the android store. Search for myPlayer. It was very flaky at the start but its working much better now (though needs more work on the interface).

Games are missing because...

by default QVGA screens aren't supported by an Android application - the developer has to explicitly specify in the application manifest that 320x240 screens should be supported. This is basically all the developer needs to do - apps get automatically downscaled to the smaller screen perfectly fine without a single line more code required other than this XML attribute set to true - but unless developers remember to do this, it won't appear in Market.

Not free

You say the X10 mini is "free with contract" from several providers. This is a contradiction in terms, and it is definitely not free -- the monthly costs are increased over standard contracts so as to cover the cost of the phone.

If you want to mention a price, mention the minimum total cost during the contract period. All other prices are suspect, and "free" most of all.

X10 Mini Pro

I bought one of these at the weekend and it does have a user replacable battery, as well as the physical keyboard and is only £20 more than the Mini.

The tiny screen is remarkably usable and the form factor is such that you don't notice carrying it around.

SonyEricsson making a comeback: dinky size, flourishing Android OS, microSD not memorystick

A Xenon bulb flash would have been welcome, but at least there is an LED one, rather than not at all.

I'd go for the mini pro though for the qwerty keyboard as predictive text becomes tiresome sometimes.

picked up a mini pro on monday...

Really good phone, one thing to consider if you pick one up (a pro) is that it doesn't have any sort of prediction or spellcheck.