Sony Ericsson announces Xperia Ray, Xperia Active and Txt
22 June 2011 by Olav Hellesø-Knutsen Sony Ericsson today announced two Android smartphones and an entry-level QWERTY model. The Xperia Ray is a designer model while Xperia Active is a model for those one the run. Sony Ericsson txt is a feature model with a full QWERTY keyboard At CommunicAsia 2011 in Singapore, Sony Ericsson this week announced two new Android smartphones and a full QWERTY feature phone model.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray is a designer model with a relatively small 3.3 inch touch display. The 480 x 854 pixel resolution on a 3.3 inch display give us a pixels per inch (PPI) of 296. This high number rank the Xperia Ray as number 13 of the phones listed in our phone database. Other well known models with high pixel density are iPhone 4 (329.64 PPI), Nokia E6-00 (325.20 PPI) and LG Arena (310.98). Increasing the number of pixels without making a larger display makes text and graphic look more smooth, but when reaching one point, it could make the default text size too small. Esato has only one phone model listed in the database with 3.3 inch display combined with a 854 x 480 so the screen is first of its kind. Xperia Ray, or Xperia ray with a lowercase R as Sony Ericsson choose to call it, has many of the features found in Xperia Arc and Xperia Neo. The screen resolution is the same, but also the 1 GHz processor, Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA Engine and the 8.1 megapixel camera with Exmor R for Mobile. If the camera is identical to the Xperia Arc and Neo, you should expect nice low light performance as we found out in our Xperia Arc review. The 3.3 inch display size is of course smaller than Xperia Neo's 3.7 inches and Xperia Arc 4.2 inches, but as we have seen with the Xperia Neo compared to the Xperia Arc, decreasing the screen size will result in much better battery performance.     More Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray highlights
In selected markets, the Xperia Ray sales package will include a LiveSound headphones. Available Xperia Ray colours are Black, Gold, White and Pink Sony Ericsson Xperia Active is a different kind of smartphone. It is one of a handfull water resistant and dust proof smartphones. It is not often we hear about water resistant touch screen models. We know about the water resistant Motorola Defy but can't think about any other. As with all the latest Sony Ericsson Android models, Xperia Active is having the latest version of Android operating system installed (Android Gingerbread 2.3)
Observant readers will notice that both the Xperia Ray and the Xperia Active has touch keys instead of hardware keys. We prefer the physical feedback given by pushable keys, but without them, the front side of the phone get a more sleek and stylish form. Sony Ericsson has kept the dedicated camera key as well as volume controls and the power key. A very visual hinge makes it easy to attach the included wrist strap to the phone. The built in GPS, barometer and compass in addition to ANT+ support are good news for those wanting to replace their Garmin or Polar fittness product. ANT+ makes it easy to log heartbeats and bike cadence using third party accessories. The pre-installed iMapMyFitness app could be one of the apps usefull for this, but there are other free apps in Android Market such as Endomondo Sports Tracker used by million others which could do the same thing. The Xperia Active also has the four corner home screen shortcuts which often are found on Sony Ericsson phone models with small screens. These extra navigation icons are convenient for one hand navigation.       Sony Ericsson Xperia Active highlights
Included accessories: Sport stereo headset, arm case, wrist strap, 2 GB microSD card, USB cable and a exchangable cover. Sony Ericsson txt
   Sony Ericsson txt highlights
All three phones will be available in Q3 this year. Alternatively post this in the Esato forum Please sign in to your Esato account to leave a comment regarding this article
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