Anyone else got a mini pro?

[lukeyboymac]

The girlfriend liked my desire but wanted something a bit more portable for her handbag and got this.

First impressions are good. Timescape looks a heck of a lot better than I thought it would (really was expecting horrible pixelated contact pics as per desire). UI will take a while to get used to but she can text, call and use facebook so she is happy. If I get a look in I might come back and do a mini review but can't get my hands on it at the moment

 

[jonmorris]

I've got the X10 mini and mini pro, and while the X10 mini pro is quite a bit bigger (not just thicker like the Vivaz pro is over the Vivaz), it is still very small - and you can carry it in your hand discretely.

As a result, despite the 240x320 pixel display being a rather large come down from a Desire/Milestone/Nexus One/Galaxy S, there's something about it that I really like.

The keyboard is pretty good and when I go on holiday, I can see myself opting to have this in my shorts pocket over my Milestone for day to day use.

I've not had it long enough to see what the battery life is like, but so far so good. And you can remove the battery on the mini pro too, which is good given that I've collected quite a few over the years!

 

[lukeyboymac]

yeah indeed. I think it's a great little 'going out at night' phone where you can slip it in your pocket and forget about it. It feels sturdy as well, bit like a mini tank.

Dunno whether it's because it's 1.6 or because of the small screen size but there are a lot of apps missing from the market place. It's made me realise how much I love HTC sense though as whilst the UI seems polished it's nowhere near as intuative. Speaker is decent, camera seems good. Keyboard is suprisingly easy to use and works well.

 

[jonmorris]

It's a very powerful 'going out at night' phone too!

When it gets the update to 2.1, that will solve the problems of many apps being missing - but most of what I've got on my Milestone can be downloaded (and those that can't are things that wouldn't look good on a QVGA screen even if the X10 mini pro had 2.2!).

What's great about Android is the fact that any app I've bought can be installed on my X10 mini pro (and X10 mini, but that's going back to Sony Ericsson) and with the syning of contacts/appointments etc, it really is possible to put one phone down and pick another one up and carry on almost seamlessly.

(And, before anyone says it, yes I know you can do the same if you have multiple iPhones!)

I know what a lot of people will say about the X10 mini models - because I said the same when I was in Barcelona for the announcement. People will think the phone is too small, fiddly and it will be impossible to use the menus and select things or enter text.

All I can say to these people is try one out for a bit and then see if you still think the same.

Even the camera seems to be great - and so far I've had far less noisy results with the X10 mini pro than a Samsung Galaxy S! How does that work? My guess is the sensor in the Galaxy S is very small because of the slim design.

 

[spatuluk]

I just got one. Tried a few smartphones before, and always thought they were too big for general use.. I'd gotten used to operating phones with one thumb, and having to use two hands for anything seemed slow and a bit backward.. it'd be like going back to 80s brick phones!

So, for me, the X10 Mini Pro is perfect. I can use Android while walking about, with it safely gripped in one hand (nice rubbery grip, too!), and if I have to do any lengthy typing I can use the keyboard. The screen size is fine for Android use, and actually isn't fiddly at all. The last phone I had was a T-Mobile Pulse, which had a fairly large screen by all accounts, and that seemed a lot more fiddly for some reason.

I don't think it's a phone for taking out at night, or a phone for girls, or a phone for miniature technology nuts.. it's a powerful phone for normal people with normal sized pockets and normal sized hands (I've got quite large hands) who don't want to carry a slab around with them on the offchance that they want to watch a movie.

 

[jonmorris]

I agree that it is much more than a 'night out' phone, and perhaps shouldn't have implied that's all I thought it was good for.

 

[dabluone]

Just ordered from Very - looking at

 

[jonmorris]

I'm in Stockholm today, roasting like the rest of Europe, and I had with me my X10 mini pro, Motorola Milestone and Samsung Galaxy S.

Wearing shorts, I opted to take the X10 mini pro today and left the other two behind - and I am very glad I did so given how easy you can slip it into a pocket (and it doesn't feel as vulnerable as something thin and flat like the Samsung). I've still been able to use Facebook and Twitter, the web browser is fast (and QVGA isn't terrible by any means) and run most of the apps I've got on the other two (despite Android OS 1.6).

To be honest, while I love the display on both the Milestone and Galaxy S (clearly significantly better), I can actually use the X10 mini pro (or standard mini) just fine. It's only when you're swapping from one to the other it becomes quite obvious, but speed wise the X10 mini is very quick and responsive.

If there was one complaint, the screen brightness is not high enough (and there's no light sensor, so it becomes too bright when you come indoors) and the battery life already mentioned before - but not so bad today. Maybe the battery is improving after it's had 5-6 full charges, or maybe the signal was just a lot better.

 

[retzie]

Wow, just read about the mini/mini pro and am suddenly re-inspired to head to Android (from a dumb phone - I flat refuse to sacrifice pocketability!) So, I'm new here - hi

Quick question for those of you who have the mini (pro):

The Engadget review mentions a text input bug:

Regardless of the input type, though, we did spot a common bug: while minding our usual Twitter business in Twicca, we noticed that the text cursor -- also a unique SE feature -- could only travel back by a certain number of characters, meaning we couldn't fix any previous typos. Hopefully this would be a quick fix for SE.

Has this been fixed? This would drive me crazy and I would fear for the phone's safety if I got one before this was patched.

Apart from that, the phone looks the goods!

 

[jonmorris]

I'm using TweetCaster and just typed 140 characters of nonsense and used the <- key to go right back to character 1 (and then back again with the -> key).

I have to say that while I wondered why they didn't have up and down, the left/right keys are excellent for correcting errors.

As far as I am aware, there's only one firmware for the mini pro - so it must be an issue with the app they used (Twicca) which I have not seen or used.

 

[retzie]

Great news! They talked about it in the vid too and I somehow got the impression it was across all text inputs - my worry was really for texts/email.

Maybe their issue was just that they wanted to be able to skip to a place via touch? Does this work in normal text messages/emails? For me, as long as there are arrows, it's not the end of the world, but it'd be nice to know.

 

[jonmorris]

Great news! They talked about it in the vid too and I somehow got the impression it was across all text inputs - my worry was really for texts/email.

Maybe their issue was just that they wanted to be able to skip to a place via touch? Does this work in normal text messages/emails? For me, as long as there are arrows, it's not the end of the world, but it'd be nice to know.

You can still touch the screen to move the cursor, with the usual accuracy of a small screen. I can barely touch in the right place on a Milestone, let alone the X10 mini! Google needs to do something similar to the iPhone where you can magnify the text to get more precision.

 

[retzie]

Cool, this bug seems to be a complete non-event for me then. Thanks for clearing it up

 

[jonmorris]

You got me playing with the phone a bit now to test out selecting part of the text via touch and I'm actually able to be surprisingly accurate!

 

[galorin]

ok, new here and didn't think it was worth opening a new thread for. I just broke the screen on my HTC TyTN2 (Wimo 6.1, qwerty slider). I had been writing a book on it (40k words thus far) and was looking for a new qwerty slider. How well does this little chap type?

I can get one on a low-use contract hat meets my needs for

 

[Mikkie]

ok, new here and didn't think it was worth opening a new thread for. I just broke the screen on my HTC TyTN2 (Wimo 6.1, qwerty slider). I had been writing a book on it (40k words thus far) and was looking for a new qwerty slider. How well does this little chap type?

I can get one on a low-use contract hat meets my needs for

 

[bosshog]

I just got the mini pro 2 day's ago. Loving the size of it, it's the smallest handset i have ever owned and my first android handset

Battery not the best, lasting me about a day and a half but using alot a.t.m being a new phone Aint all smart phone battery's not that great?

Does any one know of any good 3d game's that work well with the mini?