The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is the first smart-phone in the market that complies with the requirements of the Playstation Suite Initiative to play Playstation certified games. Even though it does not serve as a substitute of one of the more powerful games consoles Playstation and Playstation Portable, it sports all features of an adequate gaming console and addresses smart-phone users who want to have a game pad rather than just a touch-screen for gaming with their mobile or who are not satisfied with the range of games in the Android market.

From the end of April, Telekom will be offering customers the tablet PC Motorola Xoom with Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) operating system for € 699.95. The version featuring UMTS mobile telecommunications technology for mobile data transmission will be available exclusively through Deutsche Telekom for 90 days. But the Motorola Xoom is only one of the products, Telekom is presenting visitors at this year’s CeBIT fair in Hanover. Here is a short overview of what you get to see Telekom stand which is located in hall 4, stand 26.

HTC Flyer, LG Optimus Speed and Samsung Nexus S - Vodafone Germany is showcasing new smart-phones, tablets as well as LTE surf sticks and applications at CeBIT 2011 in Hanover. Here is short overview of what devices and services you can see at the Vodafone pavilion 32 at the CeBIT fair.

German network operator Vodafone is offering three new Android smart-phones to prepaid customers. Buyers of a “CallYa OpenEnd Internet” prepaid starter package can choose between the LG GT540 for € 149.90, the HTC Wildfire for € 199.90 and the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro for € 249.90. While the LG GT540 and the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro are available for similar retail prices at other stores in Germany, the HTC Wildfire offer of Vodafone is quite attractive. However, at the moment interested mobile phone users can only pre-order the HTC Wildfire at the Vodafone website and will have to wait until the end of November for the new phone being delivered by Vodafone. The LG GT540 and the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro are in stock at Vodafone stores.

Android smart-phones are becoming hot stuff for the common cell phone user. They are easy to use and offer several online services of Google, they always come with a touch-screen, and – that’s very important for many mobile phone users – they are cheaper than the Apple iPhone. HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson are just the well-known handset manufacturer building Android smart-phones, there are several others such as Acer, Garmin-Asus, General Mobile or Huawei. Which means: People looking for a new Android smart-phone have many options. This overview shows the Android smart-phone available at stores in Germany with the Android OS version running on these phones and the purchase prices buyers should expect currently.

Small but nice – that’s my impression after having tested the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini of the Xperia multi-media smartphone series. Obviously, the small size of the cell phone compels comprises – the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini fits into any pocket but is not suited for all smartphone application. But don’t be fooled: The X10 Mini is a powerful device despite its small size. Read in this review what I like and what I don’t like about the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini.

The X10 of the Xperia series is Sony Ericsson’s debut Android smartphone. The list of features is rather impressive, even though it shows that the Sony Ericsson X10 is no high-flyer: 1 GHz Snapdragon processor by Qualcomm, 8.1-megapixel camera with HD video capture, HSPA and WiFi connectivity, and A-GPS. On the other hand, it runs on Android 1.6 - an older version of the operating system geared towards the easy use of Google services such as Google Search, Google Mail, Google Maps or Google Talk by mobile. This is why Sony Ericsson has put its own user interface User Experience with its Timescape and Mediascape views on top of the Android OS. How older software and up-to-date hardware work together will this review of the Sony Ericsson X10 show.

It’s not the 8.1-megapixel camera, the 1-GHz Snapdragon processor or HSPA and WiFi connectivity that make the Android 1.6 smartphone Sony Ericsson X10 unique – it’s rather the new interface “User Experience (UX)” with its Timescape and Mediascape sections. Watch this video to see how Timescape and Mediascape work on the Sony Ericsson X10.

Apps expand the range of functions of smartphones: They run on the Internet or on the phone and deliver news, weather or status updates of social networking contacts, offer direct access to web pages and online services, open documents and email attachments or help in another way. Such applications can be downloaded from web portals to the mobile for free or at cost. The most well-known app store is the App Store service for the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad which is part of the Apple iTunes Store. Here users can find applications developed with the iPhone Software Developer Kit (SDK). But there are several other app stores by different operators around. The problem with all these different download and mobile device platforms is: They are not fully compatible. In fact, most systems are rather walled gardens with apps especially developed for their mobile systems and with specific download platforms pegged to.

More and more cell phones appear in the market as shrunk-down versions of other mobiles that have been launched earlier. The Nokia N97 Mini is just one example of this, the HTC HD Mini will be another. In a few weeks, Sony Ericsson will also ship the Xperia X10 Mini Pro smartphone to stores in Germany, which is a small version of the Android smartphone Xperia X10. The Xperia X10 Mini Pro runs on Android 1.6 and has a physical slide-out QWERTZ keyboard for heavy texters which makes it well-suited for using Google web services, social networks and messaging functions on the way. The new mini smartphone by Sony Ericsson will be available in Germany for a purchase price of EUR 349.00 without contract.