MWC 2011: Sony Ericsson overview

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo has been called a Vivaz successor but it's a droid all over. The 1GHz (single-core CPU) inside the Neo runs Android 2.3 Gignerbread with Sony Ericsson's customized UI.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo follows the Vivaz design traditions

From the looks of it the XPERIA Neo will be a down-to earth version of the XPERIA Arc. You lose the inwards curved back and ultra slim waistline, but you are probably getting a better price for the exact same feature set.

More Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo hands-on photos

Sony Ericsson plans to launch the XPERIA Neo in a three different colors and luckily all of them were present at the event. There's the smartphone bold red version.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo in red

And here's the more conservative black color.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo in black

Unfortunately the plastic used in all three cases, sleek as it may look at first, is way too prone to fingerprints and smudges. It only took us a minute with each of the color versions to go from perfectly clean to greasy mess.

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo packs an 8MP Exmor R camera, which can record HD video.

More Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo hands-on photos

XPERIA Neo second encounter

With the XPERIA Neo, Sony Ericsson have concentrated on improving the UI, polishing the multimedia apps (gallery, music and video players). Sony Ericsson also did a lot of work on the overall performance of the device.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo hands-on photos

The Neo runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Sony Ericsson's latest User Experience Platform (or UXP). The new UXP has new features that improve the usability - simplified menu with handy sorting options, pinning a folder to the bottom of the screen is space efficient and the Overview mode (like we saw in the XPERIA Arc) is a great way to navigate your homescreens.

Here's a demo of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo, which demonstrates some of the new features: