Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray review

We guess the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray isn’t called the Xperia Arc Mini simply because the Swedish-Japanese phone giant already has several other Android smartphones dubbed “Mini”. Otherwise, this is exactly what you’re getting. Is that a good thing? Let’s find out.

Any way you slice it, for its price, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray is a remarkable device. The 3.3-inch screen size makes it something of a sequel to the popular Xperia X8 phone, but it takes its design cues from the far sexier, and far more expensive Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. It doesn’t curve inwards like its elder brother, but it’s skinny at 9.4mm, and unbelievably light at just 100g. It genuinely looks like a regular smartphone sliced in half.

Along the top of the device, you’ll find a 3.5mm audio jack and easy to push lock button, while the left and right sides house a USB charging port and volume rocker respectively. The physical buttons below the screen meanwhile aren’t backlit sadly (and there’s no search button, as on some Android phones), but the tactile Home button is surrounded by a glowing rim which changes colour gradually, and makes it easier to see in the dark.

But these are minor niggles on a slick touchscreen smartphone. If there’s a problem, it might be that it’s too narrow. Sony Ericsson is one of the few Android phone peddlers to use the 854×480 WVGA resolution rather than 800×480. It leads to a sharper picture, but it also makes it surprisingly long, and tricky to type on with thumbs. But more on that shortly.

As you can imagine, stuffing so many pixels on to such a small screen gives incredible clarity, and leaves text, websites and images crisply seared on to your retinas. The LCD panel looks lush and bright (Sony Ericsson has had some problems in this respect recently), with reasonable viewing angles, and the Mobile Bravia Engine seen on the Xperia Arc and Neo kicks in on videos to improve picture once again.

Sure, Samsung’s very finest AMOLED screen phones outperform it, but to put it bluntly, no other mid-range phone offers nearly such a lovely viewing experience. Do bear in mind though that 3.3-inches is small: some rivals offer a larger, and thus easier typing experience, which may be the deal breaker.

Android 2.3.3 “Gingerbread” still isn’t quite as easy to use as iOS on the iPhone, but it’s slowly getting there, and in the meantime there sure are lots of Android apps to make up for it. Sony Ericsson’s custom launcher also helps make it much simpler to make your way around: you can stick whatever apps you like in the dock at the bottom of the screen, while the company’s “Facebook Inside Xperia” syncing service offers some handy options: while its Rolodex of social network updates, Timescape, is still ever so slightly slow and pointless, we love how your Facebook photos are synced to your phone’s gallery and SD card.

In fact, the only inhibitor with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray might be the screen’s size. It’s narrow, and not helping the matter is Sony Ericsson’s portrait 0-9 keyboard – we actually installed another QWERTY keyboard from the Android Market and found we could still type perfectly well on it, although not at the speeds we can on larger phones.

To ship a smartphone without 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS in today’s modern age would be a Hague-worthy crime, and needless to say, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray comes with all three. Running Android as it does, it also allows you to create a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot using its 3G signal at the push of the button – always handy if you need to get online with your laptop or tablet, and the cafe Wi-Fi is MIA.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is hands down the best Android camera phone, and indeed second only to the Nokia N8 when it comes to grabbing images. As you can imagine then, a phone with exactly the same 8.1 megapixel Exmor R sensor js also going to be one compact camera killer, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint, with a rapid fire rate and noise-free shots.

HD 720p recorded smoothly too, although we noticed that focusing wasn’t its forte even a foot away from an object. Other than that, our only issue is the lack of a dedicated camera shutter button on the side of the phone . C’est la vie, we suppose.

Sony Ericsson’s suite of included apps on its Android phones is always a mixed bag, and the same is true of the Xperia Ray. The company’s DLNA media streaming app, Connected Devices, and signature TrackID service work perfectly, while others, such as Friends’ Music & Videos leave us bewildered. What’s the point of a separate app that shows what your friends Like on Facebook, and thus appears on Facebook anyway?

One new addition we’re really pleased to see is Qriocity, Sony’s content streaming service. Ignore the Music Unlimited app (Spotify is far superior), but do check in with the Video app from time: just like iTunes on the iPhone, or HTC Watch on new HTC smartphones, it offers a la carte rentals and purchases of new release movies for a few quid, which could prove a godsend on a long haul flight.

All this is let down however by the inclusion of spamware icons on the menu. UEFA.com and Xperia Hotshots are simply links to download these respective bobbins promotional apps, and it’s franky insulting that Sony Ericsson thinks they’re so useful you shouldn’t be able to delete them (You can’t). It’s a disservice to customers, but in the grand scheme of things, we think many will be able to overlook it.

Corporate spending on promotional gifts rises

“The trend we’re seeing is a shift to promotional gifts instead of corporate gifts to incentivise the staff or advertise. Since budgets are tighter we are having to come up with a more innovative way for them to spend it,” said Damion Stamp, manager of corporate sales at Damas.

Their latest products are the 24 karat gold-plated iPad2, iPhone4 and BlackBerry Bold 9900. The items, limited to 250 per region, attracted a lot of interest yesterday at the Gifts and Premium Exhibition under way in Dubai.

Despite a tightening of purse strings, Stamp says sales have been steadily increasing. From 2008 to 2011 they saw a 30 per cent increase in sales.

Other retailers are reporting steady sales. According to Reza Sahebalfosul, managing director at Mission Media Electronics, which specialises in customised USB products, sales are increasing each year.

“We have three types of USB, jewellery and key chain USBs, rubber USBs and customised USBs. Among corporate clients, customised key chains are the most popular. In the UAE, rubber key chains are popular, however in Oman and other GCC countries, jewellery is the most popular,” said Sahebalfosul.

According to Stamp, customised items remain the most popular.

“Local companies like to buy things related to the UAE such as clocks, gift sets etc,” he said.

Livescribe 'smartpen' useful for students, journalists

The Livescribe Echo "smartpen." It's as if Livescribe and Apple both looked at the old pen-and-pad combination, but completely disagreed on how to take it into the digital age.

Apple put all the smarts into the pad. Livescribe put all the smarts in the pen.

I don't have to tell you which is the better idea ― iPad sales have helped make Apple the most valuable company in the world. Livescribe is tiny.

But the Echo is interesting enough to be worth a look, particularly with some recent software updates. It starts at $100, making it more affordable than the iPad, and it could be a good tool for a student.

The Echo is a fat, cigar-like pen with a small screen near the top. It works as a regular ball-point pen, leaving ink marks on paper. But its reason for being is that it records what you write, and its microphone records what you're hearing at the same time.

It matches up the audio recording with the recorded writing, so that if you tap the pen on something you've already written, it will play back the audio recording, either through its built-in speaker or through headphones. This is useful in almost any situation where you want to record something for future reference, be it a lecture or an interview.

Certainly, you can do the same thing on the iPad, with apps that match up audio and writing. But writing on the iPad isn't easy. Styluses are awkward, and typing on the screen is not much better. You can use a PC instead ― Microsoft's excellent OneNote application records audio and typing ― but you need to sit down to use a PC, and their microphones can be iffy.

So, the Echo is still the best tool for note-taking, particularly when you're standing or when hammering away at a PC would seem rude, like in a meeting. I used Livescribe's earlier model, the Pulse, quite a bit in my reporting job, and found the ability to tap back into a conversation to get a verbatim quote useful on several occasions. (In the old days, reporters used to learn shorthand. Today, we scribble furiously.)

The Echo improves on the Pulse by replacing proprietary audio and data ports with a standard headphone and micro-USB port. The USB port also charges the pen.

On the software side, the pen now "talks" better to other programs. For instance, you can mark pages and have them sent in an email as soon as you connect your pen to your computer. You can also send them to Google Docs, for sharing, or to OneNote, to keep your notes tidy. You can also post them on Facebook, perhaps for sharing lecture notes with friends. The writing looks good on screen ― much better than it would look if you simply wrote on a pad, then scanned or photographed it.

There's also an "app store" where you can buy little programs to download to the pen. One lets you measure the distance between two points on the pad, or compute the area of an enclosed space.

The coolest app, by far, is a version of the classic text-based adventure game "Zork." It's a pretty magical experience to write commands like "go north" and see replies like "You are in a clearing …" scroll by on the pen's screen.

Another app lets the pen control your PC's cursor when connected by cable. Hover over the pad, and the cursor moves. Press down, and you register a click, or draw on the screen. It's equivalent to Wacom's PC input tablets, but it doesn't register different degrees of pressure, so it's unlikely to be useful to artists.

Speaking of pads, you do need a special pad to use the Echo. It works only on paper that's preprinted with a pattern of dots that looks like a faint speckling of the page. The dots are picked up by a small camera in the pen and allow it to figure out where it is on a page. You can buy a four-pack of additional notebooks from the site for $19.95 (one small notebook comes with the pen). It's also possible to print your own dotted paper if you have a color laser printer.

The biggest drawback to the pen is its tiny screen. It's not that hard to control this "pen computer" ― you write things, and it responds. But it has a really hard time communicating anything back, since its screen shows less than 25 characters at time, in monochrome. It can also talk to you through its little speaker, but that's not a medium that can convey the complexity of a Web page. Even a phone screen can communicate a lot more.

The other big shortcoming is that the pen needs to be physically connected to your computer to send email, upload notes or control your cursor. A short-range wireless link like Bluetooth would be neat, but might not be fast enough to transfer notes. Wi-Fi would be better, but getting a pen to work well with Wi-Fi would be a big challenge, both in terms of the user interface and battery life.

I like the Livescribe pens and find them useful. But as computers, they are a dead end. They're just not flexible enough to be general-purpose devices, like tablets. An iPad that worked well with pen input would make me drop the Echo. Apple's competitors already have rudimentary pen-based tablets out, and who knows, maybe the iPad 3 will have some surprises for us.

Livescribe 'smartpen' useful for students, journalists

The Livescribe Echo "smartpen." It's as if Livescribe and Apple both looked at the old pen-and-pad combination, but completely disagreed on how to take it into the digital age.

Apple put all the smarts into the pad. Livescribe put all the smarts in the pen.

I don't have to tell you which is the better idea ― iPad sales have helped make Apple the most valuable company in the world. Livescribe is tiny.

But the Echo is interesting enough to be worth a look, particularly with some recent software updates. It starts at $100, making it more affordable than the iPad, and it could be a good tool for a student.

The Echo is a fat, cigar-like pen with a small screen near the top. It works as a regular ball-point pen, leaving ink marks on paper. But its reason for being is that it records what you write, and its microphone records what you're hearing at the same time.

It matches up the audio recording with the recorded writing, so that if you tap the pen on something you've already written, it will play back the audio recording, either through its built-in speaker or through headphones. This is useful in almost any situation where you want to record something for future reference, be it a lecture or an interview.

Certainly, you can do the same thing on the iPad, with apps that match up audio and writing. But writing on the iPad isn't easy. Styluses are awkward, and typing on the screen is not much better. You can use a PC instead ― Microsoft's excellent OneNote application records audio and typing ― but you need to sit down to use a PC, and their microphones can be iffy.

So, the Echo is still the best tool for note-taking, particularly when you're standing or when hammering away at a PC would seem rude, like in a meeting. I used Livescribe's earlier model, the Pulse, quite a bit in my reporting job, and found the ability to tap back into a conversation to get a verbatim quote useful on several occasions. (In the old days, reporters used to learn shorthand. Today, we scribble furiously.)

The Echo improves on the Pulse by replacing proprietary audio and data ports with a standard headphone and micro-USB port. The USB port also charges the pen.

On the software side, the pen now "talks" better to other programs. For instance, you can mark pages and have them sent in an email as soon as you connect your pen to your computer. You can also send them to Google Docs, for sharing, or to OneNote, to keep your notes tidy. You can also post them on Facebook, perhaps for sharing lecture notes with friends. The writing looks good on screen ― much better than it would look if you simply wrote on a pad, then scanned or photographed it.

There's also an "app store" where you can buy little programs to download to the pen. One lets you measure the distance between two points on the pad, or compute the area of an enclosed space.

The coolest app, by far, is a version of the classic text-based adventure game "Zork." It's a pretty magical experience to write commands like "go north" and see replies like "You are in a clearing …" scroll by on the pen's screen.

Another app lets the pen control your PC's cursor when connected by cable. Hover over the pad, and the cursor moves. Press down, and you register a click, or draw on the screen. It's equivalent to Wacom's PC input tablets, but it doesn't register different degrees of pressure, so it's unlikely to be useful to artists.

Speaking of pads, you do need a special pad to use the Echo. It works only on paper that's preprinted with a pattern of dots that looks like a faint speckling of the page. The dots are picked up by a small camera in the pen and allow it to figure out where it is on a page. You can buy a four-pack of additional notebooks from the site for $19.95 (one small notebook comes with the pen). It's also possible to print your own dotted paper if you have a color laser printer.

The biggest drawback to the pen is its tiny screen. It's not that hard to control this "pen computer" ― you write things, and it responds. But it has a really hard time communicating anything back, since its screen shows less than 25 characters at time, in monochrome. It can also talk to you through its little speaker, but that's not a medium that can convey the complexity of a Web page. Even a phone screen can communicate a lot more.

The other big shortcoming is that the pen needs to be physically connected to your computer to send email, upload notes or control your cursor. A short-range wireless link like Bluetooth would be neat, but might not be fast enough to transfer notes. Wi-Fi would be better, but getting a pen to work well with Wi-Fi would be a big challenge, both in terms of the user interface and battery life.

I like the Livescribe pens and find them useful. But as computers, they are a dead end. They're just not flexible enough to be general-purpose devices, like tablets. An iPad that worked well with pen input would make me drop the Echo. Apple's competitors already have rudimentary pen-based tablets out, and who knows, maybe the iPad 3 will have some surprises for us.

Compliment the Patented Cell Drive Product Family

The Cellink ET offers the same power and data management functions as the patented Cell Drive but adapted to a more specific cell phone user. While the Cell Drive is a usb flash drive device which with adapters can accomodate mini/micro usb and iPhone/iPod devices for charge and sync functions, the Cellink ET as a card reader allows the users the freedom to use the appropriate memory capacity to fit their needs as well as allow the use of the micro SD memory card that is included in many of the smartphones on the market.

The micro-usb charge/sync tip on the Cellink ET device allows charging for many micro-usb devices like GPS, Bluetooth, MP3 as well as data/media sync and transfer between computer and mobile phone.
The smaller battery of the Cellink ET allows for a smaller device for easy carry and tether.

Sam Duyka, the owner and US patent holder of the Cell Drive technology advises that the Cellink ET will be priced lower than the 4 GB Cell Drive which makes it an attractive product for the promotional market as well as the casual traveler and student.

Sam stated that he is interested in finding licensing and OEM partners to promote the technology. There is a limited supply of samples for distributors and retailers.