CIO East Africa - Business Technology Leadership

As Safaricom continues with the countrywide roll out of its 3G network, Kenyans will  from today have a wider range of quality smartphones to choose from, thanks to  Sony Ericsson's relaunch in the country. A range of Sony Ericsson phones from mid-end phones all the way to smartphones will now be available countrywide courtesy of Krishna International .

At an event held today at The Tribe Hotel in Nairobi's Village Market, Sony Ericsson's Regional General Manager for Market unit,  Jorgen Berg unveiled a number of Xperia Android smartphones .“The Xperia™ X10 mini and Xperia™ X10 mini pro are clever mobile phones which characterize communication entertainment”, said Jorgen Berg, “We have pushed the boundaries to deliver two compact and smart handsets. Not only are they mini, but they are filled with great features consumers desire; like a touch screen, entertainment and content. For those who want a one-handed experience the Xperia™ X10 mini offers ultimate control and the keyboard of Xperia™ X10 mini pro allows for quick and powerful messaging or mailing with the QWERTY slider keypad.”

The Xperia X10 features Android 1.6 running on a 1 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.  The phone also comes packed with an 8.1 megapixel camera capable of video recording , geo tagging and face detection.  Also packaged in the phone is Wi-Fi capability, 3.5 mm headphone , 3D games, jack and a trial version of Wisepilot maps which may not be available here. The X10 also features a 4 inch 65K colour TFT WVGA 480 by 540 pixel capacitative touch screen. Unique to the Xperia are Sony Ericsson Timescape, Mediascape and the Infinity button.

Timescape aggregates all your communication, or those of your contacts in one place arranged in tiles, including social media. This means that you can view all your SMS, MMS, Facebook posts and Twitter messages in one window. This can be then narrowed down to messages from one channel such as SMS. The same applies to all your contacts where messages you have exchanged inclusive of Facebook posts and tweets will be grouped in one Timescape window.

Mediascape groups all your media in one window. Photos, videos and music appear in their own window, which is divided into two to display local content in the top half and web content in the bottom half. The media is displayed in rows of thumbnails which can be scrolled across to display more media. Mediascape can also display content on the traditional list format including music grouped  by artists or albums .

The infinity button appears on all items inclusive of contacts and multimedia and allows you to search  content or all history related to the item you are viewing, locally and on the web. 

Also launched were slimmed down versions of the X10 in the form of X10 Mini and the X10 Mini Pro. Both the Mini and the mini Pro carry smaller battery capacity and come with a 5 Megapixel camera compared to the X10. They also come in a reduced form size falling short of the X10's height by about 3 cm. The main difference between the X10 Mini and the X10 Mini Pro is that the Pro features a QWERTY keybaord.

All the above phones will be available from Safaricom shops countrywide and in other outlets, distributed by Krishna International.

Speaking during the launch, Venkata Dinesh, Managing Director of Krishna International Ltd said: “We are proud to have partnered with Safaricom for this exclusive launch and as we move forward our emphasis will be on quality sales and service support to all our customers.With the growing importance of the East African region, we are committed to reinforcement of the Sony Ericsson brand and grow its portfolio.”

Safaricom Head of Retail, Morris Maina said: “The quest for increased data penetration and usage in Kenya has always been constrained by lack of breadth when it comes to data-enabled devices in the market. As Safaricom, we are actively working with our partners to narrow this divide and put data-enabled devices in the hands of as many customers as possible while improving the utility of devices on our network. Our partnership with Sony Ericsson snugly fits into this active strategy.”