14 DAY TRIAL // Although the Xperia mini pro has been up for pre-orders in the UK for a month now, customers could only pre-purchase the device via major online retailers.
However, this is about to change as Orange UK has just listed the Android-based device on its “Coming Soon” webpage, which confirms the rumors about its upcoming official release.
According to Orange UK, the smartphone will be available for free on pay monthly plans, but there is no information regarding the phone's exact release date.
It is expected that the Xperia mini pro will be available from other UK carriers as well, including T-Mobile, O2 and Vodafone.
Furthermore, it looks like Orange UK is using a photo of an older Xperia X10 mini pro model, which was launched almost a year ago, instead of the upcoming Xperia mini pro.
Even though the names are almost similar, they are quite different in terms of hardware, as well as design.
Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro has a compact slide-out form factor and comes with a full QWERTY keyboard.
The smartphone is equipped with a single core 1 Ghz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon processor, complemented by an Adreno 205 GPU (graphics processing unit).
According to the manufacturer, the smartphone integrates one of the best mobile display technology developed by Sony and is powered by Google's Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform.
The phone comes with a 3-inch LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors support and 320 x 480 pixels resolution, which is based on Sony's BRAVIA engine technology.
In addition, the phone provides users with full support for HD video recording thanks to the 5-megapixel main camera with LED flash, autofocus, image stabilization, as well as smile and face detection.
The Xperia mini pro sports a secondary VGA front-facing camera for video calls and support for HSDPA (7.2Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76Mbps).
The phone's 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery should provide users with up to 330 hours of standby time or up to 6 hours of talk time.