14 DAY TRIAL // Sony Ericsson is one of the companies that was expected to launch a Windows Phone-powered mobile phone last year, but which announced that it would not come to the market with such a handset in the near future.
Apparently, the company does not feel that the Windows Phone platform has proven as of yet, and decided to hold back from releasing a mobile phone based on it until it does so.
However, we did have the chance to see a purported Windows Phone 7 prototype from Sony Ericssson last year, codenamed Julie, and the same device made another appearance recently.
Sony Ericsson was very close to releasing a Windows Phone 7 smartphone in October last year rumor has it. Microsoft announced at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, that such a device would arrive last fall, but things turned out otherwise.
The Sony Ericsson Julie that emerged now seems to be a slightly different device than the model that was leaked last year.
The phone sports a large touchscreen display, complemented by a side sliding QWERTY keyboard, which is white in the available leaked photos.
Moreover, the mobile phone is rumored to come to the market with 16GB of internal memory, which does not sound too bad, one should agree.
However, no official info on the unannounced device emerged for the time being, and chances are that it would turn out to be a completely different handset when made available on shelves, provided that it would indeed be released on the market.
With Windows Phone Mango, Microsoft promises a wide range of enhancements that will make the mobile OS far more appealing that it was before, and Sony Ericsson might reconsider its position towards releasing handsets running under it.
If so, Julie could very well be one of the first Windows Phones that Sony Ericsson would bring to the market, though we should wait for an official announcement on it to emerge before planning a purchase.
