14 DAY TRIAL // There have been many rumors about the next Sony Ericsson phones, especially regarding P5i, which seems to have impressive specifications and should be released somewhere in the second half of 2008. While we haven't heard anything about the P5i lately, some fresh leaked details revealed that, on 10 January 2008, the Swedish-Japanese joint venture filed a patent application to trademark the name "Xperia" for what appears to be a new mobile phone or even a whole new range of phones (like the Cybershot or the Walkman series).
The patent application, which can be viewed here, describes that the name Xperia relates to a device or a range of devices that feature the "capacity to function in any number of extra ways beyond just as a phone". Well, this is nothing new, as most of the recent high-end handsets are far from being just mobile phones. But those "extra ways" that are mentioned are quite impressive, covering about everything one would want from a mobile device: camera, instant messaging, multimedia messaging, music, video, e-mail and Internet, business functionality, satellite navigation, remote controlling, mobile printing, gaming, walkie-talkie functionality and so on - the list is quite long. Furthermore, besides being related to one or more devices, the Xperia trademark also covers "telecommunications services in the nature of transmission of sound, picture, image, video and data signals" and "a website that enables transmission of sound, picture, graphic, image, and video signals to the website, where the signals may be edited and then transmitted to computers and cellular or mobile phones." Sounds like Sony Ericsson prepares something big, doesn't it?
If Xperia is indeed a new SE phone, it will be a unique naming, since the company doesn't use "real" words in its phones' names. Some websites claim that Xperia is the next Sony Ericsson P5i, but they really should not, since the name could very well not be related to the P-series. So, until official details from Sony Ericsson appear, we'll feel like the simple men of the Dark Ages who believed the moon is a living creature. We're a bit luckier though, as we don't have to wait centuries to find the truth.