Today we took a brief look at Sony Ericsson’s line-up at CES and fondled the Pureness as well as the X2 and Elm. SE also had black and white versions of the X10 available, but you all saw that two months ago when SE held its announcement in NYC — so we won’t really dive into that much. If you’re itching to see more snapshots in our gallery as well as get a brief low-down on each handset, hit the break!
Click on over to our Sony Ericsson at CES 2010 gallery!
One thing we noticed at this year’s CES is that there is a lot of green, or eco-friendly technology and the Elm is definitely in that category. The plastics are recycled, there is an in-phone e-manual, green apps and a power saving charger are packed into a small packaging box for minimal waste. Voice quality on the phone features noise reduction and what SE calls “intelligent voice adaptation.” Don’t let the simple looks fool you, though: the Elm is capable of accessing your Twitter and Facebook accounts along with home screen widgets. The Elm has a 5MP camera with LED flash and face detection, too.
There isn’t much to say about the Hazel because it features almost everything the Elm does — green technology and same social networking integration. Even the camera is the same. The only difference we noticed with our very brief time with the devices is the obvious form factor. The Hazel is a slider phone whereas the Elm is candy bar styled.
The pureness was rather impressive, but only for its novelty. You’re all already aware of the sky-high price for this thing, and unless you’re a fashionista looking for something sleek regardless of price, it’s probably not worth it. The glass see-through screen is pretty interesting, but it’s very difficult to see what’s on it if there are a lot of highlights in the background — if you’re holding it above a white table or in front of a white wall or sunlight, you might not see much. The phone is devoid of visible buttons when it is turned off, but when you turn it on all the numbers and menu keys light up. Neat concept and it’s what Sony Ericsson calls a “holiday from technology” since all you’ll be doing on this thing is talk, text and checking the time.
The XPERIA X2 brings more of the features you might want in a phone these days. As you know, it’s a Windows Mobile 6.5 touch screen device with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. We checked out the panel manager for multiple desktops and it has a nice thing called SlideView for quick access to the applications you use most. SE’s X2 also has Wi-Fi, DLNA media server support and TV out, too, with a 8.1 megapixel camera sensor that has auto/touch focus, just like the iPhone.
