Sony Ericsson Idou

PREVIEW

Sony Ericsson has done it again and made itself the talk of Mobile World Congress 2009 with a touchscreen handset.

But rather than aiming at the business crowd as the Xperia X1 did in 2008, it has its eyes on the mobile entertainment scene currently catered for by Apple’s iPhone.

?XMB on board?
The Idou (pronounced as if you’re consenting to marry someone) rocks a 3.5in touchscreen and will have an XMB menu system (like the one seen on the PS3), which sounds like a great combination to us.

Slightly more mysterious is the operating system that will sit under this. We know it will be the new, open source version of Series 60, from Symbian’s Alliance project, though official details on this are thin on the ground. There should at least be thousands of apps to download, a la the iPhone.

Compact replacement?
What’s more certain is that it’ll be the world’s first 12MP camphone. It’ll come with Xenon flash, though there’s disappointingly no news of optical zoom nor a 3.5mm headphone jack (as seen on the new W995).

?Though we’d rather see camphones improve their picture-taking chops rather than cram yet more megapixels onto the sensor, we’re optimistic about the Idou’s snapping potential given the C905’s victory in our recent camphones test.

?Thankfully we won’t have to wait too long for the Idou as it’s due second half of 2009 – hopefully with a less ridiculous moniker.

Specification

• Wi-Fi

  Yes

• Dimensions

  111x54x15mm

• Bluetooth

  Yes

• Main camera resolution

  12MP

• Screen size

  3.5in

• Xenon flash

  Yes

• Screen resolution

  360x640

• Quad band

  Yes