Say hello to Beibei

Sony Ericsson is never one to be particularly worried about new phones popping up on the internet before official release. A video here, a spy pic there? “Pah!” cry the marketing team before turning their phones sideways to gaze in awe at their accelerometers.

The SE Beibei has been one of those handsets that seems to be almost always appearing, but never seems to pop up on the shelves.

But now, thanks to those chaps at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), it has been revealed SE will unveil the Beibei soon, with some interesting features and even more interesting buttons.

3G, GPS, touchscreen and UIQ? Yes please.

No, press the red one!

As if handsets weren’t already getting cluttered enough thanks to the urge from manufacturers to make them small enough to inhale, the Beibei wants to pack in four more next to the directional scroller.

We get some more navigatorial buttons, a menu, messaging and bizarre sun button (answers on a postcard for what that does) and the standard clear/answer/terminate keys we all love.

The phone itself looks quite high end for a mid-range candy bar, toting 3G, GSM quadband and EDGE for worldwide usage.

A little bit of GPS and WiFi says the device will be ubiquitously connected, and the touchscreen will give some interesting multimedia options.

The UIQ interface hasn’t been confirmed, but given the amount of applications that can be developed with it, the Beibei could become one of SE’s flagship models.

Shame we don’t know when it’s coming then, really.

Check out the FCC's images of the device here.