Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro review

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro features a 5MP camera with LED flash that's also capable of recording 720p HD video clips. It's exactly the same as that found on the Xperia Mini, and also includes a front-facing camera for video chatting.

There aren't many fancy options on the phone's camera, with the majority of the scene modes hidden away. The default setting is to have the Xperia Mini Pro automatically detect scenes, which can lead to some interesting choices, especially in low-light conditions.

Pressing the Capturing Mode toggle enables you to choose from nice pre-determined scenes the usual standard modes including Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Sports and Party.

The camera's very quick to use, firing off sequences of shots rapidly without getting bogged down in any way. The physical camera button itself is a nice feature, too, with Sony Ericsson sticking on a nice, soft button that's sensitive enough to shoot without making you jerk the phone around.

Camera output is OK. Photos at the highest 5MP setting come off the phone at 2592 x 1944 resolution, and are certainly bright and colourful. In fact, it's actually a little too trigger happy with the colours, as bright reds and greens really explode and are quite exaggerated.

OUTDOOR: Ask it to capture red, greens and organic detail and you're given a bit of a blotchy end result. Images are colourful enough to get away with when used at small sizes, but the full-size originals look slightly odd

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INDOOR: Under decent light, indoor photos without flash are very nice. The camera's tendency to over-egg the colours seems to calm down a bit away from the glare of the sun

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MACRO: Macro mode is great, doing an excellent job of enabling you to get around six inches away from the subject

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FACE DETECTION: The Xperia Mini Pro also features face detection, which kicks in the portrait mode when it sees something with eyes and a mouth. Again, shots are super-colourful, so it's down to personal choice whether you can live with this or not

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DIGITAL ZOOM #1: There's a very quick and responsive digital zoom available when taking still shots...

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DIGITAL ZOOM #2: ...although you probably won't actually use it, because there's a hefty loss of detail once fully zoomed

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BACKLIGHT: Evening shots often see the camera engage what it calls Backlight mode, which tries to maintain brightness levels without exaggerating the brightness or contrast too much. It creates very nice shots that are indeed pretty representative of actual evening conditions

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FLASH: Just like the Xperia Mini, the Mini Pro has a decent flash. But when it automatically engages Night Portrait mode and lengthens exposure time, getting a non-blurry photo can take some time. You might find it quicker to wait until morning

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FRONT CAMERA: The Xperia Mini Pro also has a whole extra camera. It comes with a front-facing secondary sensor, which takes shots and video at 640 x 480 resolution, so you can enjoy the futuristic pursuit of video chatting

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