There’s been quite a few price drops on Sony Ericsson handsets lately and here’s another one that’s just come through. While this handset isn’t new, it is refurbished and sold by a trustable UK online retailer. Mobiles.co.uk state that the refurbished handsets are units that have been returned under their 7 day returns policy and have been fully tested and inspected and also come with a full 12 month warranty.

Mobiles are selling refurbished Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini’s for £49.90 on O2, Vodafone and Orange. A £10 top up is required however, taking the overall price for £59.90 with free delivery. Which ever network you choose though, the phone will be unlocked.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini may be last year’s phone but, it still remains a good choice for those looking for a budget range Android phone. The Xperia X10 Mini usually retails for £119 through O2 and other retailers but, a bargain has been spotted on Argos’ outlet store on eBay.

They are currently selling Xperia X10 Mini’s for just £79.99 with £3.99 postage. In comparison, Argos are selling sim free X10 Mini’s for £234.99. There are currently more than 10 available through the Argos eBay outlet store with 29 sold. How many more than 10 are available though is unknown so if this deal appears, you’d best be quick. They previously had Xperia X8 handsets on O2 for a reasonable £69.99, compared to the usual £99.99 price point but, quickly sold out and only had 16 units in stock.

When Sony Ericsson announced that they had changed their plans for the Xperia X10 and that it would not be stuck on Android 2.1 but, would instead be upgraded to Android 2.3 during the end of Q2/start of Q3, this pleased many customers. However it still left some of Sony Ericsson’s customers rather angry, as while this was great news for owners of the Xperia X10, it was also announced that the X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro and Xperia X8 were not part of these plans and would remain on Android 2.1 as previously stated.

Big things are about to happen this year for Sony Ericsson as promised during the Consumer Electronics show (CES) 2011.  A video released by Markus Hansson, currently employed by Sony Ericsson, on YouTube announced the company’s integration of Ant+ technology on their smartphone models. This is going to be the first time for smartphones to be integrated with Ant+.

To understand what Ant+ is we must first know what ANT is. ANT is a wireless sensor network that enables wireless devices to communicate with each other. Ant+ basically adds more function to ANT so that it is easier to manage the transfer and collection of data from various devices. Areas that benefit from this are sports, home health and wellness.

Now that we have entered the year 2011 what do you think was the best budget phone for 2010? There are many contenders for this category such as the phones from Nokia, Samsung and LG. What we are looking for is a phone that has tons of useful features and comes with a price tag that won’t break our piggy banks.

Here are the qualities we considered the phone must have to be declared the Budget Phone of the Year for 2010.

-          Affordable

-          Can work on almost all networks

-          Capacitive touchscreen

-          Excellent connectivity options ( Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, miniUSB)

-          Excellent multimedia options (FM radio, music player, camera with flash)

-          Running on Android OS