Sony Ericsson deep-sixes Paris and G702?
Yeah, the just-announced C905 plugs a gaping hole in the high end, but Sony Ericsson's in desperate need of as many smartphones as it can get its hands on right now -- and a smartphone is one thing the C905 is not. The flagship P1i isn't getting any younger, neither the G700 nor G900 are inspiring a lot of emotion, and the M610i (which wasn't particularly fascinating to begin with) was canceled before it ever hit the market. Could the Paris -- or P5, or P10, or whatever it's called -- and the G702 BeiBei have met the same fate? That's what the Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog is claiming, suggesting that intense criticism from sites that got early peeks at the devices let to their untimely demise while leaving the window open for a possible limited release in Asia (not unlike the Motorola MPx, if our memories serve us correctly). The way we see it, Sony Ericsson's just a little too oblivious to be that responsive to the user community (case in point: M2 cards), so we're more keen to chalk it up to technical glitches or a homegrown realization that the devices just weren't what the market needed. By the same token, it seems like they can't afford to throw these efforts out the door altogether; it'd put them hopelessly far behind the competition in the smartphone arena, so hopefully they're just retooling and learning some lessons as they go.
