Sony Ericsson warned the world just over a fortnight ago that things wouldn't be too rosy when it came time to announce Q2 results, and rosy things are not. Even though the handset maker was hoping and praying to break even at the end of the quarter, net profits ended up falling through the floor to the tune of 97%. As predicted, weak sales of mid-to-high-end mobiles were blamed for the bulk of the bad news, and it did affirm that conditions would remain rough for the rest of the year. Granted, the looming launch of the Xperia X1 should help matters a bit, but without a new stable of low-end cellies to send to emerging markets, it'll be a long road back to the top. Unfortunately, SE's sagging position in the market has left it slashing 2,000 jobs across the globe, though it didn't say exactly where the cuts would be made. It's okay SE, there's only one place to go when you're laying on the bottom... or something like that.

[Image courtesy of Flickr]

Read - Sony Ericsson's Q2 earnings
Read - Sony Ericsson plans job cuts

Like virtually all other Sony Ericsson hardware (sorry, Sony Ericsson, but it's true), the Remi is getting a full pictorial ahead of a presumed official announcement in the coming weeks or months. Pegged as a spiritual successor to the wildly popular T610 by fans, Remi (whose real model number hasn't been deduced yet) should end up essentially being a W890 in slightly tamer clothing. Thin, fast, and pretty -- sounds about right for a T610 descendent, assuming the boys and girls in London can deliver.

[Via Sony Ericsson Blog]

One of Sony Ericsson's more creative designs of recent memory, the W350 might be a whole lot closer to grubby American paws than many might have expected. Up for auction on eBay at the moment is a "lightly used" W350a variant in white featuring a silver highlight on the music controls; that in itself isn't particularly interesting, until you take a gander at the display and see a nice little AT&T logo silkscreened on the bezel. The listing's page doesn't give any clue as to when non-rich people might be able to get a subsidized W350 from the AT&T store in their neck of the woods, other than to state the obvious point that the "phone has not been released in the US yet, and you will not find this beautiful color anywhere else." So if you're really bent out of shape about taking delivery of this thing, you might want to dive in on the auction -- you never know if it's going to go the way of AT&T's ill-fated K850.

[Thanks, Bernard]

If you were thinking to yourself, "gee whiz, if only Sony Ericsson had made a Walkman version of the S302," well, your life is now complete. The sporty, hipper version of the S302 Snapshot is predictably hot-rodded up, though the changes seem to be strictly visual -- from a guts perspective, the W302 (codenamed "Feng," it seems) should be a dead ringer for its recently announced cousin. Sony Ericsson Blog claims we can expect to see it announced on July 22 alongside the W595 and W902, with a release in October.

Yes, it could be a knockoff or a rendering -- but given Sony Ericsson's storied history of being unable to keep unreleased phones on the down-low, we have every reason to believe we're looking at a real phone here. Besides some interesting texture on the case, we can see some Walkman branding on the bottom and the lower edge of the keypad, so it looks like we're dealing with a candybar; rumor has it there's a 2.4-inch screen up there somewhere, too. The rest, though, is pure guesswork at this point. Want more? Well, we're only half joking when we say we bet this'll be on eBay by next week, so line up that cash flow now just in case.

[Via SEfanatics]

The W580 is one of Sony Ericsson's more popular handsets for three very simple reasons: it's cheap, it's reasonably sharp-looking, and it knows its way around a playlist. Problem is, it's getting a little long in the tooth -- and that might just be where this rumored W595 (codenamed "Linda") comes into play. The spied slider claims a 3.2 megapixel camera, FM radio, stereo speakers, shake control (for controlling the media player with a few well-executed flicks of the wrist), and a svelte 14mm shell. Give us North American 3, Sony Ericsson, and we're sold.

[Via Sony Ericsson Blog]

It looks like Sony Ericsson's finally getting around to producing an ultra-thin candybar that isn't all dolled up in Walkman branding, which should be music to the ears of folks who hate music of all kinds (you know who you are). We jest -- obviously, the Walkman image isn't for everyone, and modern non-Walkman Sony Ericssons typically have plenty of prowess for busting out the tunes -- so we're actually seeing people from all walks of life being able to get into this so-called "Remi". The rumored handset looks plenty real in these shots posted over on se-nse, and the specs sound legit, too: HSDPA, a 3.2 megapixel cam, and a body measuring somewhere in the neighborhood of 10mm thick -- all attributes borrowed from its W890 cousin. Pictured next to the Remi on the right is the legendary T610, a phone that holds a very special place in the hearts of they Sony Ericsson faithful; with its aluminum shell and two-tone face, it's pretty obvious that the Remi is trying to tastefully evoke the T610's cues, so let's just hope there's some bite behind the bark when it launches.

Although Sony Ericsson just churned out a rather impressive array of new handsets this month, it seems the outfit is still having trouble securing record-setting profits. Truthfully, it's struggling to break even, as evidenced by the second profit warning of 2008 that was issued last week. SE is pinpointing "disappointing European sales of its mid- and high-end mobile phones" as the reason it will likely not see a profit in Q2, and some analysts are suggesting that shipment delays and a dearth of low-end handsets also carry a share of the blame. 'Course, the hotly-anticipated Xperia X1 could certainly make for a lovely Q3, but only time will tell if enough folks shell out for it to make a difference.

Like a dagger through Motorola's heart, we're sure, Sony Ericsson's collaboration with tennis superstar Maria Sharapova is starting to pay dividends with the Maria Sharapova Design Collection of custom phone accessories. Launching in the third quarter, wares include the "Courtside Case," Excercise Case, Travel Wallet, and "Party Bag" -- at least three of which we weren't aware we needed -- but the custom branding should push at least a few of these out the door. One word of caution, though: Miss Sharapova assures us in the press materials that "I am looking forward to using the collection with my Sony Ericsson T303," and if her phone of choice is seriously an EDGE-less slider with a 160 x 128 display, we're forced to cast her good taste into serious doubt.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Look, we've heard our fair share of PSP phone rumors, and there's really no reason to trust this one any further than your average baseless musings, but if Marketing Week's "sources in Japan and Korea" can be trusted, Sony's PSP phone could be hitting shelves as soon as Christmas 2009. What does seem clear to these shady sources is that Sony won't be forking over the PlayStation branding to its Sony Ericsson partnership, and instead will build its PSP phone all by its lonesome. Other "details" from "analysts" are slightly less legit-sounding, with some stating it would be "relatively easy" to work phone features into the PSP since it already includes WiFi. Um, ok. Still, reasonable or not, this is clearly a rumor that will never die -- until Sony builds the dang thing, in which case we can start talking up a sequel.

[Thanks, Alex]

Come on, now, Sony Ericsson, you know what happens when you make too many colors of the same damn phone. The W580i was a serviceable midrange Walkman handset in its heyday, but without 3G, it's pretty hard to justify the $99 after contract and rebate that AT&T is asking for the thing in its latest shade -- a nice, shiny red. Ironically, the 3G-equipped Z750a is a solid $50 less, so yeah, we're really not seeing where AT&T is going with this. To be fair, $99 is the same price being asked for every color of the W580i (and there are many at this point), but shouldn't they be using this golden opportunity to lower prices across the board to somewhere within the realm of reason and logic?

[Via phoneArena]

So here's the scene. We're at the Digital Experience show, trying to get our hands on a powered-up Sony Xperia X1. Sure, we found a unit that wasn't powered up, but that does you -- and us -- no good. Sony told us to come back in 15 minutes, so we grabbed some press kits, made a round of booths, and came back.

Sure enough, when we came back the X1 was powered up, but the nice booth lady tried to tell us that things weren't working just right and the unit was stuck on the config screen. After some jiggering, we determined the little X1 was just stuck on the touch screen calibration, and we were cruising through menus within minutes. It's pretty clear this unit wasn't ready for primetime -- you'll even see some HTC test apps in the below gallery -- but we were impressed by the screen's resolution and brightness. Windows Mobile 6.1 showed it face often in the UI, but the phone app and general utilities were looking good.

Overall, the X1 is a pleasure to behold -- it's one sexy device. That said, we'll have to wait how Sony Ericsson's user interface shapes up and just look at the pretty pictures in the gallery until mid-September.

You can find the gallery over here at Engadget Classic.

We got our grubby mitts all over the latest and greatest from Sony Ericsson, including that new C905 8 megapixel monstrosity, and, of course, the Xperia X1. The C905 is certainly no slouch in the camera department, with that for-serious Xenon flash and dedicated camera keys, but you'll pay for it in thickness -- the C905 is a good deal thicker than its Walkman counterparts, though that does leave room for a nicely formed slide-out keypad. The C905 is capable of geotagging pictures, but can't upload on the fly to photo services just yet like Nokia's new phones, though such capability is in the works. While the C905 seems finely honed for a specific purpose, the Z780 flip phone seems much more plain jane in comparison, with a rather large size despite its "slim proportions" and a lack of detailing in styling to make it really pop. But, of course, who needs all that featurephone nonsense when you've got the X1 staring 'em all down? We got to twiddle around with an out-of-battery Xperia for a minute, and it's certainly one of the thickest and heaviest phones headed for the market in the near future -- though the upside of that is some glorious build quality, an immense WVGA screen and an expansive, highly touchable keyboard. SE certainly does seem to have something for everybody, but with Moto apparently working on an 8 megapixel camera of its own, and touchscreen rivals to the X1 hogging all the spotlight, SE's isn't looking at an easy road to bumping back that profitability. Oh, and in case you were interested, the gallery below also includes the W760 sporting a black finish, a pink-ish red-ish W580 and the wonderfully tiny W350i.

Press / in the wild shots still not enough for you? Fret not, friends, as CNET had a chance to spend a few quality minutes with Sony Ericsson's F305 slider and write up a few paragraphs of impressions. For starters, they seemed to prefer the white motif versus the black, and while a trio of games will reportedly be available to take advantage of the Motion Gaming controls, only a fishing title was on tap for demoing. It was noted that the phone required "vigorous shakes" in order to get the job done, and unfortunately, critics were less than enthused by how the game actually looked. Nevertheless, it's probably worth a visit to see if SE's next shaker has the chops to earn a spot in your handset collection.