The Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini (pictured above) and Mini Pro have been a good success since they launched last year. Now the successors to both mobiles have been confirmed by Sony Ericsson.

The new versions still have the same compact form which made them so popular with people around the world but now have a vastly improved specification. The only difference between the two mobiles is the addition of a sliding QWERTY keyboard in the Pro version (pictured below), which also slightly increases the size of the device.

The first noticeable improvement is the operating system with the two mobiles now running on Android 2.3, which is the latest version of Google's operating system. The 3 inch touch-screen has also been improved because it now features Mobile Bravia technology which improves the screens visibility and quality. Additionally, it is now scratch resistant and supports true multi-touch !

The Xperia Mini is now the world's smallest mobile to support HD video recording thanks to it's 5 mega-pixel camera. The processor has been vastly upgraded to a 1 GHz snapdragon processor which should give the devices that extra-boost needed for multi-tasking and Android 2.3.

Both the Xperia Mini and Mini Pro will be made available in the third quarter of 2011.