Facebook inside Xperia Actually Kind of Cool

You may already know that we’ve taken a look at Sony Ericsson’s newest effort: XPERIA mini and XPERIA mini pro, both essentially the same device with the push-out keyboard sitting below the pro. Both of these devices feature what Facebook and Sony Ericsson are calling “Facebook inside Xperia,” an integration of the social networking site into the basic everyday functions of the phone. Turns out it’s pretty neat!

Upon closer inspection of this Facebook inside Xperia situation, it turns out that it’s not a completely separate app, but stays integrated with Facebook for Android. What this does is allow you to only have a single login instead of logging in once for every different Facebook app you’ve got running, then it plays out as extended functionality through Gingerbread. The places you’ll see it work right away are in your photo gallery and in your music app.

In your photo gallery, you’ll now be able to view not only the photos you’ve got on your device, but the galleries pulled down from your Facebook profile too, plus photos you’re tagged in. What more could you want? How about the ability to add photos to albums you’ve already created? Then there’s the music app – now with a Like button that allows you to share the name of the track you’re listening to your Facebook wall.

In addition, there’s also contacts sync (not entirely new) and calendar sync, contacts now having tabbed views of their likes, interests, recent wall activity, and photos / videos. Finally, there’s a media discovery app that pulls content in from recently shared items shared on your friends’ Facebook walls, complete with comments! All of this will also soon be available (in a few weeks, says Sony Ericsson) for XPERIA Arc and XPERIA Play as well – Facebook engulfs us all!