Sony, LG Phone Owners Get 50GB of Free Online Storage

Owners of Sony Ericsson Xperia handsets can get 50GB of free virtual storage thanks to Box.

Do you have an Xperia handset and need a little extra virtual storage to stream your music and movies? You're in luck, as Sony Ericsson and Box have teamed up to provide Xperia owners just that in a special December promotion. There's really nothing to it: download and install Box for Android onto the Xperia phone, open the app to create or sign into an existing account, and that's it: the standard 5 GB virtual locker is expanded to 50 GB... for life.

"With people taking more pictures, listening to more music and watching more video on their Xperia smartphone than ever before, especially over the holidays, we wanted to make sure that they had the ability to upload their content to the cloud and share  it across multiple devices," said Steve Walker, Chief Marketing Officer, Sony Ericsson. "Xperia and Box will provide consumers with access to a massive amount of content on the go putting their smartphone at the very heart of their connected lifestyle."

Box is one of many cloud services that offers free chunks of virtual storage for consumers. Users can share content by linking to individual files or granting access to the entire folder for collaboration. Users also receive real-time updates whenever someone else has viewed, edited or commented on a file. The Box virtual hard drive can be accessed by apps for Android, iOS, BlackBerry smartphones, the PlayBook tablet, HTML5-enabled mobile web browsers, and via an HTML5-enabled desktop browser.

"As more people bring their personal devices in to work to take full advantage of mobile computing, it is essential that they never have to worry about storage limitations," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. "By partnering with Sony Ericsson we are bringing the full power of Box’s cloud content management and sharing to those users."

According to Sony Ericsson, the Box promotion begins today, December 15, and continues until December 31, 2012. It's available to all consumers worldwide who own any Xperia smartphone including and after the Xperia X10.

Box for Android weighs a hefty 5.51 MB once it's installed into the internal storage, and doesn't support App2SD. Box also provides services for the small Business and Enterprise sectors.

UPDATE: Owners of Android-based LG devices can also get 50 GB of free virtual storage until March 31 by installing the Box app. A similar promotion was available for owners of Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, but that offer ended on December 2. Box also provided a similar 50 GB upgrade to consumers who purchased HP's TouchPad tablet.