Last week Sony Ericsson held a press event at which a slew of new handsets were unveiled.  The C905 Cyber-Shot cameraphone was there as expected, but the "Paris" smartphone was not.  This no-show led to much speculation around the blogosphere that the UIQ sliderphone wasn't just delayed, but actually had been cancelled outright.

But now a photo of Paris in a new color scheme - black and orange - has surfaced over on Just Another Mobile Phone Blog.  So what gives?  It's possible that this is a photo of a prototype built before SE decided to scrap the project, and it's possible that SE's going forward with Paris and just wasn't ready to announce the handset last week.  Many a blog post, comment, and forum entry decried Paris' rumored specs as not being robust enough for a modern smartphone, so it could well be that SE brass sent the device back to its engineering labs for a processor transplant before deeming it ready for the marketing folk.