When it was announced many months ago, the Sony Xperia X1 looked like Windows Mobile’s answer to the Apple iPhone, with its cool-looking animated custom screens and icons. What got everyone to sit up and listen was a promotional video that Sony Ericsson uploaded online. The video showed an incredibly fancy interface, with icons that zoom in and out and flip around — in essence, the promise of a flashy interface over the normally staid Windows Mobile menus. So now that it’s here, does it fulfil Sony Ericsson’s promise of a better smartphone?
Before we get to the nitty-gritty, we will take a look at just what you expected to get after paying for the Xperia X1.
Apart from the handset itself, you get a charger, a pair of headphones with built-in microphone and, of course, the usual plethora of manuals, setup CD and quick start guides.
The X1 charges via its USB miniport and the bundled sync cable actually plugs into the AC adaptor to charge the device. Of course, you can also charge when the X1 is synchronising with the PC so you don’t really need to plug the device into the AC adaptor if you sync with your PC a few times a day and keep the power topped up.
The X1 itself feels quite good in the hands — it’s not the thinnest nor smallest smartphone around, but it’s narrow enough that it fits in the hand nicely.
On the front, the phone has the usual Windows Mobile buttons arranged in a sort of double-X pattern on either side of the directional pad.
Here the X1 reveals the first of its hidden secrets — while the directional pad functions as you would expect, where you navigate by pressing the up, down, left, right and centre buttons, it actually functions like a notebook’s touchpad as well, allowing you to scroll by just running your finger along the surface.
While it is pretty cool to do this, there’s really not much difference between using this method to scroll compared with using the directional pad.
Turn on the X1 and you’ll be presented with a gorgeous screen — the display is a really high-resolution 800 x 480pixel screen, one of the highest currently available on any smartphone. Thanks to its high-resolution and relatively small size, the screen looks silky smooth with pixels that are really invisible to the naked eye — I can’t stress just how nice the X1’s screen is.
The same can’t be said for the X1’s slide out keyboard, as the keys on the Qwerty keyboard are just too flat and shaped wrong to type with the ball of your thumb or with the fingernail without hitting the keys next to the one you want.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again the Windows Mobile interface seriously needs a makeover. Like HTC’s Touch series, the Xperia X1 has a go at changing the staid Windows Mobile menus with its own flashier interface.
For a start, the X1 mimics the iPhone’s “flick-to-scroll” feature and allows you to scroll through the entire interface by just flicking your finger on the screen. On top of that, Sony Ericsson has included a few applications of its own including a replacement Today screen with a large analogue clock on the front and shortcuts to the messaging application and wireless settings.
There’s also a flashy X Panel application that gives you a list of animated shortcuts to a number of applications, including the custom Xperia Today screen, the built-in radio and the multimedia player, amongst others. However, while it certainly looks cool, the X Panel is of limited practical use — for one thing, it only allows you to add shortcuts to only a limited number of applications instead of letting you add a shortcut to any program you want. For another, all the flashy animation (giving you either a tiled view or a an animated fan view) slows down the machine and doesn’t actually make accessing your programs any faster.
Beyond that, the X1 doesn’t go far enough to get you away from the Windows Mobile interface and you will still have to resort to the clunky Windows Mobile messaging application for all your e-mail and SMS/MMS needs.
While it’s not bad, for example Windows Mobile 6.1 adds a threaded SMS interface, it still requires a lot of navigating in menus to send a message.
The software bundle that comes flashed into the ROM include Google Maps that works together with the built-in GPS in the X1 and best of all, the very latest Opera 9.5 browser for Windows Mobile. Opera 9.5 is a very solid browser and much better, smoother and faster than Internet Explorer Mobile, allowing you to view webpages and zoom in and out of columns much like Safari does on the iPhone.
Oh yes, while Office Mobile is common in all Windows Mobile smartphones now, the version that comes bundled with Windows Mobile 6.1 allows you to open and save documents in Microsoft’s latest Office 2007.
As for games, Sony Ericsson has added a couple on top of the Windows Mobile’s default Bubble Breaker and Solitaire, namely Astraware’s Sudokuand Bejeweled 2 — nice, but strangely the games only work in landscape mode.
The 3.2-megapixel digital camera with autofocus produces pretty good photos especially when shooting in bright daylight.
Having the Sony brand name attached to this phone means that you get a music and media player that looks better than plain old Windows Media Player Mobile as well as a nice radio tuner application that works with the built-in FM tuner.
One thing I really liked is that the X1 comes with a regular 3.5mm stereo jack input so you can use third party earphones if you so desire, although the supplied earphones were good enough for me and comes with a built-in microphone for answering calls.
Battery life on the Xperia X1 is just average — you can get about a day and a half if you don’t use WiFi at all. If you do a little surfing via WiFi for an hour or two, however, expect to have to charge the X1 at the end of the day.
We also experienced a few problems with our review unit, as the X1 would crash a few times during the day, and the problems persisted even after we hard reset the device and started from scratch. To be fair, a little sticker on the side of the X1’s packaging indicated that the device is a “trial unit /prototype” so perhaps the stability problems were due to firmware that’s not fully baked yet.
Hopefully this will be fixed in the retail version.
In terms of size and shape, the Xperia X1 is really not bad at all.
Unfortunately, the thing that really lets down the X1 seems to be the Windows Mobile operating system itself, as Sony Ericsson just doesn’t go far enough with its customisations to minimise the problems with the operating system.
My verdict? The hardware is nice, but for the price, Sony Ericsson really needs to look at where HTC is now with its latest Touch handhelds and really bring the X1 up to speed both in terms of performance and cost.
Pros: Nice design; fits well in the hand; beautiful high-resolution screen.
Cons: Interface still needs work; stability issues; thumb keyboard too flat and closely spaced.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 Specifications :
Operating System: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Camera: 3.2-megapixels with autofocus
Display: 3in (800 x 480pixels)
Messaging: MMS, SMS, e-mail, instant messaging
Connectivity: WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, HSDPA
Phone memory: 512MB ROM (400MB available for storage), 256MB RAM
Expansion slot: MicroSD
Battery type: Li-ion 1500mAh
Standby/talk time: 833/10 hours
Other features: FM radio, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office Mobile, GPS, Java applications
Weight: 145g
Dimensions (w x d x h):11.0 x 5.3 x 1.7cm
Popularity: 5% [?]
Technorati Tags: Sony Xperia X1, Sony Ericsson
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