Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

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By Damian Koh, CNET Asia
Nov 3, 2009

Like many other key mobile phones announced this year, the Xperia X10 had its rampant fair share of leaks. But the most telling was a conceptual user interface video on YouTube that showcased Sony Ericsson's custom software on the Android operating system. The Japanese-Swedish firm finally made things official this afternoon. Its first Android smartphone is the Xperia X10. The handset runs on Android 1.6 (codenamed Donut) and packs a 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

It took a while, but we're seeing more smartphones with 1GHz processors. At last count, there's the Toshiba TG01, HTC HD2, Acer neoTouch on Windows Mobile and the Acer Liquid on Android. While the speed of the chip is important, the overall user experience hinges on other things like memory and user interface as well.

To that, Sony Ericsson is introducing the Timescape and Mediascape applications with the X10. The former aggregates your communication history on multiple levels including, text messaging, email, Twitter and Facebook in one place. Mediascape does the same for your multimedia content. Going one step further, Sony Ericsson has built "intelligence" features into Timescape and Mediascape, which automatically congregate relevant content, contacts and media. Sure, that's a mouthful to digest, but going by the rather impressive leaked videos we've seen so far, all these do tally up. We get the feeling that Sony Ericsson may have done a good job with the UI experience here, but we'd reserve final judgment until we get to try it out.

The X10 has a 4-inch 854 x 480-pixel WVGA touchscreen. This is different from earlier Android smartphones with 320 x 480-pixel HVGA displays. The recently announced Motorola Milestone has a similar wide-aspect ratio LCD, but with a smaller diagonal size of 3.7 inches. According to Sony Ericsson, the panel on the X10 is also scratch-resistant.

Connectivity features are aplenty on the X10. These include a 3.5mm audio jack, Bluetooth stereo A2DP, Wi-Fi, Assisted-GPS, HSPA and quad-band GSM. It'll also support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync out-of-the-box. This being an Android phone, it'll be preinstalled with Android Market, alongside Google Maps with Street View, Calendar, Gmail, Media Uploader, phone-top search, Google Talk and Google Voice Search. As for multimedia, there's an 8.1-megapixel camera with built-in photo and video light.

According to Sony Ericsson, the Xperia X10 is expected in Asia Pacific from Q1 2010. It will come in black and white. We'll have a proper hands-on evaluation once we get hold of a unit.