First announced during this year's Mobile World Congress, Sony Ericsson's XPERIA X1 will finally be shipping soon. One of the biggest questions potential buyers will have is if it matches up to the HTC Touch Pro. We'll be answering that question later in a full review of the X1, but for now, check out some photos we took of the two side-by-side if you want to see the physical differences.

The X1 (right) is longer and narrower than the Touch Pro. The increased length is necessary because of the longer screen which has a resolution of 800 x 480 compared to the Touch Pro's 640 x 480 pixels.

Here, you see the two devices with the keyboards out. The wider Touch Pro has space for a five-row keyboard, while the X1 has a more common four-row one without dedicated number keys. Though it has fewer keys, some might prefer the X1's QWERTY keypad because the letters are spaced out, while the HTC's aren't.

From this view of the base, you can see that the X1 is slimmer than the Pro. It isn't much, but in the hands, it makes quite a difference.

Here's another view where you can see the relative thickness of the X1 compared to the Touch Pro. It also shows the 3.5mm audio jack, a feature lacking in the Touch Pro and most other Windows Mobile PDA-phones, for that matter.

In this shot, you can see the advantage of having a WVGA display. You can see more of the CNET Asia homepage on the X1, though at that zoom level text is way too small to be readable. This shot was taken with both devices' displays turned up to maximum. From what we have observed so far, the Sony Ericsson's screen looks better than the HTC's in both color reproduction and brightness.