There’s been a lot of talk about the X1, the first smartphone from the Xperia family by Sony-Ericsson. This high end mobile whose aim is “the convergence of multimedia entertainment and mobile Web communication”is intended both for consumers and business users. As such it is direct competition for HTC’s Touch Pro. This premium phone has a good design, a comfortable touchscreen, a wide keyboard and all the connectivity that has now become standard on smartphones. The X1 also uses Windows Mobile 6.1 as its operating system, but a large number of customized enhancements run on top of it.

Solid design

Thinness is not something the X1 goes for, lightness neither as a matter of fact. At 145 grams, the X1 might feel slightly heavy in your pocket. Its silver brushed metal body makes it look more like a business phone and its sturdy build gives it a trusty feel. The phone comes with a large variety of buttons- most of them very handy. It is a pity that the slot for the memory card (up to 8 GB) is not that easy to get to. You actually have to remove the back of the handset to access it.

The X1 has a rather heavy feel.


Suprisingly, the X1 does not come with a protective cover. Okay, it may look very solid, but with it’s price tag, some sort of protection would have been welcome. Sony-Ericsson seems to prefer paying more attention to the packaging of the box it ships in, full of protective sponge…How environmentaly friendly is that ?

The quality of the 3 inch wide VGA (800 x 480) display is pretty amazing. Video playback is good and pictures are sharp.

The Xperia Panels : a skin for Windows Mobile

The Sony-Ericsson interface which consists of panels is meant to make the rather austere Windows Mobile 6.1 more fun and user friendly. Each of the panels offers acess to the information and applications of your choice (search engine, weather forecast, diary…) and you can style the panel display to suit your needs. There is also a Sony Ericsson web portal, but for the moment there is not much choice.

Despite the many efforts, you still seem to end up in a Windows Mobile maze which might put some off. In comparison the skin of HTC's TouchFlo seems to be more of a success.



There is no accelerometer on the X1. It is only when you slide out the keyboard that the display can go into landscape mode. Once you put the keyboard away, all goes back into portrait mode, so don’t even try playing a video with a « closed » phone.

Touchscreen navigation

You can either navigate the touchsceen with your fingertip or with a stylus, the latter being necessary when you fall back into the Windows Mobile interface. At first, the reactivity of the X1 seemed impressive (as in when switching applications) but the system would sometimes mysteriously slow down and this unexplained performance lag (due to Windows ?) created much disappointment.

The X1 is not a multitouch device, therefore you have to press the screen when you select an application. There is also an optical joystick that allows you to choose between the various multimedia menus.

Multimedia

Music on the Sony-Ericsson sounds good and their earphones are not bad either. But if you do change them, the X1 will produce a much more well-rounded sound. Given that there is a standard headphone jack, it seems worthwhile to switch for better audio quality. The interface of the player is user friendly with large buttons.

The 3,2 Mp camera will give you good enough pictures provided there is enough light. Images however are not totally crisp : any mid-range camera would do better. Also the camera is rather on the slow side. If you want to capture a child posing, be careful not to choose a restless one! Video playback is rather good, but can be sometimes a bit blurry.




Conversations are clear on the X1 even in noisy surroundings and the phone connects easily to networks under most circumstances

Web-browsing is easy and significantly better when using Opera (rather than Internet Explorer); most of the pages come up well.

As far as aGPS features go, and despite the price of the X1, there is no software supplied. Google Maps however proves very handy and allows you to find any address and get step by step directions.

Battery life on the X1 is similar to what you get on other smartphones at the moment. With everything on and a rather intense use, you will get 2 days from it at the most (this still is so much better than what the iPhone 3G delivers). However when we put the X1 to our audio test, we got only 9 hours and 50 minutes. There are other handsets out there that will give you 12 or 16 hours... Nokia’s N79 will play on for more than 20!