The Xperia X10 will be Sony Ericsson’s first phone to be powered by a Snapdragon CPU and also their first handset to mount the Android OS.
Design and Looks
Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 is a refreshing slant at the touchscreen design. The edges of the slim form factor are rounded and there are wavy metallic patterns of the side. Even the thin metallic hardware keys look refreshing to give the touchscreen factor. The most prominent exterior feature on the phone is quite obviously the large 4-inch capacitive touchscreen which exhibits nice contrast and sunlight legibility. On the flip side the screen does not produce more than 65,000 colours which is strange given the high profile of this model. The Android 1.6 (Donut) OS is to take the blame for this because it does not support more than the basic number of colours. However a firmware upgrade to Android 2.0 may be in the docks which mean the phone will then be capable of supporting up to 16 million colours. Except for this one limitation the Xperia X10 has the best display in the Sony Ericsson line-up.
This screen responds nicely though thanks to both, the sensitive touschscreen and the Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon processor. The hardware keys below the screen provide good tactile feedback and are comfortable to work with. At the top of the phone is the standard audio 3.5m port which we have been seeing on many SE models lately. The camera lens at the back is unprotected except for being a little recessed into the phone’s body. The back of the phone is rounded which makes gripping the phone and single-handed operation much easier to perform. The only design faults with the phone is the bad placement of the microSD card under the phone’s battery and the glossy front which attracts finger-prints.
The user interface looks different than on other Android phones because SE have put in efforts to develop their own UI to run on top of the Google developed OS. There are currently many bugs and missing functions in the Android 1.6 Donut OS that fail to complement the phone’s excellent hardware. For example, one of the missing niceties is multi-touch gestures or pich zooming for the web browser and image gallery.
The phone’s camera is an 8MP unit that performs excellently for a camera of its resolution range. Videos are captured at WVGA resolution at a maximum frame rate of 30fps; except for some excessive compression the videos are quite decent. The camera interface is new but features few options like exposure compensation settings, five different focus modes and four capturing modes.
But the UI’s most innovative applications are the Mediascape and Timescape. Together they handle communication and multimedia content on the phone or on the web. Mediascape brings together multimedia content on the phone and from the user’s social networking profiles on various sites including Facebook, Picasa and flickr and other popular social networking services. Mediascape also houses the phone’s media players and photo browser. The video and music player are functional enough but the video player cannot handle videos in DivX or XviD format. The photobrowser is an intuitive application and lets users upload pictures directly to your social networking accounts. The Mediascape also has a button titled ‘Infinity’ that gives users all Google search results for the particular media file.
Timescape brings together the user’s entire communications to one place. This includes SMS, MMS, email, missed calls and Facebook and Twitter updates. Both, Mediascape and Timescape have huge scope and revolutionize the way phones organize data. There is also an option to set either one of them as the default homescreen.
The phone which is yet to make an official launch will likely be priced at around Rs. 35000.
Features
Refreshing looks
Good design and construction
4-inch 65K colour capacitive touchscreen
Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor, 256MB RAM
1GB internal storage with 8GB card included in retail package
8MP camera with LED flash autofocus
Android 1.6 OS (Donut)
Mediascape and Timescape applications
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