Introduction
With the X10 Sony Ericsson have gone from zero to hundred in a split second. While they may know their way around high-end devices, pulling off an undertaking such as the XPERIA X10 must have been a special challenge. And they have yet to get to the finish.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 official photos
The thing is that Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is the first Android smartphone by Sony Ericsson. Its also a Snapdragon first for the company, and theyve even come up with a first of its kind proprietary Android UI. Making the X10 a reality seems like a long way full of potential pitfalls for a company that hasnt still recovered from its financial woes.
But the XPERIA X10 or Rachael, or X3, or whatever it has been called in the long months of development, seems like a device thats worth all the hard work.
Even more so, X10 will not be a solitary device but more of a high-flying start for a full-blown platform of Android devices with their own distinct interface and user experience. That kinda sounds familiar. A year and a half ago, we were again there listening to Sony Ericsson presenting the XPERIA X1 in much the similar words. Well, lets hope theyll have better luck with starting off and developing this new part of their portfolio this time.
We had the pleasure of attending a very limited press event held in London, at which Sony Ericsson presented their latest and greatest before they showcase it for the general public. Much like attending a press-only movie screener we had the opportunity to gather some first-hand impressions of what is probably going to be the Sony Ericsson flagship next year. But before making our first go at the XPERIA X10, lets recap its features.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 at a glance:
- General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz, HSDPA, HSUPA
- Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
- Dimensions: 119 x 63 x 13 mm, 135 g
- Display: 4" 65K-color TFT capacitive touchscreen, 854 x 480 pixels
- Platform: Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor
- OS: Android 1.6 (Donut)
- Memory: 1GB storage, 256MB RAM, microSD card slot, 8GB card included in the retail box
- Camera: 8 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and face detection
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack
- Misc: Sony Ericsson custom social networking and media UI, built-in accelerometer
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 presentation for the press
Take the Android OS version, for instance. Despite all the hopes for getting the latest and greatest of the Android crop, Sony Ericsson are serving a cold meal to all the gadget lovers out there. They refused to comment any further on the matter but perhaps all is not lost. Our best guess is theyll have some hard time adjusting their proprietary UI for Android 2.0 (Eclair) so they prefer to stick to 1.6 for the time being in an effort to get the XPERIA X10 out in the market as soon as possible.
And the current plans for the X10 availability say Q1 2010. Yup, missing the holiday season and shipping the handset during the tight-pocketed January and February is certainly the last thing theyd like to do, but proper product development obviously demands it.
Speaking of which, the Sony Ericsson X10 units presented at the event were devilishly fast in all Android tasks and applications, but the proprietary UI by Sony Ericsson clearly needed a lot more work.
But lets not waste any more time and jump into the physical details of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10.
Design and construction
The XPERIA X10 is anything else but a compact handset - but thats expected in a device with a 4" display. Still, due to the curved edges, the phone feels extra thin despite the fact that a girth of 13mm is not ground-breaking (the Toshiba TG01 is 9.9mm).The XPERIA X10 is also impressively light for its huge screen real estate, so much so that it feels almost plasticy. But dont let that sound bad, we really liked how the X10 felt and handled.
The XPERIA X10 is the second Android handset sporting a resolution of 854x480 pixels. Believe it or not, that resolution has been a set standard even before the X10 and the Motorola Droid/MILESTONE came to being. Its even got its own abbreviation FWVGA - short for Full Wide VGA, which simply denotes its got pure 16:9 aspect ratio. That FWVGA resolution is actually quite common among widescreen multimedia projectors.
By the way, dont miss checking out the cool lockscreen on the second image below.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10: a device with an extra large display, but with an extra thin waistline
The 8 megapixel camera lens is on the back of the XPERIA X10. Theres also a tiny LED flash here, to keep the lens company. On the top of the device, there is a standard microUSB port, a 3.5mm audio jack and a huge on/off key.
Interestingly, that right there is the only the second Sony Ericsson handset to use a microUSB port (though there should be more to come in 2010). The first one was its XPERIA X2 cousin.
When asked, Sony Ericsson explained theyve designed, constructed and manufactured the X10 from the ground up all by themselves and theyre not relying on another company such as HTC to do the manufacturing this time.
Sony Ericson XPERIA X10: an 8 megapixel camera and a microUSB port on top
Obviously using Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 for web browsing will be a real treat. In fact there are a lot of websites that will fit into 848 pixels worth of width without having a side scrollbar. It almost feels as if next year well be seeing mobile phones matching the resolution of your regular netbook, doesnt it?
Browsing GSMArena.com on the 4-inch FWVGA display is a nice experience
Youre welcome to jump over to the next page, where well give the Sony Ericsson Android UI a quick rundown coupled with some videos for an extra treat.
Hands-on video
While we have the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 covered on the next page, heres a low down of what the device all about.Customized Android OS 1.6, but no multi-touch
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 runs on the user-friendly Android 1.6 OS (codenamed Donut). Unfortunately, version 2.0 is still a no-go for the time being and there are no plans for an official upgrade to the latest version.Another nasty surprise is that the OS wont be making use of multi-touch gestures such as pinch zooming in the web browser and gallery.
That being said, Sony Ericsson still had some impressive new UI all set on the Android phone and though it still needed a lot of polishing around the edges, it surely showed some nice potential.
Timescape is a user interface (or simply put - an application) that brings all your communications together. It gets activated by pressing the Timescape widget on the homescreen and displays an aggregated view of your SMS, MMS, email, missed calls, Facebook updates and Twitter updates all on one screen. A longer press on a tile lets you pnews its content.
Sony Ericsson proprietary Timescape UI for XPERIA X10
You can easily filter the displayed stuff by event types or by contacts (strangely called Infinite view).
The following video we took should give you a good idea of what the Timescape UI is all about:
Customized Android OS 1.6, but no multi-touch (continued)
Quite similarly called, Mediascape gathers all your media together. Music photos and video each have a dedicated homescreen divided in two parts – local and online.
Sony Ericsson proprietary Mediascape UI for XPERIA X10
The following video we took should give you a good idea of what the Mediascape UI is all about:
Camera
A clever automatic face recognition system has been integrated in the images department as well, recognizing up to five faces in any image. Once you name each of those faces, it goes ahead and recognizes all its appearances in your phone gallery. Whats even more, tapping on the face on any of those photos afterwards, allows you to call or text that person.Sony Ericsson are also promising that the 8 megapixel camera on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 will have all the features you would expect from a Cyber-shot cameraphone including, but not limited to, Face and smile detection and Touch focus.
Sony Ericson XPERIA X10 camera interface
We were unable to take any photos and videos with the XPERIA X10 during its official announcement but, luckily, we managed to find some nice camera samples (Thanks, Sony Ericsson!). However, dont forget that those have been shot with a pre-release unit (probably like the one we are now pnewsing) so dont be so picky and just enjoy them.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 camera samples
The photos certainly look great for a pre-production unit. The amount of resolved detail is pretty satisfying, although not as impressive as it was on the Sony Ericsson Aino. We are pretty pleased with color saturation as well.
The noise levels are pretty decent with chroma (colored) noise almost nowhere to be seen on these shots.
The first three shots were probably taken with a different metering mode enabled as the handset tried to retain as much detail as possible, resulting in a flat and unrealistic image. While it will give you more headroom in post-processing we are pretty certain that most of the users would prefer the punchier output, witnessed in the last couple of shots.
When it comes to the video, it is recorded in WVGA 800 x 480 pixel resolution at almost 30 fps (about 28fps to be exact). And here you can download the full resolution sample itself.
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