The XPERIA X1 is the newest smartphone from Sony Ericsson. Since it announced early this years, we have been waited so long to finally see it on the market. The X1 is the first in the series, and it is also is the smartphone from SE implementing Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS. It has amazing build quality and rich of features and regards as the hottest mobile from Sony Ericsson this year.
Design
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 has form factor that similar to HTC G1 or HTC Touch Pro, which a 3-inch VGA touchscreen on the front and a full QWERTY keyboard underneath that can slide out from the side. The display is excellent. It is excels in both contrast and brightness and the sunlight legibility is lot better then other phone. It is no problem to use it out door. Maybe it is the 800×480 resolution makes the display become so good. The touch sensitive screen is a bit downside. Fingers are not so friendly in use for the touchscreen. The solution is using the included stylus more often than your fingers. The stylus is work perfectly with the screen.
Below the display, you will found the array of buttons including the left and right soft keys, the send and end keys, an ‘X’ key (switches the phone back to the panels screen,), and the‘OK’ Button. And at the center of these buttons is the optical D-Pad.
When slide down the keyboard, the 4 lines full QWERTY keyboard revealed and the screen rotates to landscape mode within less than a second, so its does not affect the experience. The keyboard is ok but I still take a bit of times to get used with it
Camera
There is only a 3.2MP camera come with X1. It is not bad but since Sony Ericsson capable to release 8.1MP camera phone why don’t they make it at least 5MP for this phone? The flash is also disappointed. It is better calling it a light rather then a flash. However the photo quality is fine if it is in clear, bright day, but don’t expect too much on average lighting conditions.
It does however record video at 30fps in full VGA. Likewise it is very nice and produces great videos when lighting permits.
Memory
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA comes with 512MB ROM and 256MB RAM with an additional 128MB of dedicated graphics memory. So the panels do not take up much memory at all. That why the device react fast enough when switch between applications. The X1 is support microSD (TransFalsh) memory card. Practically, 8G memory card is no problem for this phone.
Music & Video
To play music in X1 you can use the default pre-install Media Player, but you are allow to use other application such as Kinoma to play the music. The Media Penal insides this phone is an odd thing. Except of music playback, there are no AVRCS Bluetooth control, no album art, no synced playlists in this panel. Weird!
Don’t expect the Media Player to play DivX or XVID etc. It will only play your recorded video or any video converted for playback on Windows Media player However you still can use other player that surpport DivX/XVID files.
Connectivity, internet & GPS
Overall, the X1 support almost all type of connection. HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, GPRS, Bluetooth, 3G, USB, EDGE, X1 has all of it. Thus there is no problem for you to get connected with internet. The web browsing experience is great because the speed is very fast. It might be the fastest web browsing I ever experience on a mobile phone. It same speed can be enjoyed in the GPS navigation. It is no problem work with Google Maps.
Final Words
No doubt the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is a very good smartphone. But since there are so many competitors in the smartphone market, the disadvantages of X1 such as low specs camera, poor touch experience (except using stylus), and high price (for somebody) may turn somebody head off. And if X1 compare with other touchscreen smartphone such as Google G1, Samsung i8510 INNOV8 or HTC Touch Pro, X1 won’t be the best, but also is not the last. However, it is still can be one of the coolest smartphone for the year.
See the specification and video review of Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1
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