The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is Sony Ericsson’s first foray into the world of the Android phone. The X10 would enter the market as a flagship product, so this is quite a unique occurrence in that Sony Ericsson has decided to move away from its UIQ Symbian flagship phones and try out something new.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 - Design & Build:
The paintjob on the back of the device will likely get scratches from repeated contact with wherever you put it down. Almost the entire front of the device is the screen itself, and a lot of care has to be taken so as not to crack or scratch the screen.
The power button and USB port is on the top of the device, while a volume toggle and the camera hotkey run down the right side of the device. The three buttons below the screen are mainly softkeys to navigate around the interface, so what we can surmise from this arrangement of buttons is that the USB port does double duty for charging the phone and also for any data transfer that you might want to do with your computer. The screen is four inches or 10 cm across diagonally, so that would make it the largest Android screen handset on the market right now.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 - Software:
The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 comes with Android 1.6, which is also known as the Donut variation of the OS. Most of its competitors are launching Android 2.1 models right now, so this is rather outdated, and it is reflected in the occasional slow response of the device despite having the 1GHz Snapdragon processor inside.
The onscreen keyboard is a little small and it doesn’t respond to taps with a pen. One would have to aim the fingers very accurately to type something out. But the input is fairly decent, and the dictionary guesses the incomplete words pretty accurately so that would save a lot of typing once you get used to the short-forms that activate the longer word.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 - Camera:
The camera comes with an 8.1 megapixel rating. The camera comes with the usual assortment of effects, but I did not like that most of the interface did not really respond to my touches and it did take a little concentration to actually press where you wanted to on the screen so as to get a response from the phone.
It was a devil of a task to try to find the setting to activate the flash. It wasn’t in the usual place and apparently it is activated from the advanced settings menu and the light stays on the entire time you are framing the shot. It serves to reason that the subject of the photo would be more than a little miffed at you after a while if you keep pointing the annoying bright light into his or her eyes.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 - Performance & Connectivity:
The 1Ghz allows the X10 to open application quickly. General navigation through the user interface is snappy and posting updates on Twitter and Facebook was very responsive, and an overall breeze. However, dreaded bottlenecks start to surface when attempting to run multiple applications simultaneously. This is mainly due to the smaller amount of available RAM. This is a HSDPA 7.2 Mbps phone with HSUPA 2Mbps. It supports 3G and 802.11b/g WiFi.
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 - Battery Life:
Sony claims that the X10's 1500mAh battery will provide 8 hours of talk time to users. With our review unit we found it difficult to get through a full day with only light use. With medium use, users will surely want to tap into a car charger during the day. With high use, making numerous phone calls, responding to many email messages, and using application and/or browsing, you'll need to use a car charger and a spare ad adapter at you desk. The very subpar battery life may only pertain to our particular unit.
Conclusion:
While the device is with many of its specifications, the screen disappoints. Colors do look better than on devices such as the HTC EVO 4G, but the touch accuracy of the screen can be very frustrating, especially when typing long text messages and emails. The combination of the less-than-accurate screen, as well as Sony's finicky UI take away from the otherwise great effort from Sony Ericsson with the Xperia X10.
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