After months of delays, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 will finally be available soon in the USA. Slated for an August 15th release, the X10 will be available for only $149 with a two year contract ($130 through SonyStyle). That’s a pretty incredible price for a phone that runs Android (albeit 1.6, but will have an upgrade to 2.0+ in several months), has a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor, complete with a 4 inch capacitive touch display, 8.1 megapixel camera with LED flash and 2GB included MicroSD removable storage. However, the thing that truly stands out to me with the phone is display. It’s the type of cell phone experience you just can’t stop looking at because of the huge screen and the lush looking Sony Ericsson theme. The XPERIA X10 will also arrive in the USA with updated firmware which fixes the battery woes that plagued the device when it was first released in Europe – you can enjoy up to 5 hours talk time and up to 11 days of standby time.
Sony Ericsson has promised a firmware update in several months that will enable the XPERIA X10 to record in HD (we presume 720p MPEG-4).
The phone feels very natural in your hand, and even holding it up to my head wasn’t absurd. It’s really not that larger than an iPhone, but somehow has a larger screen and looks just bloody futuristic. I’ve owned an iPhone for quite a long time and I can honestly say this is the first device that makes me want to try something different. Designs like these totally blow away what Apple is doing right now. And Sony Ericsson is not the only person doing that now. I think a lot of the CE manufacturers are going to hurt Apple in 2010 because they are using advanced functionality such we found in the XPERIA X10, as it has Android, such a striking appearance, and embraces open standards (MicroSD, Mini USB, removable battery).
Here are some pictures of the general areas in the phone, including the dialing screen and the contact list (with integrated twitter/facebook updates). I also show off some parts of Mediascape, including album listing, song playback, and songs within album. The last two pictures are the Radiant game loading screen, Google Maps map view, and watching a full screen video (with video control overlay enabled):
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Google Maps on the four inch screen with free turn by turn voice navigation makes this an incredible device for getting around. Games look vibrant and comfortable on the large display.
One of the major software highlights of the XPERIA X10 is Timescape, which can be used to manage your methods of communication and social networking. Using a visual method called reticulating splines, you can dynamically browse through Facebook, Twitter, photos, emails, and texts all in one go. You simply flick up and down with your finger and you can see all of your usual feeds right there in the application. To view an individual update, you just select it and it enlarges with the full text. It is the killer app of this phone and you simply must try it out if possible. It’s the ultimate convergence of information, and saves the user an enormous amount of time by putting all of the information they usually read every day in one beautiful place.
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As I mentioned before, the X10 has a 8 megapixel camera which is another huge selling point of this phone – it also has face and smile detection, face recognition, scene detection, and geotagging. Sony Ericsson has always used some of the best imaging sensors in their phones and they also have excellent software (as you see above) to support the hardware. The X10 also has a super bright LED flash that also allows you to shoot in virtually any environment, but the problem I have found with these newer LED flashes is that they are almost too bright. People will squint and act like they’ve seen judgement day if you take their picture in the dark.
Here are some sample images I took with the XPERIA X10 in various environments:
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We found a slight problem with the XPERIA X10’s microphone placement – I kept accidentally brushing past the microphone either throughout a week of heavy testing. You can see the microphone in the picture above. It just wasn’t the most convenient place for me and my girlfriend kept saying she would hear noise as I used it while I was out and about. Maybe after a while I would learn how to hold it right or use a bluetooth earpiece. I pose the question to XPERIA X10 owners, have you had similar issues?
The XPERIA X10, despite arriving so late to the USA and only having Android 1.6 is still an extremely attractive phone, plus the incoming updates that will raise it to Android 2.0+ will make it even better. This is a great play for Sony Ericsson and yet another stunning Android device to entice consumers away from the iPhone.
