Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 preview: Getting closer Price, pictures, Details, model specifications
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is one of the hottest names in the industry and it’s not even released yet. Santa won’t be able to get us one for Christmas but next year holds a serious promise for us geeks. The Sony Ericsson’s first Snapdragon device and first Android smartphone is one seriously capable handset that promises great user experience.
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We first met the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 a month ago at its official announcement event in London. The device that might end up deciding the company’s fate left us feeling quite positive about its market prospects so we are really pleased to finally welcome it to our office.
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Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 official photos
The software of the XPERIA X10 is far from settled but since Sony Ericsson dared to show it to the audience, you can bet that the hardware won’t see any dramatic changes. The realistic expectations are for the bugs to be solved and maybe a couple of minor features added but what we are going to show is what you should expect to see when the device hits the shelves in Q1 of next year.
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For starters let’s take a look at the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 key characteristics.
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; touch focus, WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) video recording at 30fps
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack
- Misc: Sony Ericsson Timescape and Mediascape UI, built-in accelerometer
That Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 certainly looks pretty powerful among its Android peers. It’s only major sin is that it will be too late for the Christmas shopping spree and will have to achieve success in a much more challenging market conditions.
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The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 views
An unspectacular handset can do wonders in the last moths of the year, given the right marketing, but things get much tougher once New Year’s Eve passes. People have already spent most of their surplus cash and need more persuasion to shell out the serious amount that this baby calls for.
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The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 next to the Apple iPhone 3GS and HTC HD2
But than again, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 looks well prepared to handle any challenge. The device is supposed to launch in the middle February – most probably around the MWC 2010.
We’ll start with a brief hardware inspection of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 following the break.
Custom UI everywhere, Android 1.6 lurking beneath
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 runs on the Android 1.6 OS Donut. You probably knew that right from the start, but we can’t hide our disappointment that it doesn’t come with the latest Android 2.0. Currently, Sony Ericsson has not announced any plans for an official upgrade to the latest version some time in the future.
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Another unwelcomed surprise is that the XPERIA X10 Android implementation won’t be making use of multi-touch gestures such as pinch zooming in the web browser and gallery.
That being said, we still gotta give Sony Ericsson the credit they deserve for coming up with their nice custom UI. Yeah, it still needs some polishing around the edges, but it’s got that magic mojo. And with the help of the 1GHz Snapdragon core inside, you can be sure the final result would be amazing.
All the homescreens, lockscreen, menus, submenus, notifications areas and internal buttons have been redesign completely by Sony Ericsson. As a result, X10 brings a completely new underwater-like blue interface and looks completely different from it Android siblings.
The lockscreen and the three customizable homescreens
Still the Android structure is almost intact and you won’t get lost digging into the menus and settings. All the usual suspects are here – the three homescreens, and the single menu that holds all your stuff, the slide-down notification area at the top and the contextual menu at the bottom.
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As you see from the shots, the customized Android 1.6 is eye-catching and gives the OS a slightly new feel.
Surprisingly good camera
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 sports an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash capable of taking photos at a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels.
Sonu Ericsson have designed their own camera interface from scratch.
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At the left column bar you will find only five options – capturing mode, resolution, scenes, focus mode and camcorder switcher. On the opposite you can change the exposure compensation and go to the camera album.
There are four capturing modes – normal, scene recognition, smile detection and touch capture. Choosing the scene recognition will set all settings to auto and the X10 will estimate on what setting to shoot.
On the other hand there are five focus modes available – single or multi autofocus for focusing on more than one spot, macro mode, face detection and infinity for capturing landscapes.
Finally, there is one really handy addition – the recent shot tray. It appears at the bottom left corner and shows the last pictures taken as small thumbnails.
Camera interface
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 takes pretty good photos with excellent detail and colors even at this early pre-production stage. There are no visible problems with the lens or processing algorithm. There are some things here and there that need polishing, but we are more than satisfied with the results.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 camera samples
The X10 is capable of capturing videos up to WVGA (800×480)@30fps. Touch focus is even available in the video recording mode.
Picture bar • camcorder options
Videos look well and despite some frame rate and compression problems, we are happy with them. But you can bet we woouldn’t have been be so forgiving if this was a retail version.
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Mediascape and Timescape
Timescape and Mediascape are the two new interfaces (read: applications) developed by Sony Ericsson specifically for XPERIA X10. They provide a novel and interactive way of accessing and managing your communications (including social networking) and your multimedia content.
However – these two most interesting parts of the XPERIA X10 UI are also the least finished. That’s the reason why we’re also not publishing any video demos at this stage. The software is still not ready for prime time and Sony Ericsson are hard at work in polishing it.
Accessing all your media
So first off, let’s answer what is Mediascape. Well, we can simply call it a fancy file browser and media player. But we would be oversimplifying things.
Granted, the Mediascape UI contains three different categories – Music, Video and Photo. Sure enough the Music and Photo tabs are very similar – they show in a small thumbnail rows your recently added, recently viewed/played files and your favorites among those.
The magic however is on the second part of the screen, which is dedicated to online content – if you link your X10 to a Facebook/Picasa/Flicker account or some online music service, you will see your content in the same way as those into the phone.
The Photo tab
We also mentioned there’s a Video tab, remember? Well, there is no online content here but you get all your videos in a plain and easy to use thumbnail view. Unfortunately, DivX and XviD videos are not supported and those clips don’t even get listed here.
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The Video tab
All the three tabs feature a More button, which will lead you to the full power of the galleries. Choosing more into the Music tab will open the full lists typical for a music player – recently added, played, favorites, albums, tracks, genres, etc.
The music and video player have pretty much identical interfaces with some plain straightforward buttons. At this stage there is no equalizer for the music player.
The gallery has all the regular controls and it works nice and fluidly. You can upload images to social networking services directly from here. Zooming is also fast. As we mentioned before, there is no multi-touch, so you will count on the dedicated virtual buttons.
Browsing images
If you click on the Infinite button in the music player (and interestingly the image gallery), you will get a streamlined view of a Google search results based on the context info like the current album artist. The search results are sorted by their type – such as YouTube videos, images, popular e-shops, etc.
Finally, you can set the Mediascape as your default homescreen, which will be shown when you hit the Home key.
The music and video player
And a place to gather all those close to you
Just like Mediascape, Timescape is a separate application but it’s job is to bring all your communications together. It always displays an aggregated view of your SMS, MMS, email, missed calls, Facebook updates and Twitter updates all on one screen. It also has a large number of tabs that can filter the content by type.
The Timescape UI
Similar to the Mediscape, the Timescape can be set for your default homescreen too.
To sum up – Mediascape is your player, Timescape is your communicator.
First impressions
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is far from official release but it’s clear it’s full of potential. It has among the currently fastest ticking hardware platform. The 4-inch screen is as big as you can fit on a mobile phone without hampering usability. So yes, the XPERIA X10 is one great package that will take on the competition with no hesitation.
Choosing Android is smart move by Sony Ericsson, since the OS is still new and developing, with free open-source code and a growing App Market. And most importantly, it’s not plagued by the Windows Mobile or Symbian legacy.
The Timescape and Mediascape interfaces allow for a completely new user experience on the Android platform. HTC Sense UI will definitely get a run for its money..
Unfortunately, there are at least two and a half months to go before Sony Ericsson release the XPERIA X10 and they still have a lot of work to do and a lot of edges to polish. Chances are we’ll be getting a real treat in February 2010.
