Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Review

The worst kept secret in mobile has finally been confirmed – Sony Ericsson are going to be launching a multimedia handset, running on the Android OS, and it is the Xperia X10.

We already knew a fair deal about this handset, with leaks, spyshots and video floating around the web for a while now, but finally the speculation can stop as we have a confirmed list of features to drool over.

The X10 is dominated by a superb, large TFT capacitive colour touchscreen, measuring 4.0 inches across and with a pixel busting resolution of 854 x 480 pixels. The screen supports up to 256,000 colours and is covered with scratch resistant glass; auto rotate is included, as found on almost all Android devices, so the display will automatically switch between portrait and landscape mode, depending on the orientation of the device.

The X10 is by no means a compact device, sporting dimensions of 119 x 63 x 13mm, so it will feel quite big in the hand. You will see in the video clip below, it does appear to be somewhat large. I guess this is the trade off you make when you have a handset with a huge 4.0 inch display. It does help that the X10 is rather slim at just 13mm, though. Weight wise the X10 comes in at 135g, which is to be expected on a phone with these measurements.

The camera on the X10 is an 8.0 Megapixel affair, and has some nice touches, making it one of the most advanced cameras offered to date on an Android powered device. As well as the high pixel count, the camera has autofocus, and also offers a built in LED flash. Other enhancements include support for face detection, smile detection, and image stabilisation. The camera supports geotagging, and focus can be centred in on a part of the shot by touching on the screen.

The X10 is a media rich product, and offers a full range of multimedia options; apart from the 8.0 Megapixel camera, there is a well supported media player, which can handle files in numerous formats, including MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WMA and RA for music, plus MP4, H.263, H.264 and WMV for video. There is a good amount of internal memory available for media storage, with the X10 offering 1GB fixed internal memory, which can be expanded by the addition of a memory card, which in this instance is MicroSD rather than the usual M2 cards Sony Ericsson have used in the past. Memory cards can be supported up to 16GB in size, with the X10 expected to ship with an 8GB card, although some networks may change this to help keep costs down. Another nice bonus on the X10 is the decision by Sony Ericsson to include a 3.5mm audio jack on the device, instead of the more often used proprietary Sony Ericsson port. It would be nice to see this offered on more Sony Ericsson handsets in the future.

The X10 comes equipped with all the major connectivity options you would expect to find on a high end multimedia handset; starting from HSDPA Mobile Broadband at up to 10.2Mbps, plus HSUPA at up to 2Mbps, the X10 also offers WiFi with DLNA support, plus EDGE and GPRS. The X10 is powered by the Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor, which should help deliver a smooth user experience. One surprise, is finding the X10 is currently listed as being released with version 1.6 of the Android OS. Version 2.0 is imminently available, and we can only assume that this will be made available to users via an OTA upgrade. To complete the connectivity spec, the X10 will come with Bluetooth 2.1 (although currently Android only supports audio connectivity – no native Bluetooth file transfer on the X10) and there is a mini USB port for connecting the device to a PC.

As we have come to expect on an Android device, all the Google services are tightly integrated into the OS, so things like Google Mail, Google calendar, and Google maps work well. The X10 offers a built in GPS chip, which has aGPS support. Along with the customised UI offered by the X10, there are a few nice touches worth mentioning.

Firstly, Timescape is a system that allows you to integrate all your phone contacts with the online services you use, allowing you to keep up to date with friends on Facebook and Twitter, with their statuses updated automatically. Mediascape is the setup that keeps all your pictures, videos and music files together for easy access to your media whilst on the move, whilst enhanced face recognition on the phone will recognise up to five different faces in one image, and automatically tag your friends and store the info under their name in the contacts list.

There is a lot to like about the X10 – it almost feels like an old phone, in one sense, we seem to have been talking about it so much recently. But in reality it is a cutting edge device, packed with features, and if it is a sign of things to come from Sony Ericsson and Android. If all this has you chomping at the bit to purchase the phone, you may have to wait a little while, as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is slated for a 2010 release, expected in Q1.

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