Sony Ericsson’s first Windows Mobile device is intended as a do-it-all business handheld. With quad band GSM, HSDPA 3G and Wi-Fi keeping its connection options fully open, and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and large touch screen it is designed to make best use of its messaging and browsing capabilities.The black color with a silver stripe around the sides looks pretty good too! The large 800x480-pixel, 3.1in touch screen is placed on the front while beneath it lies a rather messy cluster of control buttons around a touch-sensitive ‘optical joystick’. The joystick acts like the track ball on a laptop, as well as a standard D-pad.
The keyboard, although great, is a fairly hefty device. However, you certainly get to see chunkier models with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Fortunately the keyboard on this one is better than most as it slides out with a reassuringly solid clunk and angles slightly upwards while sliding.
This is Sony Ericsson’s ‘arc slider’ which is presumably meant to make the screen easier to read. However, it’s a just a flash trick, and doesn’t seem to accomplish anything. You couldn’t do better by twisting it in your hands. The keyboard is made up of brushed metal with four lines of well spaced, slightly angled key and looks very good. When you slide it out, the screen automatically rotates into portrait mode
Problem Panels: While in many recent Windows Mobile handsets, the OS is initially hidden behind an interface of the proprietary manufacturer, in Sony Ericsson’s case it’s the ‘Panels’.
Our model came with seven of them, each offering quick access to one or more of the X1’s functions, such as date and time, media player, FM radio, Google and more, with others available to download from the Sony Ericsson site. They look pretty good and work very well (except the Google one which automatically opens Windows Explorer rather than Opera, which is also available – why?).
It takes a few seconds to switch between panels, which slows down the navigation process. You can use the Windows menu of course but for this you will almost certainly need to unsheathe the stylus and use the phone two-handed. This can become a hassle.
Although the browser is a pleasure to use it’s much better to surf with the keyboard open and the screen in landscape mode. You can sweep web pages around by brushing the screen with your thumb and zoom with the volume keys – this is mobile internet the way it should be.
The camera is a standard and a GPS is placed on the board, powered by Google Maps, which is pretty good as far as it goes. We found our north London pied à terre pretty much instantly. The camera is a little disappointing with 3.2 megapixels, as we are getting used to have 5 megapixels on our fancier phones. It doesn’t disgrace itself though, offering pictures that compare favorably with camera phones with similar specifications.
An interesting addition is the ‘touch focus’ feature, which allows you to select the focal point of your picture by touching the screen. Using this, you can create some interesting forced perspective shots.
The music player adheres to basic standards and is clearly been inspired by Sony Ericsson’s Walkman range though it doesn’t have the same breadth of features. It does not have any graphic equalizer and has only a limited range of filing options.
Even the headphones aren’t Sony Ericsson’s best, though they’re not at all bad.
Fortunately there’s the option to upgrade to your ‘phones of choice via the 3.5mm jack plug on the top.
The onboard software, Windows Mobile 6.1, comes with a host of additional applications including Office Mobile, which allows you to create Word and Excel documents. However, it will only allow you to view PowerPoint documents and PDFs.
The battery life wasn’t overly impressive (though it rarely is on juice-hungry SmartPhones). Ours lasted a little more than a day with the Wi-Fi on, though there is a range of settings to manage the power drain.
Overall, the Xperia X1 is a pretty good SmartPhone but not quite the iPhone killer we’d been hoping for. Consider it if you need a good browser and full range of connection options, but there are better phones for media playback.
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