The Xperia X10 has constantly gained attention for being the first Android
phone from Sony Ericsson, especially since it was running a customized
interface. Being touted as one of the best Android phones available, the X10 has
an amazing build quality. The beautiful 4-inch capacitive touch screen occupies
the front. There are 3 hardware buttons present just below the display for back,
options and menu functionality. The overall dimensions of the phone are larger
than normal due to the display size, but the phone impresses with its 13mm
thickness. On the top, the phone has a power button, 3.5mm audio jack and
microUSB port. On the right side are the volume keys and the camera shutter key.
The phone runs on Android v1.6 which sadly limits the large screen to 65k
color display. It has a Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor, 384 MB RAM,
1GB internal storage which is expandable via microSD card. The phone's user
interface has been fully customized by SE and brings in two new features called
TimeScape and MediaScape to the phone. Timescape integrates messages from all
your social networking sites, emails, SMSs, etc and puts them on the home page.
Mediascape does the same thing, but to your media files. Both the applications
are pretty graphic intensive with all the animation and effects, but thanks to
the 1GHz processor they run butter smooth on the device. The UI has a quick
learning curve and once you get accustomed to it, you would fall in love with
the Timescape for sure.
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The Xperia X10 sports an 8MP AF camera with an LED flash. It records videos
in WVGA resolution @ 30FPS. The camera also boasts of touch focus, image
stabilization, geo-tagging, face and smile detection. The images clicked in
daytime turned out to be wonderful, although any picture taken in low light or
even indoors turned out to be full of noise. Video recording suffered from the
same problem. In ample light it was fine, but under false light it started
showing grains on the phone display itself. The sound output from the speakers
is just average. The speaker grill is present on the left top of the phone,
which proves to be great if you use the phone on loudspeaker mode next to your
ear. The phone comes loaded with Wisepilot GPS application for navigation,
however the turn-by-turn navigation is paid.
The X10 has its share of quirks as well. It runs on Android V1.6 and even
though there has been announcement that a 2.1 update would be made available, it
would be available at the end of Q4, 2010. The magnificent display is not
utilized to the full extent due to limitations in the Android v1.6. The phone
would never get multi-touch due to hardware issues. There is no FM radio and the
browser doesn't support Flash. If for some reason, you want to reset the phone
to factory defaults, and the phone is on low battery, then it won't let you do
that, even if it's connected to a charger..
The X10 is Sony Ericsson's first Android phone; hence there are lots of
chances for improvements. Currently, the phone is one of the good touch screen
Android phones available, however for the same price you can also get the
Motorola Milestone which offers a slide-out keyboard, runs Android v2.1, and
even has multi-touch though its got a 3.7” display.