50 Things To Know Before Getting a Sony XPeria X10 Review

1. The Sony Ericsson XPeria X10 is a prime example of the fact that failures are the stepping stones to success. Remember the Aino, Satio, Yario? Well, never mind.



{Design and Build}

2. Sony Ericsson has always had a good design language and the X10 continues the tradition.
3. The smooth back panel makes it a real joy to hold. Also gives the phone a solid grip on surfaces. Why doesn’t everybody use such materials?
4. You have a choice of 2 colors, white with a glossy texture and black with a matte finish.
5. Build quality is good, overall.
6. The power button, audio jack and charging port are at the top, volume and camera buttons to the right side and the camera plus a single LED flash make up the back panel of the phone.
7. Big phones need big hands to work. Smaller hands can wait for the X10 Mini.
   


{Display}

8. The humongous 4.0” screen is good enough to get anyone drooling.
9. Colors are rich, bright and there’s no trouble reading the screen even in the full blast of an Indian summer.
10. The screen is very responsive to inputs and if there’s any sluggishness, it’s only the early bugs.
11. Who’s idea was it to have a glossy surface for the screen? Attracts fingerprints faster than an A-list Hollywood celeb attracts paparazzi.
12. The X10 has multi-touch, but you’ll have to wait for the next update to let your pinch zooming ambitions see the light of the day.


{Interface}


13. SE has a done a fantastic job with their custom interface, UXP which takes care of pretty much everything where the Android 1.6 misses the mark.
14. However, their custom UI means you have to wait for Sony to update the software, which is hopelessly irritating. X10 owners will get the 2.1 by Q4CY10 ! !
15. A top-notch mobile UI designer is heading for Android, custom UI’s should be history. I hope. With fingers crossed.
16. The on-screen keyboard is a royal pain in the backside.
17. Skipped inputs, rubbish word recommendations etc are the norm. Thankfully, this is Android. You should get a replacement keyboard from the Android Market.
    
    {Multimedia}
    
18. Top notch multimedia performance is expected, this is a Sony after all.
19. Mediascape is their answer and is way better than Android’s default media player. Neat, simple UI to get you to your content in as few taps as possible.
20. DivX support, where art thou?
21. External speaker could have been a bit louder.
22. Watching movies is fun.
    
    {Camera}
    
23. 8.1 MP camera with a single LED flash with all sorts of gimmickry like Smile and Face Detection borrowed from Sony’s Cybershot division.
24. Great day time pictures as is the wont with most SE phones.
25. At this price, someone should have at least thought about a dual LED flash, let alone a Xenon one.
26. HD video recording is coming to X10 with Q4′s update.
27. You can tag people in the gallery, which is again a great feature. There’s geo tagging too.
28. Camera button needs some real pressing to get the job done.
    
    {Social Networking}
    
29. Great phone for the social junkies, you know.
30. Timescape, Sony’s in house social media app, delivers all your social content (mails, smses, tweets etc.) in a timeline like format. This can be traversed easily with a flick and it looks rather neat. But this can be a resource hog if you overwhelm it with all your societal quirks.

{Connectivity}

31. It’s got almost every 4 letter mumbo jumbo out there.
32. Yay, Bluetooth file transfer!
33. Love browsing on it. It’s pretty close to a full PC experience.
34. GPS latches on pretty quickly.
35. Wise Pilot, the bundled navigation software isn’t up to the mark.
36. Indians stick to Google Maps, I say.
    
    {Performance}
    
37. 1GHz Snapdragon, baby!
38. Accelerometer aligns your screen pretty quickly. Its almost iPhone quick.
39. Scrolling doesn’t display any jerkiness either.
40. Battery is good enough to see you through till the end of your day.
    
    {About Android 1.6 with UXP}
    
41. At the risk of sounding repetitive, the only frustrating thing about the X10 is not having 2.1 till Q4 of this year! By that time everyone will be having Gingerbread.
42. All the updates coming out from Android are constantly improving in performance and X10 owners will have to miss the bus.
43. Why isn’t there a opt-out option for those who want the plain vanilla Android?
44. But then, the phone is targeted at the high fliers who are most certain to give you nothing but a cold, blank stare when you get into version debates with them. They might at best, throw in a “It gets my work done you geeky pig head, upgrades be damned”.
    
    {Final Words}
    
45. Sony Ericsson is very much out of the woods and is back in the reckoning as a serious contender in the smartphone market.
46. The phone could have been priced more aggressively. At this price, they need to throw in a free date with Kareena Kapoor, their brand ambassador in India.
47. There are cheaper phones that do all of this and more. Droid comes for the same price with a full keyboard.
48. A lot of the problems will be solved by December ’10 when Sony will deliver Android 2.1 with their custom UI. But seriously, December? That’s the amount of one market cycle these days.
49. There are too many things for which you might have to wait till Christmas. Geeks could consider waiting till then. Low fuss users wanting to just get the job done can get it right now.
50. No phone is perfect.

Big thanks to Suhas for his inputs. All images courtesy Sony Ericsson.

Tagged as: android, review, smartphone, snapdragon, sony ericsson, touchscreen, x10, xperia