Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

The day has finally arrived as Sony Ericsson’s teaser website hinted it would, ending our long period of speculation – for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 has been officially announced for release in early 2010.  The big day has clarified many points, firstly the issue of the name has been cleared up – the X3 has been dropped and Infinity is something else entirely – secondly, the rumoured specification list has turned out to be largely accurate.  Before we get into anything else, here are the standout points:

• The OS is Google Android 1.6, also known as Donut.
• Inside is the Qualcomm 1Ghz Snapdragon processor.
• An 8GB MicroSD card joins 1GB of internal memory.
• The touchscreen is 4″ in size and sports a 480×854 WVGA resolution.
• Assisted GPS with Google Maps.
• On the rear is an 8.1 megapixel camera lens with an LED flash.
• A 3.5mm headphone socket.
• 3G with HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
• Available in Sensuous Black and Luster White.
• Weight will be 135 grams.

Long time followers of the X10 will recall seeing an early video showing what became known as the Rachael UI, now given its official name of Sony Ericsson Timescape and Sony Ericsson Mediascape.  Rather than being a full blown UI in the same way as HTC’s Sense, these are applications which can be set as your homepage and are reminiscent of MOTOBLUR and Palm’s Synergy.  Timescape is used to aggregate all of your communication feeds from SMS to Facebook and Twitter and displays all updates in a scrollable tiled list, while Mediascape does a similar job with your media content stored both locally and online, where one page shows all your music, photos and videos.

It’s here we discover the Infinite virtual button, which when pressed displays a page for a single contact and lists all of their communication activity from photos shared, Facebook and Twitter updates.  Sony Ericsson’s idea is to integrate all of these commonly used tasks into one place, negating the need for separate applications.  In Mediascape, the Infinite key displays related content stored on your phone and pulled from online sources.

A clever addition to these two applications is a new face recognition program which not only works when you’re using the camera, but is intelligent enough to recognise faces in any picture stored on the X10 and link them with all their communication activity.  Visually, the X10 is as expected, with a very sleek and slim casing plus the large, bright screen – easily making this one of the best looking Sony Ericsson phones we have seen in a while, even improving on the Satio.

Competition wise the X10 will be up against the HTC HD2, with Windows Mobile 6.5, that stunning 4.3″ screen and the Snapdragon platform, and in a short while, the Android 2.0 powered, QWERTY equipped Motorola Droid/Milestone.  Early reports from Sony Ericsson’s unveiling present a picture of the X10 being a work-in-progress, with an amount of tweaking needed before the phone is ready to hit the shelves.  This shouldn’t be anything to worry about, as Sony Ericsson have merely stated a Q1 2010 launch window for the phone, leaving plenty of time to polish the very exciting final product.