Sony Ericsson Xperia X10: hands-on photofest!

I’ve had the Sony Xperia X10 for less than a week and it has stopped working – not sure if it is the handset or the charger, but needless to say it won’t turn on anymore. So we’re not off to a great start on this review.

As for the phones OS, well, the interface is similar to that of most touch screen smart phones – icons you click, new apps you can install – nothing new there, this is almost par for the course now. The screen is a decent size and graphic render really well, sharp and crisp. Great colour and light.

Downside features hit you quite quickly, navigating to options seems to be a bit overly complicated. You can scroll the screen right to left, scroll down from the top from an alternate menu of alerts, or scroll up for applications. This is before we get into the fact that you can have a function open, then use the app key to open yet another set of options that is more specific to the open application or option.

Here’s an example of it being too complicated – you want to change the alert sound letting you know you have recieved a new text message. Let me cut this short – you can’t. You can only use the default sounds. Sounds annoying since, most phones will let you take any audio clip, install it on the phone and apply it for whatever you want – the X10 wont. You find this out the hardway, spending ages clicking through option screens, selecting the ‘change ringtone’ option, only to be stuck with the phones default audio clips. I contacted sony support on this, for them to tell me ‘unfortunately yadda yadda yadda you can only use the preinstalled audio tracks for text message alert ringtones’. Not so smart or impressive for an apparently ’smart phone’.

It comes with 1GB hard drive, which is also a problem when you want to save a lot of AV to it. Compared with the Nokia X6 (which i trialed last week) that came with 16GB of memory. However, Sony wins on the bluetooth front as idiotically, most Nokia phones will not sync properly with built in car phone systems (I have a saab and i guess it never occured to Noia to ensure their phones could push the phone book over to the car phone system – even though they are both Scandanavian products – pretty poor if you ask me).

So, the X10 looks great, feels fine in the hand (if you have big enough hands) and isn’t too heavy. Memory is much smaller than i’d like, navigation is overly complex, functions are too limited for an apparently smart phone.

The big question always seems to be, is this phone and Iphone killer…to which i have to be honest and say…nope. Not even close. The X10 is sony’s latest edition, coming out in time for the PR of the next gen iphone, which already promises so much more than the X10 can deliver.

As a long standing sony user, i’m a little bit let down by this – reminding you again that mine stopped working after just a few days and will no longer turn on. Take a risk on this phone if you want, but personally i look elsewhere (although please ignore Nokia if you have a built in car phone kit).