Updated 13 Feb, 2012, 6:30 pm IST

REVIEWS / SMARTPHONES / SONY ERICSSON

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

08 Jan, 2009, 12:47 pm IST | Shayne Rana | Smartphones

Well here’s the review finally! Before I start, here's a little note. I’m sure there are some out there who have already got the phone and may have had a different experience, so just to make things clear, this review has been conducted using a test piece provided by Sony Ericsson and all findings are purely based on this handset. It’s quite possible that a band new box packed device could fare a little differently.� �

Form Factor
For a detailed description of the handset check out the preview here. Just to give you a quick run through, the Xperia is a heavyweight, literally, weighing in at 145g. The large display is clear and well lit but extremely reflective, which proves to be an annoyance in brightly lit areas. The buttons are well placed and the optical navigation pad is a bonus.

The smooth slide out QWERTY keyboard is well designed and its curved shape makes for very easy typing and navigation. SE has gone with mainstream standards in the X1. It has a 3.5mm earphone socket, microSD card slot and a mini USB slot. The 3.2MP camera located at the rear has a single LED flash.

Features and Performance
Panels and UI
If you've seen one Windows Mobile OS you’ve pretty much seen 'em all. Of course these days manufacturers tend to customize home screens to enhance the users' experience like HTC’s TouchFLO 2D and 3D interfaces. SE’s Xperia Panels are their ways of doing the same. So far I found it very difficult to actually download more panels anywhere except from the Sony Ericsson website either via PC or OTA (over the air).

The panels had their own charm, some of them at least. The others offered quick access to various necessary and relevant applications and features while some were more specific or should I say dedicated like the Facebook or Google Panels. That takes a really long time to do anything but is nevertheless a very useful and well designed Panel. The Spb Panel allows a certain amount of personalization so that’s handy. I like the technology of quick-access multiple desktops like this, although some of them do appear a little too crowded and that tends to make touch navigation a problem. I also found that the Panels take a little while to refresh. For instance, if a message of a missed call has been viewed the Panel will still show it as Unread or a missed call pending although the icons on the top portion of the display have disappeared.

A couple of the Panels are a real pain when it comes to accessing the handset's basic functions like the phone book. For instance, the Media Panel that looks like a typical SE handset’s Multimedia screen doesn’t seem to pick up SIM contacts at all and there don’t seem to be settings to allow that either.

The rest of the handset is a typical WinMob handset. Using your fingers to navigate and access certain portions of the screens like the corners is not very easy for stubby fingers. Most women and perhaps surgeons may not have too much to worry about in this case. But it’s still workable for most part without the use of the stylus. The keyboard is great and has all the necessary shortcuts you’ll need rendering the tiny onscreen keyboard, Transcriber Block recognizer or the other display oriented methods of input redundant.

Even with a Qualcomm MSM7200 528MHz processor, the handset I received for testing was horribly slow. After sending a message, the option to dismiss the ‘Message Sent option’ will stay onscreen for at least 20 seconds before it gets processed. That’s just the simplest thing I could think of at this moment, believe me, there were a few other instances. Again it could be an issue with just this one handset; nevertheless it’s something to think about. �

Tags: Windows Mobile 6.1 , Xperia

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