LATEST TECHNOLOGY

Sony Ericsson XPERIA's sides are quite loaded. On the right side, we find the double volume control button and the photo / video camera button. The left side presents the miniUSB slot in which you can plug the charger and the data cable, plus a speaker. Also on this side, in the top corner, we find (hidden) the metal stylus. On the top side, we find the ON / OFF button and the slot for the standard 3.5 mm audio jack. XPERIA X1 is the first terminal from Sony Ericsson, which has a slot of this kind. The bottom side presents only the hand strap socket.

The phone's back side is occupied by the 3.2 MP camera, with a LED flash and several other brand emblems. Under the metal cover, we find a standard Li-Polymer battery 1500 mAh, which in stand-by mode resists between 600 and 800 hours (depending on the network that is used) and between 6 and 10 hours of talk time. The SIM card slot, as well as the microSD card slot can be found under the battery.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is the first terminal of the SE company that runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional therefore the terminal will have the dedicated menu of the operating system. It can be accessed from the Start button located in the upper right corner.

The terminal has a Qualcomm MSM 7200 528 MHz processor, 256 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM, plus the 4 GB of internal memory. It is worth mentioning that the display of this phone must be calibrated well from the beginning. It is recommended to use the stylus; if not, you will be surprised to see that the touchscreen will not respond correctly to your commands.

In stand-by mode, the screen displays the Windows Start bar (at the top) and the "Calendar" and "Contacts" submenus can be found at the bottom of the screen. Some of the menus can be accessed through the Start button, found on the upper left corner. The user has available: the Mobile Office suite, Calendar, Contacts, Internet Explorer, Messaging, Phone, Programs, Settings and Help menu. Even if you have the Internet Explorer browser, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 comes with Opera Mini 9.5 preinstalled. It can be found in the Programs menu, where users also find programs like Windows Media Player classic, MSN Messenger, YouTube, or the GPS. The Office suite is composed from Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word, plus the Java, ZIP and Adobe Reader support.

The music player is among the best players currently available. Unlike other smartphones or PocketPCs, the sound played by the XPERIA is very good. The music player supports MP3 and AAC audio formats and the songs can be sorted by album, artist and genre. Unfortunately, the player does not support the equalizer function, but it has Shuffle and Repeat All or Repeat One. Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 supports only the MP4 and 3GP video formats. However, you can install an application that lets you play DivX and XviD video formats.

If you got tired of the music stored on the internal memory of 4 GB, you can try the FM radio. As the multimedia menu, the radio is in one of the panels from the user interface. Of course, you need to connect the headphones because, as with other phones, they play the role of the antenna. You can scan automatically for a radio station, but you can manually search for radio stations too. In addition, the phone will show on the screen the selected radio station.

By the time when Sony Ericsson XPERIA was just a rumor, it was believed that this model would come equipped with a 5-Megapixel camera. However, the official announcement revealed that the terminal has a camera of just 3.2 Megapixels. Although it has LED flash and autofocus, the image quality captured does not have the best quality. The user interface of the camera is simple and intuitive. However, one thing worth mentioning is the special feature called Touch Focus. This allows the user to change the focal point of the camera by simply moving it on the screen. On the video chapter, Sony Ericsson XPERIA is doing well and not well. It captures videos at a maximum VGA resolution with 30 frames per second. However, this is not impressive when other terminals manage to capture videos at resolutions higher than 120 frames per second. However, XPERIA also remains the first PocketPC with such a video capture capability.

This model has GPRS Class 10 with download speeds ranging between 32 kbps and 48 kbps, EDGE Class 10 with download speeds up to 236.8 kbps, 3G HSDPA (7.2 Mbps), Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g, Bluetooth version 2.0 with A2DP and a miniUSB port. Surfing the Internet is easy, because XPERIA has the Windows browser, Internet Explorer, as well as Opera Mini 9.5 and WAP 2.0 that supports XHTML and HTML. The data transfer is also very easy, and can be done both via Bluetooth and via USB. The USB cable can also play the role of the charger, but leaving aside this aspect, at the moment the cable is connected to the PC you can choose between Active Sync and Disk Drive. The first option requires you to install some drivers from the CD you received in the package. By selecting the "Mass storage device" mode, the computer recognizes the terminal as a data storage device. The ActiveSync from your CD must be installed for data transfers between the PC and the phone. By doing this, you have the ability to store music files, pictures and movies and whatever you need on the phone. The transfer is fast so you will not grow old in front of your PC.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA comes with a built-in GPS receiver, and the information for the aGPS can be downloaded via Wi-Fi or via 2G or 3G connectivity. In addition, the phone has Google Maps pre-installed that does its job very well, and the screen has a very good visibility because it is big enough. However, the model does not come with a preinstalled navigation system so you need to install one separately.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA is and probably will remain, one of the most attractive and equipped smartphone currently available. The phone gets points for its appearance, the good screen, the full QWERTY (and easy to use keyboard) and, especially, the system applied by the X-Panel interface.

The good news is that in the end, when we draw the line, Sony Ericsson XPERIAmanages to collect more pluses than minuses.