Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 review

The Xperia X10 is Sony Ericsson’s first Android handset and there’s no doubting that the basic specs are impressive. A 4 inch screen delivering 480 x 854 pixels is not to be sniffed at, nor is the 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 8 megapixel camera and 8GB of microSD card provided storage.

The large screen dominates the front of the handset, with three small buttons for Back, Menu and Home functions beneath it. The sides are minimally buttoned. There is nothing on the bottom or left, a camera button and volume rocker on the right, and on/off/lock switch, microUSB connector and 3.5mm headset jack on the top edge.

The Xperia X10 runs Android 1.6 putting it behind the times somewhat. It lacks features like Microsoft Exchanges support, and for the fans of bling, live (animated) wallpapers, which are in Android 2.1. The former is provided on the Xperia X10 by the Moxier suite of apps.

Sony Ericsson’s skinning, including the Timescape and Mediascape overlays add a real dash of individuality to proceedings, though.

Timescape brings together ‘events’ in one scrolling list. An event might be a Twitter feed, Facebook update, text message or email, missed call, note of the last tune you listened to, or the last photo you took. Sony Ericsson calls each event class a ‘spline’.

As you sweep the screen horizontally (or sweep a horizontal menu) splines are listed individually so you can see what’s happening in each information stream. You can either open Timescape from the home screen or have it automatically open whenever you hit the Home button.

If you choose not to have Timescape as your home screen view you get two additional Android home screens that you can populate with widgets in the usual Android way. Choose Timescape as the home screen and horizontal scrolling moves you through the splines, so those extra Android home screens aren’t available.

One more point on Timescape. Those Facebook and Twitter ‘splines’ are incoming only. To create messages you’ll need to go to an app. For Twitter this actually means clicking through to the website, which is an almighty pain.

On the whole, Timescape proves to be far less effective than HTC’s FriendStream, as seen on the Desire, which is less flashy but more powerful and easy to use. Avoid Timescape, though, and it makes the X10 a rather vanilla Android device.

Mediascape is less innovative and is simply a way to access the music, video and photos on the handset as well as give you access to Facebook and Picasa photo streams, and for music a link to the Web browser for more details on what you are playing and to PlayNow.

The camera shoots at 8.1 megapixels and produced clear and sharp shots as we’ve come to expect from top-end Sony Ericsson handsets. We’d have preferred Xenon to the LED flash, but we like the smile shot, face detection, multi auto focus and macro modes. The side button makes it easy to use the camera for grabbing candid shots.

The large screen makes Web browsing a treat, though despite the use of a capacitive screen there is no pinch to zoom. Instead you need to tap at zoom controls or drag a zoom window over a thumbnail of an entire page. There’s no flash support either.

We found entering text very satisfying, with the screen size making for big qwerty keyboards in both wide and tall screened modes. But we’d have liked a button for hiding the keyboard as it often blocks important buttons you can only get to by scrolling.

As ever with big screened handsets there is a trade-off in hardware size which makes it difficult to pocket the device all the time, and we found we could not reach all the way across the display for one-handed use. Wi-Fi, GPS and HSDPA complete the X10 package. These are standard fare for Android handsets.

The Xperia X10 has lots of plus points but also lots of annoyances, and in the end the annoyances leave us feeling Sony Ericsson needs to do a little more work on this smartphone. It’s big idea, Timescape, is interesting but poorly implemented, and we hope that an update to Android 2.1 won’t be too far off.

Price: £490 SIM-free
Web: www.sonyericsson.com

Essential Verdict
Performance: 8/10
The 1GHz processor is nippy; battery life is expectedly average

Design: 7/10
Clean lines and a minimalist design are appealing; the large screen has pros and cons

Features: 8/10
The OS is a generation behind, and some of Sony Ericsson’s software needs polishing

Value for Money: 6/10
Very expensive when bought Sim-free, especially compared to similar phones

Overall score: 7/10
Updates could fix some of the niggles, but the X10 feels like a missed opportunity for Sony Ericsson

Review written by Sandra Vogel. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

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