I love playing with new phones when it comes out so when I heard that Sony Ericsson was releasing an Android phone I was excited. Before I continue I want to state that my last couple of phones consist of the Nokia N900, Blackberry 9700 Bold, HTC HD2 and my Google Nexus One which I love.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is Beautiful compared to my recent phones. The hard ware is classy and top notch which is usual when it comes to Sony Ericsson phones. Although the screen of the X10 is not AMOLED it still looks gorgeous on that large screen. The buttons on the phone are well thought of but I wished they placed the Micro USB on the bottom instead of on the top of the phone. Whoever designed that wasn’t thinking right. The back cover is easy to remove but in order to get the SIM or memory card out you need to remove the battery. It doesn’t bother me but some people might. Now to the software part…

The X10 unfortunately comes with Android version 1.6 but an upgrade to 2.1 is on the way. Sony Ericsson stated that they will release an update but we’re not sure when that’s going to happen. The fine developers at [...] will probably root the phone and release an efficient ROM way before Sony releases an upgrade. I haven’t used Android 1.6 since my T-Mobile HTC G1 but it isn’t that bad compared to 2.1.

Some points…

- Now to the whole keyboard issue; I tried using the stock keyboard and it is waaaay better than what everyone’s reporting. The space bar needs to be bigger but overall it’s not that bad. My nexus one stock keyboard gave me more of as fit that’s why I used Smart Keyboard pro which works great on the X10. Whoever plans on getting an X10 will eventuall download and customize their X10 so I don’t see it as a big problem.

- Sony Ericsson’s Timescape and Mediascape is like HTC’s Sense UI, but it’s not as rooted. Timescape and Mediascape was a little slow when I used it in the beginning so I removed it altogether and will wait for an update. I think Timescape and Mediascape seems to be the cause of everyone’s complaint that the phone is lagging. If you don’t use Timescape or Mediascape the phone works fast and flawlessly. My stock Nexus One before being rooted was actually slow so I decided to root and use the faster ROMs. That’s why when the X10 is rooted I will definitely root it myself to make the phone even better.

- I love that the phone works flawlessly with T-Mobile USA’s 3G bands. When you put your SIM card make sure you have the T-Mobile Android plan then configure the phone’s Access Point settings. If you have 3G in your area you’ll love the access.

The one drawback of this phone is that it’s expensive which a lot of people think is overpriced. Most Sony Ericsson smartphones were always expensive. I used to have the Sony Ericsson P900 and Xperia X1 and they were expensive when they first came out. I want to rate this phone based on how fun it is and not use price as a factor.

Overall, I love the phone even for the shortcomings because I see the potential in the horizon. If you can look past the price and just enjoy the phone I think you will be very pleased like me.
Rating: 5 / 5

this phone has the following problems:

1-outdated in terms of software: old version of android OS is loaded. it is unknown when SE will update the software. given how long SE took to release this phone, one can only imagine how it would take forever for them to release the update to android 2.1, as opposed to the shabby old 1.6 that the device ships with.

2-laggy slow UI all over, but most importantly and most painfully is the non-usable extremely slow virtual keyboard. it is true that one can replace SE’s virtual keyboard with a third party application from the android market but stock keyboards WILL ALWAYS run smoother and faster than a 3d party app virtual keyboard. having a non-usable virtual keyboard on a smartphone is like purchasing a brand new ferrari excep that its steering wheel does not work. how are u gonna ride it and show it off?

3-outdated hardware: yes believe it or not, this phone is outdated for a few reasons.

one, the touch screen cannot support multi-touch input (hardware issue, not software). so in the future, if android develops new multitouch gestures, then this phone won’t be capable of handling them.

two, the touch screen is TFT, not AMOLED.

three, no LED flash. it’s a light that is painful to activate. you have to click like a million clicks before you finally snap a picture in the dark.

four, no front-facing camera

five, no capacitive buttons. this phone has old-fashioned physical buttons.

six, ringer and speaker have low volume.

4-for all these flaws, you’d expect the x10 to be cheaper than the nexus one, but it is not. it’s actually costlier!!! the two jewels in this phone are supposedly timescape and mediascape. but in reality, timescape is cool but of little use in the practical sense; it just gives too much information. mediascape takes advantage of stock android’s poor media player, but make no mistake, future android versions will have an imporved mediaplayer that will render mediascape unimportant.

SE delayed the release of this phone in a strange way. many tech blogs, pundits, and forum members predicted this outcome: that the X10 would be outdated in both hard and soft ware before it’s even released, and not only that but also overpriced.

Rating: 2 / 5