Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 deals & review

In a word or two

The successor to the Xperia X1, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 packs some new and advanced features into its deceptively lightweight frame.

The Design

As you would expect from Sony Ericsson, the Xperia X2 is stylish and pleasing to look at and hold. The design is simple yet sleek with the 3.2 inch screen dominating the front of the phone and the colour scheme is clean, available in a choice of black or silver exterior.

It is a slim phone at only 16mm deep and the slide out keyboard is a full QWERTY one. Typing on the keyboard is comfortable and compares well to the X1. The auto rotate touchscreen is extremely high resolution and displays images in vibrant colour and detail, enhancing your experience of a particular feature.

Specifications

The Xperia X2 is a smartphone which runs on the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system and boasts all the benefits that accompany this. Whether you want to use your phone for your business or personal lifestyle, the Pocket Office on the X2 is bound to be invaluable. You can write blogs or proposals while on the go using Word, edit spreadsheets in Excel, and prepare presentations in PowerPoint. The X2 also has OneNote and a PDF viewer.

The Xperia panels interface is user-friendly and the phone comes with 14 panels pre-loaded with 16 more available for download. These panels mean you can add Google to your Xperia X2 or call friends for free using Skype or keep in contact with world affairs with CNN. You can even set the different features to appear on your home screen at different times, for example, Skype at lunchtime, CNN in the afternoon and games in the evening.

Communication is easy with the Xperia X2, whether you want to text, send a multimedia message, email or enjoy instant messaging with friends. And the SlideView feature means you will never miss an important call or email as it notifies you of all missed messages.

There are two features, however, which to our mind make the Xperia X2 stand out from the crowd. It comes with TV out connectivity which means you can prepare a presentation using the installed PowerPoint and then show it on a big screen. This is great for business and also means you could share images with friends and family – for example, you could have a slide show of your holiday snaps.

The camera on the X2 is 8 megapixel and is feature-rich including autofocus, an LED flash, face detection, touch focus and geo-tagging. It is a real bonus to have such a good camera on your smartphone and with the X2 you can also easily upload photos onto Facebook.

Considerations

The internal memory on the Xperia X2 is only 110MB. Considering all its features and capabilities, this is slightly disappointing. It does, however, have an expandable memory up to 16GB via its microSD slot.

Verdict

The Xperia X2 is full of fun, business and communication features which include Xperia panels, Pocket Office, 3D games and GPS. The phone also looks good and is user-friendly with a comfortable QWERTY slide out keyboard.