Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 deals & review

The first Windows Mobile smartphone from Sony Ericsson is considered one of the best Windows Mobile smartphone on the planet. It’s as simple as that. Sporting a full QWERTY slider with a touchscreen, the XPERIA X1 is not only remarkable for their aristocratic look that is simply above many similar handsets but also for what’s under the hood. 

Its Widows Mobile 6.5 Pro is powered by a Qualcomm MSM 7200 processor clocked at 528 MHz. It measures 110 x 52.6 x 17mm enough to house some navigational buttons and an optical trackpad when closed and a 3-inch TFT LCD touchscreen with Half VGA resolution and the usual 65k colors as can be expected from a Widows-driven handset. 

It’s easy to forgive its lack of gravity accelerometer. You get a choice of two colors – solid black or steel silver. Its complex electronics must account for its rather hefty 145g.

Multimedia at its Finest

Sony Ericsson handsets, especially their flagship, and the X1 is one of them, won’t be true to the name without its Cybershot and Walkman heritage that have defined what a capable multimedia handset has become.

Its imaging carries an average but competent 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash. It has touch focus allowing you to focus on anything on the view finder (the screen) without altering your composition. It also has full VGA video recording at a remarkable 30fps frame rate. There’s also a secondary front facing video call camera.

Its media players support MP3 and AAC audio files a well as MP4 video files. Once your media files run out, you can switch to its stereo FM radio with RDS. There’s a speakerphone but you stereo listening experience is better served from either its 3.5mm headphone jack or go wireless using its A2DP profile support over Bluetooth.

3G Phone Features

The X1 is a quad band GSM (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) with class 10 GPRS/EDGE and a tri band UMTS in 3G with HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA at 2 Mbps for fast data speeds online. It supports hotspot internet access with its WiFi 802.11b/g while local data transfers and syncing get wired microUSB 2.0 and wireless Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. 

There’s a GPS receiver with A-GPS support that allow you to download satellite data over WiFi and 3G. Unfortunately it doesn’t come pre-installed with GPS navigation apps but it comes with Google Maps for a start.

Phone memory gets a 256 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM with nearly unlimited phonebook contact entries as call records. You get microSD memory expandability up to 16 GB for all your multimedia files on the road. Its standard lithium polymer battery rated at 1500 mAh (BST-41) is powerful enough to yield up to 10 hours of talk time on 2G and 833 hours when in standby. It SAR EU rating is 0.57 W/kg.

Software-wise, the XPERIA X1 is preloaded with Pocket Office, the MS version of its popular desktop productivity tools on the mobile platform. It comes with the usual Internet Explorer supporting RSS feeds, a picture editor for blogging, IM, Push Email and standard Email.