We review the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, an Android-powered smartphone that sports a 4-inch capacitive touchscreen and a whopping 8.1 megapixel camera
Published on Apr 9, 2010
The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 has taken quite sometime to surface in the UK, which has been slightly annoying for Sony Ericsson purists as it is the one device that they could actually get excited about.
However, the wait is now officially over and UK customers can now pick up the 4-inch Android-powered beast SIM-free for under £500.
But is the Sony Ericsson actually any good?
Well, on first impressions it’s hardly a resounding “yes!” For starters, the Xperia X10 is gigantic – and we really do mean, gigantic! And while this may be a good thing in some people’s eyes we don’t particularly like this aspect of the device.
For instance, it doesn’t have either the subtlety or charm of the HTC HD2, which is about the same size, and this is one of the first major hurdles that the Xperia X10 fails to clear.
Needless to say, the Xperia X10 didn’t get off to a good start.
That said, the Xperia X10 is powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which does give it quite a bit of oomph, so browsing, flicking between menus, typing and running apps is a very pleasant experience.
However, the UI does seem a little empty – especially if you’re used to having HTC’s Sense UI on your device.
Sony Ericsson has really missed a trick here, as Android Vanilla – without a skin – is no way near as impressive, intuitive or user-friendly as, say, HTC’s Sense UI, which, as we all know, takes full advantage of Android. Sony Ericsson should have anticipated this during the development process because it is a glaringly obvious that the device needs something similar to HTC’s Sense UI.
Looks wise, the Xperia X10 isn’t going to win any prizes. This is partly to do with the fact that it couldn’t look more like a Sony Ericsson device if it tried – it even has the faux-metallic plastic front that was common on lower-end budget devices back in 2007.
Another issue we had with the Xperia X10 is that you can’t really operate it with just one hand. This is largely down to the size of the Xperia X10 and the hardware buttons are in a very hard-to-get-to place at the bottom of the device.
Granted, it’s predominantly a touchscreen device but you still have to use the hardware buttons from time to time and for this reason they need to be in a very accessible place. Unfortunately, they aren’t on the Xperia X10 and during testing this proved to be quite annoying.
As we said, the basic UI on the Xperia X10 is a little, well, dull. However, Sony Ericsson have clearly tried to compensate this with the known as Time Line.
Timescape is essentially a means of consolidating all your mail, texts and social networking data into a single place. On first inspection, the Xperia X10 does this admirably – so long as you think it’s 2005. Unfortunately, both for Sony Ericsson and the user, it isn’t 2005 anymore.
In addition to this, Timescape can also be stored as a widget on one of your home screens, which makes it easy for quick reference – one of our favourite aspects of Android.
However, the pictures it pulls from either Facebook or Twitter are not rendered very well on the widget, which makes it a bit of an eyesore on your home screen.
Granted, Timescape is good as a quick reference tool. For instance, simply glancing at it will tell you what is going on in the world of social networking and, if not, you can flick through it leaf-by-leaf until you find what you’re looking for – and all without any lag we might add. However, it’s not a patch on Friend Stream.
The Timescape home screen widget displays a picture of your contact with the text, or status, displayed on top of it – a social networking leaf. Yes, Timescape may do what it sets out to do, which is to pull info from Twitter and Facebook, but it just doesn’t look very good, and this is a problem for us – basically, it just looks a bit cheap.
Typing is a relatively pleasant experience on the Xperia X10, whether you’re doing email or a quick text. The Xperia X10’s virtual keyboard is responsive and, thanks to the massive Snapdragon processor, very snappy, – we didn’t experience any lag whatsoever – which is something of a rarity on Android devices.
Browsing the web is, again, a very nice experience, which is largely thanks to the Xperia X10’s huge TFT capacitive touchscreen.
Videos are also displayed in crisp colour and at a size that you can actually watch – we were quite surprised by how engrossed we became viewing videos on the Xperia X10. Big screens make a big difference.
The camera function is also superb on the Xperia X10 as well. In fact, it’s probably one of its strongest point. The Xperia X10’s 8 megapixel camera shoots at a resolution of 3264x2448 pixels and has a whole host of cool features, such as touch focus, image stabilisation, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, as well as auto-focus and LED flash
Mediascape attempts to do the same thing that Timescape does – just with music and pictures. And in some ways, it actually does a good job. For starters, it looks a lot better than Timescape and is actually quite useful for when you want to find a track, a picture or both at the same time – although, it’s hardly a strong enough stand-alone-feature to sell a device on.
On paper, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 looks like a safe bet, it’s got a massive 1GHz Snapdragon processor, it’s Android-powered, has an 8-megapixel camera and all the connectivity you could possibly ever require – 2G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Edge etc.
However, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 isn’t a safe bet – it’s a dud.
The device itself is very disappointing and lacks any sort of ambition.
That said, if it came out in 2008 it would be a very different story – sadly though, it’s not 2008 and quite a bit has happened since then. Maybe someone should tell Sony Ericsson.
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