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Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

Top10 Gadgets — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:46:16 +0000

It’s taken almost six months since its official nod for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 to finally make its way onto the high street, finally arriving on Virgin Mobile. In that time its operating system, Android, has become ubiquitous and upped its powers, with the bleeding edge 2.1 version of Google’s OS out on the prowl in the HTC Desire and Google Nexus One. The Xperia X10’s reliance on the ageing 1.6, Donut, platform appears almost suicidal on Sony Ericsson’s part.

But the Xperia X10 cannot be judged solely on its older edition of Android. This is a truly stunning smartphone and undoubtedly Sony Ericsson’s greatest design achievement to date. In terms of looks and build, only the HTC Legend comes close when you consider the current crop of top end mobiles.

The tapered rear means the Xperia X10 sits beautifully in the hand and definitely makes it more comfortable for extended use when compared to the likes of the HTC Legend and the HTC Desire. Unlike older Sony Ericsson models, the focus is very much on keeping things minimal and sleek. The slimline 13mm body rocks just camera, volume and power buttons, as well as a much-welcomed 3.5mm jack, all without drawing away from the device’s central focus, that huge 4-inch (480x854) screen.

No matter which way you cut it, the inclusion of this monster panel makes the Xperia X10 a huge handset when up against the dinky HTC Legend. But it really is testament to the design labs that this phone never feels like a monster when you’re fondling it or slipping into a pair of jeans a lithe, youthful Mick Jagger would have trouble getting into.

That size also means Sony Ericsson can shoehorn in some truly stellar specs. There’s the latest 1 Ghz Snapdragon processor, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, AGPS,1GB internal memory, micro SD support up to 32GB and Bluetooth 2.1. We fired everything up the minute we got the phone, with the battery kaput in around 20 hours, after a raft of calls, texts, emails and web browsing. That’s a relatively average return, but can be tweaked by ensuring Bluetooth and Wi-Fi aren’t on all day.

Screen dream

The screen itself is excellent, although we would have liked to have seen it bumped to AMOLED in light of HTC’s like the Desire and Legend. That said, the 450 x 854 effort is absolutely perfect for watching movies on the move. Clips are beautifully rendered and look far better than on an iPhone or iPod touch, with the extra screen real estate giving your mobile movie experience a real lift.

In terms of the screen’s touchable style, there’s no denying this is Sony Ericsson’s very best effort to date, beating the Vivaz hands down. Swipes are registered every time and it has the same easy to tap icons that make other Android phones perfect for touchscreen tech. That said, multitouch is missing, something we find hard to fathom if this wants to kick it with the big boys.

The touchscreen is also let down by a poor onscreen keyboard. We found getting up to speed with its quirks a real struggle, with the X10 requiring spot on prods every time in order for your text to appear neat and perfect first time. This compares poorly to the ace keyboard on the HTC Legend, which feels far more reassured when firing off missives to your mates. The space bar on the keypad is tiny, meaning you often accidentally pick punctuation marks instead of the gaps in text you want. Fortunately, you can switch to the vanilla Android QWERTY as seen on the Nexus One and Motorola Milestone, although this, again, is nowhere near as good as HTC’s peachy version. This can be put down to Android 1.6: Android 2.1’s update offers a more stable, skilful keyboard solution.

Software struggles

The reliance on Android 1.6 is definitely an issue. For a phone that’s been held back for six months, it puts it well behind the Legend and Nexus One in terms of core Android skills. That’s not to say it doesn’t have the easy Gmail set up from the get go, or the familiar menu system and Android Market on board. But it does lack some key functionality that by now is standard on all high end handsets. There’s no multiple Gmail account support, so you can’t hot swap between different accounts or merge mailboxes from your different Google email addresses.

That said, we’re impressed by multitasking, which is handled with a simple press of the central hard key, bringing up a roster of the apps you have open, letting you tap into them stat. It’s an easy-to-use and much welcome function.

However, the older version of Android does bring with it some speed issues. The X10 is remarkably slow to start up. We’re talking three minutes from pressing the power key to getting the homescreen up and running. Hopefully the mooted over-the-air update to Android 2.1 can fix this.

Skinning skills

The X10’s trump card though is its new UI, where the system is split between Timescape and Mediascape functions. The latter houses all your music, video and photos, letting you choose the media you want swiftly by swiping through your collection. But it’s the much-hyped Infinity key which really makes Mediascape tick, bringing up a raft of recommended videos and music, the latter available for direct download. It’s a swish and clever addition which gives it the jump on HTC Sense’s media smarts.

Music playback is also as you’d expect from Sony Ericsson. It has the feel of a Walkman device and is by far the best we’ve seen on an Android phone so far, as this is an area where Google’s OS has struggled in the past. Although the Xross Media Bar has gone, left to handsets like the Vivaz. Timescape is also a winner, aggregating social networks and email into tiles which you can flick through using the touchscreen, integrating contacts with those from your SIM. The set up process is simply a case of adding deets from Facebook, Twitter or Gmail and watching the messages roll in. It’s very similar to HTC’s Friend Stream on the Desire and Legend, but we think this is a tad more powerful and easier to use, although the tile view can appear confusing by comparison.

Snapper’s delight

The 8 megapixel peeper on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is, as you’d expect, one of the stars of the show. That 4-inch screen means working up your shots is much easier than on smaller rivals like the HTC Legend. There are nine scene modes, smile detection and face recognition, with pics coming out very sharp and clean in good light. The single LED flash, however, means this isn’t a winner when the sun goes down, with shots appearing grainy and noisy unless you’re in a well lit room.

You can’t deny that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is a corking smartphone. From its gorgeous design to its support for the increasingly excellent Android OS, it has everything it needs to be the iPhone-killer Sony Ericsson so obviously wants it to be.

But that’s to miss a few fundamental factors. The lack of Android 2.1 is really disappointing and Sony Ericsson’s excuses for not having it on board at the get go fall on deaf ears. In the six months since its official unveiling, the HTC Legend and others have taken the Xperia X10 to the cleaners.

It is clear though that Sony Ericsson should stick to Android. The new UI is fantastic and if the Android 2.1 update can get on board soon, this is a phone well worth taking a long hard look at. For design fanatics, the choice between the Legend and X10 is tough. The Legend offers HTC Sense and Android 2.1, but the large screen, excellent camera and 1GHz processor make the X10 worth a look. It's available now for free on Virgin Mobile £35 tariffs, with unlimited web browsing.

Specification Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

Size

119.0 x 63.0 x 13.0 mm
4.7 x 2.5 x 0.5 inches

Weight

135.0 g
4.8 oz

Screen

480 x 854 pixels WVGA
65,536-color TFT touchscreen

Memory

Phone memory 1GB
microSD™ up to 16GB, 8GB included

Camera

Camera - 8.1 Megapixel

Digital Zoom - up to 16x

Auto focus

Face recognition

Image stabiliser

Flash / light type - Photo light

Send to web

Video recording

Video light

Geo-tagging

Smile detection

Music

TrackID™

Media Player

Album art

Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)

PlayNow™

Music tones - MP3, AAC

Internet

Bookmarks

Google™ search

Web feeds

Web browser - WebKit

Entertainment

Media

3D games

YouTube™.

Video streaming

Video Clip

Sony Ericsson Mediascape

Connectivity

3.5 mm audio jack

Wisepilot™ turn-by-turn navigation*

aGPS

Google Maps™

Bluetooth™ technology

Synchronisation PC

USB support

WiFi™

Design

Onscreen QWERTY keyboard

Auto rotate

Picture wallpaper

By Joe Minihane

Sony Ericsson Vivaz

Top10 Gadgets — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:53:42 +0000

The new Sony Ericsson Vivaz is full of media promise – an 8MP camera, HD video recording and an 8GB memory card, combined with a full touchscreen interface, make this a real contender for Sony Ericsson.

We're not sure that there's still room for a high end smartphone with a media focus over other functionality - but read on to find out whether the Vivaz ticks the right boxes.

Sony Ericsson claims to have thought about ergonomics with the Vivaz, and to that end has come out with a chassis that represents 'human curvature' - ie, it's nicely curved and sits well in the hand.

It feels little plasticky when you pick it up for the first time - there's no comforting weight like you get with other top end smartphones, like the Legend from HTC.

But the 3.2-inch touchscreen is pretty expansive in the chassis, and despite the phone's diminutive dimensions (107 x 51.7 x 12.5 mm), we didn't feel like finger space was at a premium.

However, we were less impressed with resistive screen - Sony Ericsson and Nokia are still banging this drum as they say it's better for handwriting recognition, but we honestly can't see this as a must-have feature.

The UI is similar to that of the Satio, as the Vivaz follows this model as the second Sony Ericsson to run on Symbian 5th edition allowing icon customising.

This means finger friendly icons to push, and despite the resistive screen the phone still responded fairly well to the touch, thanks to the new glass screen, and menus were pretty easy to navigate.

Media madness

Past the superficial, this phone excels in a couple of areas - photography/video capture and media.

The former is probably the best we've seen on a phone, especially when it comes to recording HD video, which is available at 720p - not bad for a phone of this size.

The video quality is more than passable as well - the 24fps frame rate is tip-top, and makes video recorded very smooth.

The 8.1MP camera is also pretty good - pictures can be snapped speedily, and the quality is high - even at high zoom level the quality isn't lost.

Sony Ericsson has also added a huge number of photography options to play with - from smile capture mode to panorama, as well as white balance correction, you're easily able to take the best picture with the Vivaz.

We mentioned media as another plus point - this is mostly down to Sony Ericsson adding in a 3.5mm headphone jack into the mix. It's the second phone the brand has done this with (the first being the W995) and is a real plus point, seeing as it was missing on the Satio.

The excellent XMB overlay is once again in effect - easily sorting your media in the relevant categories when you first slip over some media, either by plugging the phone into your PC or slotting in a microSD card.

The music quality is good, and video looks cracking on the near HD screen - we're not sure the screen size is the right format for long movie marathons, but if you're after the odd TV show, this is good enough.

A spot of browsing

However, ploughing further into the Vivaz and things are less exciting - the internet browser is only OK, and takes a while to load up pages, even over Wi-Fi.

And compared to the slick nature of the iPhone or Android phones, the Vivaz has trouble jumping from Wi-Fi and 3G. If you want to browse the web over the mobile 'net when out and about but connect to your router when you get in, you'll have to reconnect with a cumbersome pop-up.

Web pages did render well, and while there's no flash player on board as far as we could see, we weren't too unimpressed.

Call quality is OK as well - although it oddly didn't feel too face friendly when holding the phone to the ear, and sometimes the speaker sounded pretty fuzzy to us.

Messaging was also pretty good - the screen is smaller than other phones out there, and the resistive screen can be hard to text on, but overall using the phone in landscape mode made for some pretty swift messaging - and push Exchange email from RoadSync is pretty handy as well.

Mug or Mogul?

It's easy to see where Sony Ericsson is positioning this phone - the media-loving market is going to get a real kick out of this phone.

However, for £70 more you can pick up the Samsung i8910HD - the same 8MP camera, 720p video recording but with a large 3.7-inch OLED screen, which means media looks stunning on the display.

However it's a really chunky beast, and if you're more about the pocket friendliness, then you should check out the Vivaz - even over its larger brother, the Satio.

Vivaz™ Specifications

Size

107.0 x 52.0 x 12.5 mm

4.2 x 2.0 x 0.5 inches

Screen

360x640 pixel
16,777,216 colour 16:9 nHD touchscreen (TFT)

Memory

Phone memory 75MB
SanDisk microSD™ (up to 16GB)

Networks

GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900

UMTS/HSPA 900/2100

Camera

Flash / light type - Photo light

Digital Zoom - up to 4x