Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 review

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 really took some extra time to reach India, while it was launched in the other parts of the world quite earlier. However, the wait is now officially over and Indian customers can now pick up the 4-inch Android-powered high-end device at Rs. 35,795.

But does the latest Sony Ericsson device really offer value for money to the users at this high price point?

Well, on the first impressions, it's not a definitive "yes!" The Xperia X10 is gigantic and young mobile phone users can easily get attracted to this device, largely due to its 4-inch capacitive touchscreen and an 8.1 megapixel camera. However, there are many points to consider before you can finally give your verdict to this new Sony smartphone.

First of all, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 lacks the subtlety or charm of the HTC HD2, which is also about the same size. Also, the UI does seem a bit lackluster – mostly when if you're used to having HTC's Sense UI on your device. The device offers Android Vanilla – without a skin. And it is no way near as impressive, intuitive or user-friendly as, say, HTC's Sense UI, which takes full advantage of Android.

The Xperia X10 is runs a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which is a real big plus to this device, as browsing, flicking between menus, typing and running apps gives a very pleasant experience to the users. Looks wise, the Xperia X10 disappoints again. This is partly due to the faux-metallic plastic front that was common on lower-end budget devices back in 2007.

While using this device, the first thing that you will notice is that you can't operate the Xperia X10 with just one hand. For this issue, the credit goes to the the size of the Xperia X10. Also, the hardware buttons are hard to access as these are placed at the bottom of the handset.

Even though, the Xperia X10 is predominantly a touchscreen device but users still need to use the hardware buttons from time to time and it would have been better if they were positioned in a very accessible place. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and for this matter, we found the Xperia X10 testing experience quite annoying.

As witnessed earlier, the basic UI on the Xperia X10 is a little, well, dull. However, Sony Ericsson have clearly tried to cover this issue with the feature known as Time Line. The handset comes equipped with Timescape, which is essentially a means of consolidating all your mail, texts and social networking data into a single place. On the first inspection, the Xperia X10 does this admirably.

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, it doesn't render well the images on the widget that it pulls from either Facebook or Twitter, which makes it a bit of an eyesore on your home screen.

Timescape is good as a quick reference tool. With this widget, you can simply access what is going on in the world of social networking by simply glancing at it. Alternatively, you can flick through it leaf-by-leaf until you find out what exactly you're searching for – and all in a very quick time 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 on the flip side, it just isn't really appealing – simply put, 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.

The device offers excellent web browsing experience, for which the Xperia X10's huge TFT capacitive touchscreen is really supportive. The next pleasant experience that you may have with this device is while watching the videos on this handset. The videos appear in crisp colour and at a size that you can actually watch – we were quite surprised to notice that how engrossed we became while watching videos on the Xperia X10 device. Certainly, the big screens do make a big difference.

The Xperia X10 sports an excellent camera as well. In fact, the superb camera function is probably one of its strongest point. The Xperia X10's 8 megapixel camera captures images 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.

Another feature that comes with this device is Mediascape, which altogether attempts to do the same thing that Timescape does – just with music and pictures. And, you're gonna like it, as it actually does a good job. It looks a lot better than Timescape and is actually quite useful for finding 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.

In the nut shell, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 looks like a safe bet - it's got a massive 1GHz Snapdragon processor, it's Android-powered, sports 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 that promising as it appears on the papers.