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The Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 smartphone has almost everything you'd need, and is supposed to
be a strong statement that the developer is a force to be reckoned with in the coming years. But
while the potential is certainly there, there are glaring misses in the execution.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 contains many features previously unseen in Sony Ericsson mobiles.
Their earlier products in the smartphone segment have featured limited new ideas and have been
tainted by the slow, somewhat illogical UIQ interface.

In contrast, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 contains everything but the kitchen sink and uses
Windows Mobile 6.1. This gives it a lot of advantages compared to its predecessors, but also
highlights some less impressive aspects. It also lacks a bit of the Sony Ericsson "feel" in several
ways.

The outside of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 features an eye-catcher we have requested for a long
time from Sony Ericsson with regards to its Walkman music phones; a 3.5mm plug for
earphones. This is a first for Sony Ericsson and, as far as we've seen before, unique for any
Windows Mobile-based phone. Kudos. Most of the phone is solidly built with a metal shell, but
the front button are made of almost ridiculously unstable plastic, which taints our first
impressions.

A fun feature of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 is the navigation cross, with a central button that
doubles as a touchpad. It's not entirely to our liking since a mouse pointer is nowhere to be found
on-screen, a feature better implemented in, for instance, the Samsung I780 earlier this year.
(ow you use it for scrolling instead, but we find old-school clicking more effective. We find
another use for that same navigation cross when the keyboard is extended, since there are no
directional arrows in the keyboard. After using the perfect five-row keyboard on the Sony
Ericsson Xperia X1's cousin, the HTC Touch Pro, it also bothers us a bit that you have to use the
function keys to access numbers.

Apart from that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1's keyboard is good, with slightly raised separate
keys sitting a millimeter apart. It's rather comfortable to write on, but, again, not as comfortable
as the HTC Touch Pro's equivalent.

There's a good reason that we keep mentioning the HTC Touch Pro, as both phones are more or
less identical hardware-wise. The 'Sony Ericsson' Xperia X1 is being manufactured by HTC,
though Sony Ericsson has gone to lengths to communicate that they have developed the phone
without HTC:s input. Even so, it makes sense to compare the two, as both phones are based on
Windows Mobile and also are in the same price range - at least on the Swedish market.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 has a little more RAM and the display is 800x480 as opposed to
the straight-laced VGA resolution in the Touch Pro. This gives the screen, and consequently the
entire X1, a slightly longer and more narrow shell, which also explain the lack of dedicated
number keys on the keyboard.

The Windows mobile base in the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 has, like all Windows Mobile-based
touchscreen phones, been supplemented with a homegrown graphical interface called the X-
Panel, since the system itself is the textbook definition of the word clutter.

The X-Panel consists of a number of different start screens shown either as a grid or as a fan. The
only screen you cannot replace with any of the built-in (or downloadable) alternate designs is the
main Today screen that acts as Windows Mobile's foundation. Applications include a media file
drawer we've seen in other Sony Ericsson models, a calendar screen, radio, Google search and so
on.

The best screen we've seen during the test is available for free download and is an adaptation of
the SPB Mobile Shell; it simply shows everything the regular Windows interface does, but beefs
up the size to facilitate use of your index finger instead of the stylus.

The idea behind the X-Panel is solid, the execution less so. Much of the information is shown in
duplicate (in some cases triplicate) on the screens which feels a bit unnecessary, but our main
concern is the speed. It takes a few seconds just to open the X-Panel, another few seconds to
open the media library. Most of the other screens pop up quickly in low-resolution mode but then
are locked from use for yet another few seconds before the high-res version kicks in.

Another minus is the frequent appearance of graphical glitches, where elements from one panel
get stuck on-screen after you've moved on. We're pretty certain that the bugs can be fixed with a
firmware update but a phone should simply not contain so much lag in our opinion. As a
comparison the HTC Touch Flo 3d interface works very fast and seamlessly - at least on the
Touch Pro.
Another thing that bothers us is the lack of features we've come to associate with Sony Ericsson;
things that have been instrumental in making its own phones better. The music player is
somewhat recognisable from the Walkman phone product line, as long as it can handle the music
format.

Otherwise you are redirected to a somewhat messy mobile version of the Windows Media
Player. Entertaining add-ons like remote media handling via Bluetooth or the Track ID song-
recognition feature are also lacking, and will probably remain so. (ot even the music store Play
(ow Arena is adapted to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 in spite of the massive plugging Sony
Ericsson has done in other channels.

The same goes for the camera. Sony Ericsson's Cybershot line has traditionally been at the
forefront among cameraphones, but the 3.2Mp camera and software in the Sony Ericsson Xperia
X1 are of standard Windows Mobile quality - which translates to pretty ropey.

On a more positive note we'd like to mention the range of applications in the Sony Ericsson
Xperia X1; always the big strength of Windows Mobile. Apart from MS( Messenger and the
Office package, among many other things, Opera has replaced Internet Explorer as the standard
web browser, which is an improvement (however, IE is still implemented for those who'd prefer
it), and Google Maps is also installed. While we prefer Google Maps for handling of maps in
general, we would have liked to see the navigation, and especially the exercise mode, from
Wayfinder that has been a previous Sony Ericsson feature, to have been included here as well.

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On the whole, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 is an impressive phone, and together with the HTC
Touch Pro it's probably the best Windows Mobile-based smartphone so far. The cons here are its
annoying slowness and the fact that Sony Ericsson in some cases have taken the easy route with
the existing Windows features instead of implementing its own, superior ones for the platform.
Much of this criticism can be fixed, it's mainly about killing bugs and speeding up the software,
but our long-term requests would be that the next Xperia phone takes better care of Sony
Ericsson's strong heritage. Especially so, since it seems that we'll have to wait some more for the
release of the next-generation Windows Mobile.