Sony Ericsson: What were you thinking?
In my seemingly never ending quest to find the right smartphone to replace my aging Blackberry, I decided to try out an Android phone: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.
The verdict: nice phone, decent price, but it has the feeling of being only half-baked. And Sony Ericsson's promises to make it whole ended up being hollow. Here's what I found:
I knew going in that the Xperia X10 ran on the older Android 1.6, but Sony Ericsson had confirmed it would push an update to make the phone run on Android 2.1 by the end of September. So, it was a good bet. That didn't happen -- more on that later.
Let's start with the hardware: The screen is crisp and bright and I didn't have much trouble using it out in the sunlight. Some people have complained that it smudges easily but I didn't find the X10 to be anymore smudge-prone than the iPhone. The build seemed solid and the curve of the unit is a nice change from other, boxier phones. The 8-megapixel camera took great photos in normal light, though the shutter lagged a bit [sluggishness is an endemic issue.] And the lack of flash made me recall how much I disliked taking photos on older generation iPhones.
The otherwise solid construction was marred by two things: The volume during calls was at times too low to make conversations audible in a noisy room, and the speaker was completely sub-par making it usable only in the quietest settings. I had trouble hearing phone calls in my car using the speaker and had to break out the Sony Ericsson-supplied earbuds that thankfully were very good. But no excuse for the bad sound levels.
Also, I could foresee the buttons along the bottom of the phone wearing down from use. They had an uncomfortable feel to them that was out of place on the otherwise cushy X10.
Now for the OS: Android really is a great mobile operating system in large measure because of the way it integrates with online services from Google and others. It was a snap to sync my email, contacts, and calendar, which I all have on Goggle Apps for Business. But when it came time to sync my Gmail account, I figured out the real big problem with running Android 1.6: No support for multiple Google accounts. This meant I needed to choose which account to sync using the Gmail app, which integrates with all other Google apps, and which to sync using the built-in Sony Ericsson email handler.
The company must have included its own app as a stop-gap measure until it could get the Android 2.1 update out to users. But because of that limitation I couldn't use certain apps like Google Listen, which will only sync on regular Gmail accounts and not an Apps account.
The older OS also meant that I couldn't run some apps like the official Android Twitter app, or the beta of Tweetdeck. In fact, you couldn't run any betas because AT&T doesn't allow you to download any app that's not on the official Android Marketplace. Rooting the Xperia X10 might allow this but according to the forums a practical solution for rooting is a long way off.
The overall performance of the phone is just ok. I was expecting something entirely snappier considering the X10 has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor. In fact, the phone was downright sluggish at times with the aforementioned shutter lag and screen swipes that took longer than usual. Battery life was not bad. It's about what you expect from a recent smartphone, which is to say that you better have a power source nearby if you want to get through a work day using your phone. I liked the fact that you could snap the back off rather easily and swap batteries if you needed to.
Let me say a word about Timescape and Mediascape -- Sony Ericsson's overlay to the Android OS. They suck. I'm sure the engineers must have patted themselves on the back about how pretty and ingenious their efforts were, but I doubt that much real-world field testing was done. I want granular control over what's shown on my screen at all times, and the UI for sifting through emails, tweets and text messages is cute for about 10 seconds but it becomes tiresome when you want to find something quickly. Take a cue from WebOS -- they got it right. Hell, or just look at the HTC Sense overlay, which is great on the Sprint EVO I tried.
Oh, and a word about software updates. A few people on Twitter warned me beforehand that Android updates were hit or miss depending on the manufacturer. HTC seems to push them out fairly regularly, though carriers like AT&T and Sprint have the final say on when users can have them. But Sony Ericsson, which released the Xperia X10 back in March has so far had a terrible record of keeping up with Android updates. That promised September update: it's now been pushed to late October, and that's when the carriers get it so users may conceivably have to wait until late November to see an update that most Android users have had for months now.
I could never recommend this phone in its current state -- not at any price. That's not to say I wouldn't buy another Sony Ericsson phone, but the company would have to win me over again.
Here's a more thorough review of the Xperia X10 hardware and software and the writer takes an opposing view to mine.

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