In the review below, I will take you through an objective view of my feelings and insights towards using the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 for 1 week.
I have laid out what I believe to be the important points and left out what I feel is unnecessary to mention to ensure the review contains quality content.
Package Contents:
The contents supplied in the packaging are:
Construction, Design, Size & Materials
At first the size of the phone in your hand is overwhelming, but once you switch on the screen, you get used to the size very quickly. After a few hours of playing on the phone, it actually becomes awkward to hold a smaller phone.
The back of the phone is made of a soft plastic type material that feels almost rubbery and is very nice to hold. The material grips the palm of your hand and removes the risk of the phone slipping out of your hand.
On the top of the phone, there is a power button, 3.5mm headphone out and the Sony Proprietary format USB with a little plastic cover over it. In my opinion, the USB is out of place at the top of the phone and would better be suited at the bottom of the phone.
On the right side of the phone there is a volume up and volume down switch which also doubles as the zoom for the camera. There is also a button to be used for taking photos which depresses halfway to autofocus the camera.
The bottom of the phone has a space to be able to connect a wrist band or lanyard.
The left of the phone is where the loudspeaker is located, under a groove.
The front of the phone consists of a light sensor for auto adjusting the display as well as 3 buttons for menu, home screen and back. There are no scroll or action buttons which I found a little disappointing as I am used to using them, especially when navigating through close together links in the browser, but you will quickly get used to this.
Perhaps the strangest thing is that there is no dedicated answer or hang-up key on the phone, and the phone relies on you having to use buttons on the screen for this purpose. I found myself often pressing the menu button when a phone call came in and the back button to try hang up a call, although I believe with time you will get used to this and it will not be a major issue.
The construction and quality of materials of the phone are superb and the phone feels solid in your hand. The back of the phone will not scratch easily due to the soft plastic surface.
Display
The high resolution 854 x 480 4” capacitative TFT touchscreen of the X10 is definitely impressive. The LCD is extremely bright and colours are vivid. The screen works well when viewed under the sun, and is still workable.
The Light sensor works well to auto-adjust the brightness, although I personally prefer the brightness to be set at a constant level.
Even though the phone is manufactured with a scratch-resistant surface on the LCD, it seems to scratch easily, as within 5 days of obtaining and using the phone as I would any other phone, a small scratch has developed in the bottom left corner. Unfortunately the phone does not ship with a pouch or cover, which I believe to be a necessity when dealing with such a large screen.
The Size of the LCD at first is almost overwhelming, being a full 1” larger than what I am used to on my HTC Magic.
I watched a couple videos and previewed some images on the screen, and I believe this alone will win over many multimedia enthusiasts who want something to be able to watch videos and images on.
User Interface & Included Software
The user interface on the X10 is mostly identical to the standard Android operating system with a few minor changes.
The phone only has 3 home screens which are not uncommon in Android OS 1.6 based phones, and I believe it will be upgraded to 5 home screens when the Android 2.1 update is out.
The included Timescape software is useful but lacks slightly compared to the HTC Sense UI options, although Timescape aggregates all activity on the phone into its little history which is quite nice and makes trying to find social content a bit easier than the competitor phones.
The Timescape logs many actions such as calls, SMS’s, Facebook, Twitter, Photos captured, videos captured and a couple other things.
In terms of Gmail, I was initially having trouble syncing automatically, even though the setting was definitely enabled. I personally had to click sync to check the mails. After playing around some more on the X10, it eventually sorted itself out when I unticked and reticked the synchronize button a few times. Since then I never had any issues syncing the device.
Camera – Image & Video Recording Quality
The camera software takes a few seconds to open, however it takes longer than most phones.
The image quality of the camera is great, but it struggles to get the picture sharp each time, even with an auto-focus lens. This may be due to movement and the camera being possibly more sensitive to movement.
The LED camera light is definitely useful at night and dark areas, but the inclusion of a Xenon flash would have been better.
A nice touch on the X10 is the Shutter Button which is lacking on the HTC’s. This button allows you to push it halfway to autofocus and fully to take a photo or video.
The video quality on the X10 is superb, and will get even better once the HD Video encoding update is released at the end of the year with the update to Éclair 2.1.
Multimedia – Photos, Videos & Music
The included Sony Ericsson Mediascape software is great, and really makes browsing through the media on your phone a breeze. You just slide your finger left or right to switch between the various media formats.
The Mediascape software presents all the Photos, Music and Videos found on the phone and SD card.
The X10 has a dedicated 3.5mm audio jack which, although common in most of today’s Android phones, is still a nice touch that should be mentioned.
The Video support on the phone is great and it supports MP4, H.263, H.264 & WMV video formats although unfortunately does not support DivX at the moment.
Watching a video on the phone is pure bliss with its huge LCD and vivid colours. The phone’s processor had no hard times at all playing the content.
For Audio the phone supports MP3, eAAC+, WMA & WAV files. The MP3 interface doesn’t compare to the iTunes interface on the iPhone, but it is easy to use a manoeuvre through.
The audio quality through the included headphones is pretty good, but is much better if you plug in a set of high end in-ear headphones. Overall though, the music playback is really great and the quality is superb.
I can’t say as much for the Loudspeaker on the phone though … in fact, I wouldn’t quite call it a “loud” speaker. The loudspeaker lacks a bit, and tends to be a bit soft unless in a completely noiseless situation.
Battery Life
The battery life on the X10tends to be slightly poor, especially when the phone is used a lot. The day after I got the X10 for review, I used the phone quite a bit and the battery died before 10pm, even though it had recharged the entire night previously.
On another occasion, I did not use the phone as much as I did the first time round, and it still died by 8PM. But in Sony Ericsson’s defence, at snother stage the battery lasted until the next morning without being charged … so I can only conclude that the battery on the phone can be temperamental at times.
Performance
I have no gripes at all with the performance of the X10. The Snapdragon 1Ghz processor definitely outdoes itself and the results are very visible, especially when compared to my slightly sluggish HTC Magic.
Everything on the X10 feels very smooth, especially things like page swipes and dragging menus.
Almost all the applications load quickly with the exception of the camera, which is most likely related to the initiation of the camera hardware itself and not the software.
Navigation
The X10 by default doesn’t come with any Voice navigation software, but does come with Google Maps and a program called Wise Pilot which looks to be quite interesting although I kept getting a Network Communication Failure when I tried to use it, both on Wi-Fi and GSM.
The GPS does not take long to connect and I managed to connect in about 20 seconds in doors but near a window which is quite good.
Notifications & Alerts
The X10 has a nice variety of sounds to be used as ringtone notifications, one of which I particularly like very much and have set it to my ringtone. There aren’t as many sounds to be used for the alert notification … although this isn’t an issue as you can always assign your own.
Something I found to be extremely annoying was that the X10 does not seem to have a vibrate mode, only a silent mode. However, while in the silent mode, if you go into the settings, you can enable the vibrate option, but this is for calls only and if you get an SMS or e-mail, it will not vibrate.
The loudspeaker on the phone is far from impressive. I missed a couple phone calls and SMS’s due to not being able to hear them. I even slept through the wake-up alarm at one stage which annoyed me very much.
Text Input
The X10 only comes bundled with software for a QWERTY keyboard as I could not find the option to use a standard keypad for text use in any of the settings. I found this to be a little disappointing, and this will be even more so for someone with big fingers who struggles to type on the QWERTY keyboard.
While playing around with input types, I decided to click Japanese to see what it was like, and I found it extremely difficult to get back to the English keyboard. The issue wasn’t that I couldn’t read the text or buttons, but that it took me forever to discover that you have to change the view of the keyboard to the one with the tool button to change it (There are 3 keyboard views for the Japanese Keyboard). On the other keyboards, you just hold down the button to select numbers and the menu pops up. I don’t see this being an issue for anyone though as the majority will not ever look at the Japanese keyboard.
While typing out SMS’s and e-mails, I often tended to hit the wrong letter on the keyboard more often on this phone then other touch screen phones, although I’m not sure why. Perhaps the phone would do better with a calibration option to allow you to calibrate the keyboard on the touchscreen.
A definite plus is that the touch screen is extremely responsive and you will not have any issues touching a key without it registering, although this doesn’t mean it won’t be the wrong key registering.
Something I really loved about the Sony Ericsson keyboard was the predictive dictionary which seemed to be more intelligent the similar systems on other phones. After using the phone for a few days, it began to predict the next word I would write based on my previous words, and it did this quite well … at some points allowing me to type full sentences without typing a thing (besides the first two or three words).
I think my biggest gripe with the keyboard was the luck of a minimize button to allow you to minimize the keyboard. The keyboard sometimes tends to get in the way, especially when entering text into a username or password field in the browser, and I could not get rid of it.
At the same time though, the X10 has a dedicated smiley button which I found very useful as I tend to use smileys a lot in SMS’s. When pressed, it brings up a list of commonly used smileys for you to select.
Conclusion
The bottom line is if you love your Multimedia and use your phone as a multimedia device filled with Videos, Photos and Music and enjoy using your phone as a camera, as well as keeping updated socially via the various social platforms, then this phone is definitely for you.
If, however, you use your phone more for business and browsing the web and perform tasks such as SMSing, creating tasks, creating calendar entries, etc. then I believe this phone is not for you as it does not seem to have a focus on these activities as much as the multimedia side of things.
The X10 is a good first Android attempt by Sony Ericsson and I look forward to more future Android releases by Sony Ericsson.
I give this phone a rating of:
7/10
Additional comments powered by BackType
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May 15th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Thanks for the review, great job on it! It was clear and gave me a good insight to what the phone can do and what to expect if i choose it.
Your third last paragraph said: “If, however, you use your phone more for business and browsing the web and perform tasks such as SMSing, creating tasks, creating calendar entries, etc. then I believe this phone is not for you as it does not seem to have a focus on these activities as much as the multimedia side of things.” care to list similar phone which would do better in this category?
Once again thanks for your time to review this phone!
May 15th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Desire & Milestone … but especially the Milestone (Physical Keyboard)
May 16th, 2010 at 12:40 am
I have only read the first few lines so far, but I have to correct you on the fact that the screen already has a screen protector pre-installed (in fact it has two layers, one is shatterproof layer!), so maybe only that is scratched? It also comes with a leather pouch – where did you get yours from?
May 16th, 2010 at 8:47 am
Could be that they send a demo model. Sometimes they exclude some items as it’s not crucial for testing the mobile or for review purposes…
May 16th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Hi. I did mention that there is built in scratch resistant technology, but it isn’the most effective as it still got scratched, even though very small. The box I got didn’t come with a pouch, but I will double check if it should have with SE.
May 16th, 2010 at 10:02 am
definitely a normal retail unit.
July 17th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Hi.
Just a comment about the battery life on the phone. Ive had my SE X10 for about 2 weeks, i also experienced very poor battery life on the first few battery charges, approx 10 hours of battery power with minimum usage, however after the first 10 cycles of charging / discharging, and a few changes with the phone, i know experience between 20-35 hours of battery power per charge! No kidding!
Firstly you must charge / discharge cycle the phone 10x, but always make sure the battery completely drained first, before you charge.
always remember to switch the phone off for a few seconds and then on again after a full charge, this for some reason really helps the overall battery availability.
Set brightness to auto
Make sure to turn off automatic update software search to manual (this uses a lot of power as the phone by default is set to automatic search and constantly searches in the background eating away valuable battery life)
Turn MMS & Data off until it needs to be used
Turn GPS off until it needs to be used
This also prevents your apps and widgets from doing unnecesssary updates and prevents unnecessary usage of data
Make sure you enable task manager for SE X10 and let it auto run always
Install Task Killer advanced, run both programmes simultaneously.
Set back light time out to 30 secs
Install battery indicator app, which gives you a neat % on your status bar.
These things have really helped me
July 17th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Oh and by the way, try not to use timescape and mediascape as much, they are beautiful apps but drain way too much battery and there are neater better apps that can be used that dont compromise the battery much.
Instead of timescape, use chompsms, it gives a wonderful alternative for sms/mms and mimics the iphone environment, and for media just download real player for android, its absolutely awesome for pics and videos, and also plays videos in widescreen format, the clarity is unbelievable, both apps are free from the market.
August 18th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
this definitely comes with a leather pouch. me and a friend got these and they both had.
August 18th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Recently update the phone after only two weeks of usage. New firmware is considerable faster and saves on the battery life, now just waiting for the 2.1 or by some miracle 2.2 update. Awesome phone awesome review
August 18th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Oh is it … must have been just excluded from the review unit. Maybe they saw my review