Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 – My First Impressions

I’ve been dying to get my hands on a Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 for months now, and I finally managed to at the weekend.  I thought I’d share my initial thoughts for anyone else who is considering getting one.

Although I’d pre-ordered my Xperia X1 a few weeks ago on Play.com, I was starting to get cold feet because some of the reviews weren’t necessarily glowing.  I’ve been getting a bit worried that I’m backing the wrong horse in terms of what’s going to be the best smartphone this year, and wondering whether I should get a HTC Touch Pro or a Nokia N96.  To make matters worse I have a Nokia N96 in my cupboard which was my free upgrade from T-Mobile that I’m selling on eBay, and I’ve been dying to open the box and give it a whirl.

I went shopping with my girlfriend at the weekend and I popped into a Vodafone store with the intention of checking out a HTC Touch Pro.  I was surprised to see that they had a dummy Xperia X1 on display, and I was even more surprised when the sales assistant said they had a real one in the store!  Apparently because I was at one of the main Vodafone stores they had got the first units.

Appearance wise the Xperia X1 looks even better than I imagined.  It’s also very, very light and slim – slightly longer than my N95, but much much slimmer.  The build quality is excellent and the keyboard is perfect in my opinion.  In the past I’ve owned a Sony Ericsson P900 and I hated having to use the stylus to perform most functions.  Luckily the Xperia X1 doesn’t have this failing and the 4-way key and joystick allow most tasks to be completed without pulling out the stylus.

The major failing of the phone I used though was the speed of the X-Panels.  Once within a panel everything worked fine, but opening and moving the panels was painfully slow.  I can live with this though, as beyond playing with the phone for the first week or two, I don’t think I’m going to be using the panels that often so the Xperia X1 will still deliver what I need – a good solid phone for making calls, that has a QWERTY keyboard, a good browser (Opera 9.5 is by far the best mobile browser IMHO) and good Microsoft Exchange integration.  I’m not expecting that there will be many panels that will be released that I will use, so I can live with this.

Should I have got a G1?  Well, I had a chance to play with one a few weeks ago and although I was impressed with the OS, I thought the handset was awful and there’s no way I would want a G1 as my phone.  The attraction of getting lots of Android applications for my phone doesn’t really appeal to me at the moment, as the apps that are appearing so far are great as proof of concepts, but aren’t ones I actually want to use day after day.   I’m sure that better handsets will come out in the future and apps, but for now my focus is getting a phone that delivers against my requirements today.  I’m also hedging my bets that I’ll be able to get a couple of Android based devices for free next year!

I got a notice for play.com to say that my Xperia X1 had been shipped and should be with me this week, so expect a full review next week.