Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 – First Impression, Thoughts and Review

Topics: Reviews Xperia

I have had a Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 since November 15 and have been playing with it for the past 12 days. So far I am loving the phone.

First Impression

When I first saw the box, I was quite surprised. I had expected it to be bigger for some reason. The next surprise was the phone itself. It looked so small. And if that wasn’t enough I got another shock on sliding out the keyboard. The keys are so small but not in a bad way. It’s just that the photographs give you the impression of the phone being a bit bigger for some reason.

Build Quality

One word. Fabulous! It is a solid phone and feels great in your hands. I got the black one, which has a brushed metallic look. The top part around the stylus and camera and the bottom part at the back are a bit rubbery.

Keyboard

No one was exaggerating when they said the sliding mechanism is really good. It slides out very smoothly with a definite click at the end.

I did not feel the keys were too flush or did not have a lot of bounce. They feel quite alright to me. The top row of keys is close to the phone and you do sometimes bump while typing. I do have small hands so people with bigger hands might find this to be an issue. Try out the keyboard first if you have the opportunity to do so.

Other than that I wish they had dedicated number keys at the top but its not a deal breaker.

Since I was using a Nokia 6670 before, my fingers kept trying to find the alphabets in the dial pad fashion. It took me a couple of days to get used to a QWERTY version on a phone. But now that I have I enjoy typing on it.

Screen

Nice, bright and crisp. The resolution is awesome. My sister tried her IMATE from a couple of years back and was wondering why my phone had a sharper, crisper screen. It is because of the 800×480 screen resolution. Amazing!

However, this does lead to one problem. Very tiny fonts. Although this is a software issue and you can tweak your software to get bigger fonts in most, if not all areas.

Panels

This is a brilliant concept and really makes the Xperia a unique phone IMO. There was a time when I was debating between the HTC Pro and Xperia. However, with the HTC Pro I was stuck with the interface it came with or at max I could install another Today screen plugin. But only one option at a time.

With the panels, I can switch interfaces with the click of a button. Just have to wait for more panels to be developed now as there aren’t too many options available currently.

Responsiveness

I find the touch screen to be responsive. Although people who have used a capacitative screen like on an IPhone may not like it too much. The panels open up fast but once open it takes a couple of seconds to get it fully loaded. You see a screenshot while it loads in the background. Once you are inside a panel, then the phone works fast.

The only place with a noticeable lag is when you change the screen orientation of the panel view. The panels freeze for a split second while changing. But seriously it doesn’t kill you I hardly ever change orientation in that view anyway. You normally tend to do so when inside a panel to write an sms or to view a website in wide view.

Input

I love the multiple input options. You can use the stylus, touchscreen or keyboard. You can write directly on the screen using the stylus. And with the right software you can even talk to your phone.

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If you are like me and haven’t used a Win Mo device in years or perhaps never at all, then you might find the phone overwhelming to start with. There are so many options and tweaks that can be applied and so much to learn. But don’t worry, you get the hang of it.

Just think of Xperia more like a computer where it gets better with the utilities and tweaks you add as opposed to a phone you can use out of the box. You can still do that but you will be missing out on the best Xperia can offer.

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Coming up soon: A list of Xperia Tweaks, Settings, Utilities, Panels, Software, Games, Tips and Tricks