Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 has a large 4-inch screen and an 8-megapixel camera. The smartphone was announced in November 2009. It went on the market in March 2010.

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The Xperia X10 has a 4-inch screen with 480 x 854 pixels. Unlike the Google Nexus One, which has a retina-burning AMOLED screen, the Xperia X10 has a plain old TFT screen. Still, the screen is good. The colors are bright and vivid.

Operating system

At the moment, the X10 runs an old version of Android (1.6 or Donut). An update to the latest version is expected later this year.

Camera

Sony Ericsson smartphones have always had great cameras. The X10 is no different. It has an 8 megapixel snapper that offers excellent image quality. Smile detection works well, but facial recognition is more of a miss than a hit. There is no xenon flash and due to the limitations of Android 1.6, the LED photo light does not function as a proper flash.

Processor

The Xperia X10 has the same 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor as the Google Nexus One. But since Android 1.6 doesn’t support hardware acceleration, it doesn’t feel very snappy.

User interface and browser

The Xperia X10 offers a completely new user experience, thanks to the Timescape and Mediascape interfaces. Timescape is an excellent feature. It’s basically an animated stack of 3D tiles. Each tile represents a particular event in your life, such as a Facebook update, a tweet, an email, or a photo. These tiles are arranged in the order they occurred. Timescape allows you to have all your social life in one place, but sometimes it works a bit slow.

Mediascape is X10’s media player. Judging by Android standards, it’s a pretty good app. Mediascape gives you quick access to music, movies, and photos stored on your phone or online. At this time, PlayNow is the only online music service that supports Mediascape. But more plugins are coming soon.

connectivity

The Xperia X10 supports a variety of connectivity options including quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and file transfers. There is a microUSB port to connect the phone to your PC. There’s also a microSD memory card slot, but it’s not hot-swappable, as you have to remove the battery to access the slot.

Other useful features include built-in A-GPS and Google Maps for local search. The smartphone also has a trial version of Wisepilot pre-installed for satellite navigation.

Verdict

The Xperia X10 has the correct hardware, but runs a slightly outdated operating system. An update to the latest version of Android will give the phone a better chance against the Nexus One and HTC Legend.

Specifications of the Xperia X10:

Screen: 4-inch TFT screen with 480 x 854 pixels

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor

Camera: 8 megapixel camera with LED light for photos

Connectivity: A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, HSDPA

Battery life: 8 hours talk time on 3G, 425 hours standby