Here Windows Mobile is given a stylish body to inhabit, a unique candy bar design from a company known for their candy bar handsets. The Xperia has a rolling slide-out keyboard, illuminating LED notification lights, and a very creative set of interactive panels that when combined with a touchscreen deliver a sense of life and quick interaction missing from Microsoft’s Today screen. To call it a touchscreen smartphone would be misleading as its heart and soul still belongs to Windows and all the mobile complexity and power that implies.

 

Design

Similar to Sony Ericsson’s camera phones, the Xperia is a long and slender handset that feels comfortable as a phone next to the ear and equally so as a camera when you hold it sideways. Dedicated camera keys on the top edge make it easy to zoom in and snap pictures with the unit’s 3.2 Megapixel camera.

Whatever it is about curves that we instinctively find attractive Sony Ericsson has hit upon the best one for their “Arc-sliding” keyboard design which allows it to roll smoothly out from underneath the screen and assume a position angled just perfectly to it. It’s the best sliding action of all the phones I’ve seen including that of the upcoming Palm Pre. The stainless steel keyboard provides a nice silver trim throughout the middle delivering an elegance to the black casing. The X1 sure is a nice looking phone.

Hidden along the very edge of the display are a set of programmable, multi-coloured LED lights. You can set these to light up and change colour in response to a number of actions including as a warning of a low battery, an incoming call, e-mail, or MMS message, or of an upcoming appointment. The lights are quite subtle and deliver more value as a stylish accent then as a notification service.

Navigation

Although it has a touchscreen it doesn’t need one. The fine details of Microsoft’s Windows interface combined with the Xperia’s small screen mean that you can only use your fingertips for the most basic interactions with the simplest and largest icons. Instead plan to use the included stylus for most of your applications. There’s also a directional key to quickly move through menu screens and an optical joystick for eight-way navigation, designed for video games and rare applications that support it. Add in some extra cellphone keys and the Xperia is guilty of being a bit too complicated in its navigation choices.

The Xperia does support both Landscape and Portrait view, but instead of using an accelerometer sensor to automatically make the switch when you turn the handset sideways, it depends on you to roll out the keyboard to activate the change, something that can take some getting used to.

Panels System

The Xperia uses Windows Mobile 6.1 as its operating system which is designed to mimic the desktop experience of a traditional computer, including the Start icon and taskbar. To make it more accessible on a portable screen, Microsoft added a summary menu called the Today Screen to quickly list notifications and reminders from the most important applications.

Taking this a leap forward, Sony Ericsson has added a panel system that overlays a collection of touchscreen-enabled Today Screens, each one devoted to a specific application. You can flip through these panels like a pack of cards and choose which one you want displayed as the default screen at any time. These are highly creative displays and while the handset comes with a small collection of panels to begin with, you can download additional ones from their website and the company provides support for developers to create their own.

These include a fish pond panel where a set of animated fish represent changes on your phone. One fish changes in colour to represent your battery life, another fish will turn gold when there’s an unread message and a third will turn silver when the sound is off. A forth fish only appears if you miss a call.

Facebook has a fantastic panel that displays your personal profile picture in a bubble in the centre of the screen. As the phone retrieves the latest update information from your account, each one of your friend’s profile pictures appear in bubbles floating around your own. The ones closes to your photo are the most recently updated accounts and when you touch their bubbles, the screen displays their status. Other panels include a Radio interface for controlling the Xperia’s built-in FM Radio, a slideshow panel for displaying photographs, a Google panel for shortcuts to their services, and a modified version of the Today Panel complete with calendar, clock, application short cuts and notifications.

The panel system is an interesting innovation, one that I hope will get more support. As the Xperia has been slow to find adoption from wireless carriers, developers have been slow to create their own panels. Fortunately the add-on interface won’t prevent the Xperia from using apps from Microsoft’s upcoming apps store, but it will prevent users from upgrading to Windows Mobile 6.5.

Feature-Packed

Rather astonishing for its slim size, the Xperia really packs in the features. It offers a 3.2 Megapixel camera with photo light and video recording, both offering satisfying results. It is a quad band phone offering 3G, Wi-Fi, and both HSDPA and HSUPA data connections. It has 400 MB of internal phone memory which, through a MicroSD card slot, can be expanded with an additional 16 GB. Its Bluetooth includes support for A2DP stereo streaming, making it ideal for wireless headsets and music playback.

Although it may not be the best handset for Enterprise use, it does offer Push support for e-mail through Microsoft’s ActiveSync and Hotmail. Both surfing the web and exchanging e-mails are delivered as full-screen services and aside from the phone’s complicated navigation, are enjoyable to use and fast.

The high capacity battery is removable and delivers almost six hours of 3G talk time. Like other smartphones in its class, once you mix in internet use and applications, you’ll find the need to recharge often.

Windows Mobile Touch Edition

It’s best not to think of the Xperia as a competitor to more popular handsets like the iPhone 3G S or the upcoming Palm Pre, both delivering a smoother, more intuitive experience with greater developer support, but rather as an excellent touchscreen experience for Windows Mobile users, many of whom have no intention of leaving Microsoft’s platform for new ones by other companies. The Xperia is a bit cramped in controls and Windows Mobile can be complicated to use, but it delivers access to an astounding number of features and uses.