The X1 is engineered art, precise to the finest detail and machined in brushed metal. A high-end powerhouse that mocks the bejeweled junk that usually passes for luxury in cellphone-land, it remains hard to recommend thanks to its extravagant price.
At $800 unlocked, with no subsidy options, every virtue is expected, and every vice doubly disappointing.
A slider-phone with a full QWERTY keyboard, the X1 has a 3″ touchscreen display, 3.2 megapixel camera, secondary webcam and a 528Mhz Qualcomm CPU with a 256MHz co-processor. Built in is 256MB of RAM, 512MB of Flash storage and a quad-band 3G GSM radio. It has Bluetooth, WiFi, aGPS, FM radio and a 1500 mAh battery. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro and weighs 158 grams.
As a piece of hardware it’s almost without peer. Photos are crisp and large, the keyboard is well thought-out, and performance is excellent compared to workhorse smartphones. The 800×480 display is particularly amazing. For those who want serious productivity, it’s got grunt in abundance: mobile blogging would be a dream on this thing.
On the other hand, it’s thick and heavy, and the arc on which the keyboard slides out seems more about form than function.
Its interface, comprising a collection of heavily customizable panels that abstract the phone’s functionality in various pretty ways, is equally swanky. Though it’s WinMo under the hood, it does a great job of making it as friendly as OS newcomers. In particular, the media player is a colossal improvement over the standard app bunged into vanilla Windows Mobile. You’ll still need to pull out the stylus to pick at tiny-texted menus once you’re inside many apps, however, so don’t expect miracles.
There are quirks. Opera Mobile is included, but didn’t work very well — odd given its reputation for getting a watchable web onto almost anything. Mobile IE is trash. This imperfect web access makes much of the Xperia experience seem oddly disengaged. The selection of third-party panels is slim, too; aside from what’s generally available for WinMo, the Xperia ecosystem isn’t out of first gear yet.
If you’re prepared to live with the warranty-less $600 deal at Amazon, or are dead-sure it’s what you want, the X1 will be a fine alternative to the high-end Nokias and other top smartphones. But we’re looking forward to a sequel running the freshly-announced Windows Mobile 6.5–and not running nearly a grand after tax and activation–to become a more effective flagship for Microsoft’s fleet.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 [Amazon] 
What the fuck is this thing? It is a behemoth of vaporous import.
only 512 mb of storage?! does it at least have a micro sd slot? if not it’s a waste of time/money. i like the from factor but i also like my 16 gb’s worth of storage in my iphone.
You lost me at “Windows Moblie”.
Too bad I’ll never be able to afford one.
I love the artsy fartsy photos. Lots of strange angles and tricks with lighting make it the MUST HAVE phone.
You lost me at Sony, they treat their customers even worse than Apple