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The Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 is their first foray with Windows Mobile into the smartphone arena. It has a 800 x 480, 65,536 colour touchscreen. A full qwerty keyboard is revealed when the screen is slid away from the main body of the phone. It has a 3.2MP camera, much like that in the K800i. It also has 3G HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, Bluetooth ,USB2, infrared and wi-fi. It is aimed more towards the business user than the casual consumer.

The touchscreen takes up most of the front of the phone. Underneath are several buttons, one of which acts as a joystick, scrolling in windows and menus, it also acts as a button when pressed. It is a solid phone (145g) with a full qwerty keyboard when the screen is slid out, when this is done the screen changes to landscape format. The keyboard is very good despite my initial misgivings about the size I quickly got used to it and typing was easy. There is an onscreen keyboard that can be activated but I missed being able to write on the screen like I could with the P800 and P900 series of phones. There is a stylus with the phone and its very necessary as my fingers were too big to register a hit on some of the menus.

The initial menu is called a panel and several came with the phone. I configured mine so that I could see my calendar, tasks and some RSS feeds as well as the time and date, Bluetooth and wi-fi controls.

The camera is good in most conditions but it does take a second or two for it to finally take the picture once you have pressed the button which irked me as I missed a good shot. All the camera settings are driven from the touchscreen and you can focus on a particular area of the shot by touching it. The video recording was excellent at 30 f/s but only 640 x 480.

Its not meant as a music phone but it does come with Media Player installed which gives you basic song information but not much else. The headphones are comfortable and the sound quality from them is good. The phone has a full 3 ½” headphone socket so you can always use your own headphones instead.

The X1 does have GPS onboard via Google Maps and a trial of Wayfinder Navigator is included in the box.

I found the battery to be excellent, it got me through a weekend with no charging, despite several long phone calls via a Bluetooth headset and a good web-browsing session wi-fi.

All in all a super entry into the Windows Mobile smartphone for Sony Ericsson. 4/5 Stars.

Reviewed by guest reviewer Jonathan F