We’ve had a lot of mobile devices today, mostly because Nokia World is spurring other manufacturers to make their own big announcements. Not wanting to be outdone by either Nokia or Samsung, Sony Ericsson has announced it’s own high-end smartphone – the XPERIA X2, powered by Windows Mobile 6.5. Not that Sony Ericsson had much to be worried about from Nokia today, the N97 mini was fairly rubbish.
Here’s an overview of the X2 specs:
Camera: 8.1 megapixel camera, with auto focus, automatic geo-tagging of pics and a “send to web” feature
Multimedia: very samey. It handles all the same music and video formats that you’d expect a high-end smartphone to handle. The only edge it has it the updated Windows Mobile 6.5 capabilities regarding PDFs and Office files.
Internet: fully 3G enabled, with the mobile version of Internet Explorer and a YouTube app pre-loaded.
Messaging: it handles the full gamut of text communicaiton. SMS, MMS, mobile email, IM and handwriting recognition.
Connectivity: the whole nine yards. GSM, HSPA, UMTS, EDGE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi.
Storage: There’s 110MB on the phone, and you get a 4GB SD card – which you can expand up to 16GB.
Panel SDK for developers:
The Xperia user-interface is based around Panels – browseable screens that each contain a single application, service, function or desktop. On the same day as the phone was officially announced, Sony Ericsson has released an SDK for X2 Panel developers. The applications available for a phone are just as important as the OS or the manufacturer these days. In order to attract developers to the new device, Sony Ericsson has released what it calls a Panelizer, which can transform any app for Flash, Java or Windows Mobile into a Panel. Developers will be able to shift Panels across the Sony Ericsson PlayNow arena with a 70% net revenue share.
What we think?
To be honest, the specs of the phone are what you would expect from a high-end smartphone. It’s a sweet device, yeah, but almost more important than that is the fact that it’s one of the new breed of “Windows Phone”. As a Windows Mobile 6.5 device, the X2 will be one of the first devices capable of downloading and running apps from the Microsoft mobile application store, Skymarket. I find it interesting that at very the same time, Sony Ericsson is pushing its Panels SDK as a way to get onto PlayNow without even a mention of Skymarket. This shows the devices origins as a phone with two masters. Mobile applications are so important to the survival of a device that you’ll probably see some interesting skirmishes in this area. Microsoft will want to push its apps as hard as possible, but Sony Ericsson is going to want grab as big a slice of that revenue as possible.
