8/13/10

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 - Sony's Key to Recovery

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
Sony's XPERIA line up is headed for what might turn out to be its best mobile phone in a decade. Correction: the best smartphone ever made. We've drooled over the first two XPERIA handsets but more on their looks as they eventually delivered short on expectations. We can only think of one reason about their lackluster performance - they had Windows Mobile for their operating system.

Enough said about a garbage OS. This time around, the struggling mobile phone giant is pinning its hopes to regain lost grounds with the right platform - Google's open source Android. With presumably unique enhancements to make it Sony's own and calling it UX, short for User eXperience, the Android 1.6-run Sony Erickson XPERIA X10 looks like a real winner that can topple occupants sitting on top of many mobile phone totem poles. And that includes the iPhone 3GS.


Uncertainties amidst the Promise
Now if Sony Ericsson has the same marketing savvy as Apple, it might just be able to do that. Unfortunately, it's becoming clear that it has inherited the same stupidity of mother company Sony that launched Blu-ray and the PlayStation 3 - products that have yet to recoup their investments with Blu-ray still struggling with just 8% of the home entertainment market 3 years after its launch and the PS3 business losing $4.7B for its 2009 fiscal year.

For a start, they've missed out on the best time of the year when people are throwing away money on just about anything and everything under the sun, smartphones included. In the meantime, you have the likes of Motorola Droid, Acer Liquid A1 and the HTC HD2 stealing the show and pulling the proverbial rug right under its absence from the holiday shopping scene.

People may have short memories. They have forgotten and forgiven Sony Ericsson for foisting a half-baked P990i flagship smartphone in 2006 that forced its users to update the firmware almost every other month just to make it work right. Now, as the company is about to launch what could be the best ever smartphone on the planet, Sony Ericsson is shooting itself on the foot.
 
In addition to missing its launch date and moving it to the first quarter of 2010, maybe in time for the Chinese celebration of the new Lunar Year, it is standing firm on using an older Android 1.6 which, by the time it gets released, will already become an antique operating system. Initial hands-on experiences with the prototype have already noted its response lags despite a powerful 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

We can only wonder what other stupidities Sony Ericsson did to the otherwise capable Android Donut that other smartphones like the Acer Liquid uses with utmost success on an underclocked Snapdragon.

Promising Features
Sony is resting hopes that a forgiving market can still make the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 a hit. We won't doubt that it could. Afterall, you have a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon behind its luscious 4-inch Wide VGA capacitive touchscreen that makes the iPhone child's play. It has an 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED Flash and 8x zoom that is without parallel among flagship imaging smartphones out there. Other than these, it has the features we all expect from a full-features smartphones like 3G/3.5G, a secondary VGA camera, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP, 3.5mm AV port, microUSB 2,0, expandable memory up to 32GB on the microSD and a battery that Sony Ericsson doesn't want to divulge as yet. But if Android fans don't find the patience to wait it out and settle for the equally competent and gorgeous Android phones coming out this Christmas, Sony Ericsson might as well postpone its release anew to Christmas 2010.

No comments:

Post a Comment