New spy shots of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2, codenamed “Vulcan”, have emerged from the forums over at fanklub.se. The successor to the current X1 is looking dapper in its black casing, black keyboard and silver bezel. On the back, the Windows Mobile handset sports an 8 megapixel camera with flash. What you see is what we know as no other details about this phone have been leaked. If it follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, we should see it launch sometime in 2011.

[Via SEMC Blog]

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When it rain in Canada, it pours in Canada. Our ninja just came back with news about a few more handsets making their way to Rogers in the near future. Some we already know about and some we’ve been waiting for all too long, but there are definitely a few tasty morsels in there. Oh hi, preliminary iPhone launch details… Hit the jump for the skinny.

• LG Rumor 2 (Solo Mobile) — ETA: May 25th, outright: $160.00, 2-year contract: $75.00
• Sony Ericsson C905 — ETA: May 19th (delayed), outright: $449.99, 3-year contract: $249.99 ($299.99 without Rogers Vision)
• HTC Dream — ETA: June 2nd (limited quantity, availability will increase by June 12th), outright: $649.99, 3-year contract: $199.99
• HTC Magic — ETA: June 2nd, outright: $649.99, 3-year contract: $199.99
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 — ETA: June 30th (barring additional delays), outright: TBD ($649 – $749), 3-year: $299.99 (will launch at $249.99)
• iPhone — ETA: unknown (July/August), outright: not allowed, 3-year: TBD

Of note, Rogers will launch the new iPhone on the same day that it lifts off here in the US. Purchases will be limited to one iPhone per customer on opening day and there will be active demos on display in stores. Also of note, Rogers expects to have substantially more iPhones on hand this time around so as not to run into the same stock issues as with the iPhone 3G launch. Excited?

Thanks, G!

Okay, so get a load of this. Apparently (please note the emphasis) a former employee of Globalive aka Global Wireless, the next big Canadian wireless provider that is building a UMTS / HSPA network with service planned for all provinces and territories excluding Québec, recently got canned for “poor performance in marketing”. This of course led to him logging on to HoFo and leaking everything about the carrier’s plans except what the CEO ate for breakfast. There is tons of stuff to cover and the slides are pretty grainy at best, so we’ve taken the time to write it all out for our Canadian friends. Now hit the jump and prepare to mess yourself because if even half of this stuff is true, the Canadian wireless landscape is about to make a serious shift for the better starting in Q4. Just one question — why no BlackBerry love?

Thanks, “Ex-Global Wireless Employee”!

14 Handsets

• Sony Ericsson TM506
  • 7.2Mbps HSDPA clamshell. $29.99 on 24-month, $99.99 on 12-month and $199.99 monthly / pre-paid. Available in green, silver and red.
• Nokia 5330 XpressMusic
  • 384Kbps UMTS candybar. $59.99 on 24-month, $109.99 on 12-month and $207.79 monthly / pre-paid. Available in black and red.
• Nokia 5730 XpressMusic.
  • 3.6Mbps HSDPA candybar. $49.99 on 24-month, $99.99 on 12-month and $179.99 monthly / pre-paid. Available in black, pink, blue and red.
• Nokia 6070 Classic
  • 10Mbps HSDPA candybar with 5 megapixel camera. Pricing is unknown. Available in silver and black.
• Sidekick LX 2009
  • Radio information is unknown, though we’d wager 3.6Mbps HSDPA. Pricing is unknown and you can have it in any color you like so long as it’s black.
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
  • 7.2Mbps HSDPA Window Mobile 6.1-powered slider to be billed as the flagship device of globalWireless. $149.99 on 24-month, $249.99 on 12-month and $449.99 monthly / pre-paid. Look for it in black.
• Global (HTC) G1
  • Same thing as the HTC Dream and the T-Mobile G1 including the 7.2Mbps HSDPA radio. $129.9 on 24-month, $229.99 on 12-month and $429.99 monthly / pre-paid. Black only.
• Global (HTC) M1
  • Same thing as the HTC Magic aka T-Mobile G2. Pricing is unknown, though we do know it feature 7.2Mbps HSDPA and will be offered in white only.

Airtime Rates

• $29.99 – 350 minutes, unlimited e/w, unlimited incoming
• $39.99 – 650 minutes, unlimited e/w, unlimited incoming
• $59.99 – Unlimited minutes and incoming.

Voice Add-Ons

• $5 – Unlimited nights at 5PM
• $8 – Unlimited mornings until 9am
• $15 – Unlimited calls to the US

Included Services for Monthly Plans

• Unlimited SMS (Canada and USA), Voice Mail, Caller ID, Name Display, MissedCall, Call Waiting, Call Conferencing and Call Forwarding

Optional Services

• $4 – 500 international SMS
• $7 – Unlimited international SMS
• $5 – Video Mail

International Calling

• $5 – 100 minutes to Asia
• $10 – 250 minutes to Asia
• $5 – 100 minutes to Philippines
• $10 – 300 minutes to Philippines
• $5 – 200 minutes to Eastern Europe
• $10 – 350 minutes to Eastern Europe

US Roaming (T-Mobile)

• $0.19 per minute without plan
• $0.05 per SMS without plan
• $0.40 per MB of data without plan

US Roaming Plans (T-Mobile)

• $15 – 75 minutes
• $25 – 200 minutes
• $40 – 650 minutes
• $10 – 250 SMS
• $19.99 – 50MB of data
• $29.99 – 250MB of data
• $59.99 – 1.5GB of data

Data Access Rates

• $10 – Unlimited email (20MB in reality), IM and “communities” (social media sites?)
• $23 – 2.5GB data and unlimited email
• $40 – Unlimited, plain and simple

Data Add-Ons

• $8 – Unlimited browsing
• $5 – Enables tethering
• $10 – “100MB of global remote mobile storage”

SIM Cards

• $0 on 12 and 24-month plan
• $19.99 on 1-month contract
• $29.99 outright
• Will only work on a globalWireless handset

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This right here people is the day you’ve been waiting for. The two best Windows Mobile devices out there; the Sony XPERIA X1 and the AT&T HTC Fuze. We put them head-to-head in a bunch of tests and categories just so we could help make your decision a little bit easier. They are both fabulous phones, both are manufactured by HTC, and both are practically identical in terms of hard specs. But which one comes out on top? Which one are you going to drop a weeks pay on? Well, hit the jump and see what’s really hood with the X1 and the Fuze!

Screen:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The XPERIA uses a WVGA resolution for it’s 800×480 display, and while it’s absolutely gorgeous, we couldn’t help but feel as if it might be a little too big. The menu items are pretty small, and while it’s ok to use if you’re banging away on the soft key buttons on the front of the device, it’s kind of tricky to use your finger to select these most of the time. What we love about the XPERIA’s display is that there are no grainy artifacts, and the screen barely requires any pressure to register input. Not a bad thing, a good thing. But that might come down to personal preference.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

Ah, good ol’ VGA. The Fuze rocks out with a 640×480 display, and while it’s not as roomy as the Sony X1, it’s more than big enough to cram whatever you want into the screen. Most applications look great in this resolution, and hey, even Skyfire works! The only downside about the Fuze’s screen is that while it’s very, very nice, it’s a little grainy if you want to get nitpicky, and the pressure required to register a touch can get a little annoying.

Keyboard:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1 makes use of a 3-row QWERTY keyboard (the fourth row being the spacebar, extra buttons like “OK”, etc). We said some pretty harsh words about it in our mini-review back in the day, but we’re actually loving the keyboard now. Our gripes were that the keys were a little too flush with the case, but it seems as if that has been cleared up now. The keyboard by no means protrudes, it’s still very flush, but it’s a lot better than the unit we toyed with previously and we have no problem banging out emails or IMs on here. The only complaint would probably have to be that there isn’t quite enough room to type 100% perfectly on the top row of keys. We would have loved a tiny bit more space in between the key and the front sliding mechanism, but once you get used to it, you’re pretty much good to go.

Final critique would have to be the backlighting. We understand the keys are metal and everything, but there is really no excuse. Once you have the layout sort of memorized you’ll make out alright, but the lighting is very dim unless you are in total darkness and it doesn’t even fully light up key like it should.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

The Fuze uses a 4-row QWERTY keyboard and is pretty much what you’d expect from HTC. The keys are not rubberized like they were on the Herald or Tilt, but they feel really good. There’s enough tactile feedback to minimize mistakes and the layout is near perfect. But there are a couple things that bug us, though… For starters, while we love AT&T for kicking the crap out of whoever designed the initial Touch Pro keyboard and making them add Start and OK buttons, there is also a negative. Instead of the numbers being at the top row of the device they are placed in a standard number pad format over the keys. That’s all well and fine, but what this did is push the letters to the side of the keys so they could fit the numbers in. If you’re not typing in perfect daylight this can kind of get annoying because when you go to hit a letter to type, you actually hit the very edge of the key and not the middle of it since the letters are pushed over. It’s not the end of the world, just a minor annoyance that we would have liked to be fixed. All in all, it’s a very good keyboard; one of the best keyboards on a Windows Mobile device

OS:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

While Sony doesn’t come close to offering anything like HTC’s TouchFLO 3D, they have made great use of something called “Panels.” There are about eight pre-loaded that range from the standard Windows Mobile homescreen, to a Google homescreen, to even a Facebook homescreen. The Facebook panel is straight up addicting. Like crack addicting. Really. Why do you think it took us so long to write this review? In addition to the aforementioned panels, there is also a music player panel, and customized homescreen ones where you can add in some RSS feeds and have them display right there. Very sneaky, very cool. Navigation on the XPERIA is just the regular Windows Mobile stuff, though, and Sony didn’t do much in terms of customizing the OS. For an expert WinMo user this is obviously not a problem, in fact, you might even prefer this, yet we can’t help but think how many additional sales Sony would have gotten if they had done a little more. Well, they probably would have got a lot more sales if the damn thing was shipping and wasn’t $800, so let’s not kid ourselves there.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

The Fuze uses HTC’s TouchFLO 3D which runs on top of the standard Windows Mobile junky OS. HTC has done wonders in this regard, and they don’t plan on stopping. If you’re not familiar with TouchFLO, you could sort of think it as a very complex skin, but the whole purpose of it is to minimize the actual user interaction with Windows Mobile as a whole. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. You can always just rip into the regular Windows Mobile until your heart is content, but TouchFLO is the best Windows Mobile experience out there. In the OS department, where the Fuze differs from the X1, is that HTC has pretty much combed through everything to try and bring it up to snuff. You can’t polish a turn (well, you actually can) yet HTC has been able to deliver an amazing product that makes Windows Mobile far more usable. For instance, the soft keyboards. Instead of having to slide the phone open like the XPERIA to enter text (unless you want to use the atrocious standard Windows Mobile keyboard, or one of the other rudimentary text entry options), you can just quickly touch type and be on your way. For a longer typing engagement, just slide out the keyboard. This approach works wonders, and it’s actually one of the big complaints we had with the T-Mobile G1.

Battery:

The X1 makes use of a 1500mAh battery while the Fuze uses a 1350mAh battery. No question which one lasts longer, right? Well, not so fast. We’d say they are practically equal in terms of battery life, and if they aren’t exactly equal, the Fuze beats the X1 by a tiny bit. This as usual depends on your usage patterns, but we found both handsets lasting well into the late evening from an early morning full charge. If you’re a power user, you’ll want to pickup a second battery or car charger for either device.

Connectivity:

Both handsets are practically identical in this regard — quad-band GSM/EDGE, tri-band HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IrDA, etc. We noticed that the Fuze holds onto a 3G signal a tad bit better than the X1 but this wasn’t really a concern as both units 99% of the time mirrored each other in the signal department, and both would hold onto low signals in fringe areas very well. The only part where we can see these two differing in the connectivity department would be Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi just plain sucks on the X1. We’re not sure why. It might be the placement of the Wi-Fi antenna, it might be the semi-metal casing — we’re just not sure. But even standing 5ft away from one of our wireless routers wouldn’t yield better than a 1-2 bar signal. Wi-Fi dropped every so often, and it just wasn’t a pleasant experience in general. The Fuze fared much better and we really don’t have anything to complain about there. At least in terms of connectivity.

Speed:

Hard specs on the X1a:

• 528MHz Qualcomm CPU
• 512/384MB ROM/RAM

Hard specs on the Fuze:

• 528MHz Qualcomm CPU
• 512/288MB ROM/RAM

As you can see, they are pretty much identical. But how do they fare in real world usage scenarios? It’s tough to compare them, but we’d say overall the Fuze is a tad bit more responsive and polished. Neither device has crashed on us so far, and that’s very impressive seeing as how we’ve put both through the ringer.

Sexiness:

Beauty is the eye of the beholder, right? This one’s going to be tough to judge as y’all probably have more than your own opinions (anyone ever looked at our comment sections before?), but if we had to give you our take, we’d say the X1 is simply the sexiest Windows Mobile device out there. That’s not an insult to HTC either, they built the thing. The Fuze is a little more understated from the front, but we love the diamond back, though some people would have preferred the flat one that didn’t pickup an ant’s fingerprints, we dig it.

The X1′s backside is a little too “Sonyish” for out tastes, it reeks of the P-series, and while that might not be a bad thing, it sort of takes away from the beautiful aspects of the phone. The triangle front navigation keys, the sexy-crafted angled aluminum keyboard, and the very sleek polished aluminum bezel around the handset.

The Fuze isn’t an ugly duckling, and the all polished device really looks professional yet sexy. The all black theme works wonders for it as well. And while the casing is metal on the Fuze, we’d have to go with chrome/polished aluminum over gun-metal glossy black. But hey, we’re just speaking for us. Go on with your bad self and lust over whichever device you want to!

Navigation:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1 uses the beloved (at least by us) optical joystick. You won’t see an onscreen cursor here, but you will be able to do pretty much all your navigating with the optical joystick. Some nice tweaks by Sony (or HTC, we might add) include using the optical joystick to scroll in the browser in a page up / page down mode instead of selecting individual items. This works great because you can scroll to wherever you want to go, and then when you need to actually select something, hit the up/down/left/right key and select with the optical joystick (yes, it’s a real button also, that pushes in). There are no arrow keys on the keyboard however, and at first this is pretty annoying. Once you get used to navigating with the optical joystick though, it’s really no problem. You just keep one hand on the joystick instead of on the non-existent arrow keys on the keyboard.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

Out of the box, the Fuze offers a 5-way directional pad with a circular touch wheel. The problem is that the touch wheel doesn’t really do anything besides zoom in and out in Opera, or increase text size in emails, and so on. To get it to work like a scroll wheel, you have to hit up XDA and get your freak on. That’s fine with us, but for the average user that just buys a phone and keeps it stock, that won’t work so well.

Touch:

Sony XPERIA X1a:

The X1′s screen, like we said before, requires a much lighter touch to register touch input and this is really preferred in this neck of the woods. You get very fluid touch movements that are easy to control. This makes it more prone to user error if you aren’t careful, but once you get used to the thresholds, it’s very nice to use. The X1 does use a form of TouchFLO for scrolling, so you can simply swipe in any directions and phone will continue that touch interaction for you. One of the negatives about the touch screen really doesn’t have to do with the touch screen at all, rather how it’s placed. The screen isn’t flush with the casing, and while it doesn’t make or break the phone, it does make it a little annoying when you can’t seem to hit the start menu or “X” button just right because it’s sunk in the corner of case.

AT&T HTC Fuze:

HTC’s Fuze requires a stronger touch to register input, and while it’s cool that you can get away with lightly touching the screen to wipe it clean, or not accidentally hitting buttons while you are talking on the phone, we think it requires a little too much force. We’ve begged HTC to integrate capacitive touch screens into their Windows Mobile phones, and while that might be a pipe dream (there’s too many damn tiny check boxes in the OS to make a capacitive screen effective at this point), the touch should require so much… touch. The good news is that HTC’s screen is flush with the front panel and this makes our problems with the X1 seem like much bigger problems — the layout is great here on the Fuze.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, what phone is better? That’s the ultimate question isn’t it? I personally crowned the AT&T Fuze as the best Windows Mobile device out there. Am I sticking to it? More or less, yes. Here’s why… The XPERIA X1 is a fantastic Windows Mobile phone. But the more we use it and evaluate it, the more we think its target market shrinks. Not so much because the device is sub-par, it’s quite the opposite. It’s just that we feel the only consumers interested in the X1 will be prior Windows Mobile users that know what they are doing and know how to handle the shortcomings in WinMo. Then there’s the $800 price tag which will certainly push a huge segment of the target market away. Like real, real fast. Looking at both of them from a consumer’s perspective, there really isn’t any reason to not go with the Fuze. Even if you’re not on AT&T, paying $500 for an unlocked unit is still better than paying $800.

The Fuze offers a much more complete experience than the X1, and that combined with the price really makes this a winner. If we eliminated price altogether, which one would we choose? That’s really tough, folks. The fact is we’d be happy with either one of them, but at this point we’d probably just go ahead and choose the Fuze. It’s much more streamlined, the entire OS is cohesive in terms of what HTC has done (everything from the volume up/down screen, to the Connection Manager, to TouchFLO, to well, you get the point) and it’s just an all-around more usable phone out of the box. If you want to man up and get your hands dirty with customizing the X1 and making it suit your needs better, more power to you. We’ve pretty much raped this handset and got it up to snuff, we just don’t think that many people want to be bothered with doing that. Not with Android, Symbian, BlackBerry and the iPhone around.

At this point it’s been so long since we reviewed the X1, we almost forgot it existed. Thankfully, Sony Ericsson decided to refresh our collective memory yesterday evening with a press release detailing the X1′s long-awaited arrival stateside. It’s definitely safe to say we enjoyed the phone but it certainly didn’t knock our socks off like a, gulp, $800 handset should. That’s right people, just as we scooped a couple of days ago, the official US price from Sony for this bad boy will be a whopping $800. Sheesh. For those of you who will soon be deciding between the X1 and a well-specced laptop in the coming months, here’s a quick refresher course:

• GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA 850/1900/2100
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Operating System
• Size: 110 x 53 x 16.7 mm, 145 grams
• Main screen: 3″ touchscreen, 800 x 480 pixels, 65,536 color TFT
• Slide-out QWERTY
• Phone memory: up to 400 MB, microSDHC support
• 3.2 megapixel camera, auto focus, video recording support
• Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
• Optical joystick navigation
• Xperia panels UI band-aid

Yeah, yeah – you know the rest. The X1 will be available through Sony stores on November 28th, though don’t expect any special Black Friday pricing. The Sony Style website will also begin taking pre-orders on November 13, you know, because there are going to be hoards of people pushing and shoving for the chance to drop $800 on a phone in this economy.

Are you a developer that missed the boat for the Google Android Challenge and/or the Apple iPhone Developers competition? Here’s your chance to achieve eternal glory, fame, and fortune. SE is apparently preparing to launch a developer challenge tailored to their Xperia X1 Windows Mobile handset. As you well know, SE has implemented a proprietary panel-based UI on the X1, bringing quick-look access to a variety of aspects of the handsets OS in an innovative and aesthetically pleasing way. To mark the phone’s launch, the company is challenging developers to come up with the most creative and useful implementation of the panels interface. Exciting? Sure, but wait until you hear about the prize. The winner of this competition will pocket a brand spanking new….Xperia X1. Yep. That’s it. With a prize like that, we can’t imagine anyone worth mentioning will spend much time trying to best their competition. We can’t help but wonder why SE would launch something like this in the first place.

UPDATE: Sony Ericsson contacted us with a bit more info regarding the contest. It turns out that the prize is actually a bit more comprehensive than the free X1 we’ve mentioned above. In addition to receiving a new handset, the winner will be flow to SE’s headquarters in Lund for a 2-day, all expenses paid trip to meet with the company’s design team. Sounds a lot better to us, though we’re still waiting for an actual X1 release stateside. Hmmm.

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Well lookie what we have here. Fresh off news of the sexy Sony Ericsson G705 we now finally have official launch info for the even sexier Xperia X1. You already know just about everything there is to know about the first entry into Sony Ericsson’s high-end Xperia line so we won’t bother going over it again. We’ve all been anticipating this smooth QWERTY slider since the beginning of the year but news of delays have continuously been a buzzkill. Last we all heard, Sony Ericsson had pushed the Xperia X1 back to 2009 and the spirits of Sony Ericsson fans around the world were crushed. Well it’s time to buck up, kiddos. September 30th is the date to mark in your calendars – if you live in the UK, Germany or Sweden that is. The X1 will then drop in other markets across Europe, Asia and Latin America over the course of Q4 2008. Now we know what you’re thinking and the answer is no, we’re not forgetting anything. According to the press release it looks like those of us in the US might still be looking at 2009 before we can get our hands on a localized version of the X1. LAME. To quote the release, “Availability dates for North America, China, Australia and Russia along with other countries not mentioned above will be announced by local markets in the coming months.” We already know that there will be an X1a  version packing a US 3G radio so what’s the problem Sony Ericsson?!

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Now that we’ve had some time to spend with the XPERIA X1, we’re going to break down the various features and give you our in-depth review. We’ll continue to update this post as we use the device more, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what’s at hand — a brand new Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1! Full review is after the jump. Pictures will be added shortly.

Screen:

With a 800×480 VGA screen, you can’t really go wrong right? Right. We’ve got to say off the top that this is the best-looking screen we’ve ever seen on a Windows Mobile device. It puts all the others to shame. It’s not just that the screen has an amazing resolution, it’s that the screen is vibrant and clear as day. If your vision isn’t top notch you might have to increase the font size in settings because it gets a little small with that super high-res. Sunlight couldn’t phase it either as we had no problem using it on the go outside.

Audio quality

We didn’t put the speakers through our normal tests just yet to be honest. We tried a couple MP3s and they sounded good, not great. The speaker volume in general could have been a little louder and the sound could have sounded a little fuller. Speakerphone was the same. We’ll report back with more detailed findings.

Notification lights

If you’ve seen the Sidekick LX, you’ll know what we’re talking about. There are 4 independant notification lights on the four corners of the X1. These are LED lights that change through various colors. Unlike the Sidekick, you have complete control over the notification settings. Only want people to think you’ve got a UFO in your pocket when you’re getting a text message? No problem. There’s a lot to choose from to suit your own needs. The lights offer a nice touch and weren’t too over-powering and bright which we were afraid of. The kids will love it.

Call quality

Calls came in and out with crystal clear quality. The ear speaker was plently loud and the party on the other end said we sounded like we were on a land line.

Data Connectivity

Name something you’d like to see in a mobile device… HSDPA? Wi-Fi? GPS? The X1 has all of it. T-Mobile USA lovers will also be overjoyed at the fact that an AWS 1700MHz version is coming. Our unit had the 850MHz/1900MHz US 3G bands so we were rockin’ over HSDPA just fine. In fact, web browsing was abnormally fast. We didn’t find much of a difference between browsing over Wi-Fi or HSDPA. That’s probably due to the bottleneck of the phone in general, but it was a pleasant surprise.

Build quality

Another winner for Sony Ericsson. While the device isn’t the lightest phone on the market, we think it’s build quality is almost second-to-none. Maybe even iPhone status. It’s just so sturdy and well put together. We have to give HTC some mad props on this one. Could you please try and incorporate some of this newfound metal addition into some of your devices HTC? Please. The sliding mechanism was fantastic even though the device isn’t a normal “flat” slider. Major points for build quality.

Usability factor

This could be subjective depending on your view of Windows Mobile, but we found the X1 to be on par or better than any Windows Mobile device we’ve used. Baring the keyboard issue, (see below) there wasn’t anything that hindered us from taking full advantage of the device. When closed, the device gives you access to all necessary shortcuts on the bottom front of the unit. Slide it open and you’ve got access to everything you could want. People have wrote us and asked about how it is to use the phone when the QWERTY keyboard doesn’t have directional keys, but they’ve overlooked something — the optical joystick. This works wonderfully well and doesn’t have a learning curve. It’s a natural extension of what we’ve been forced to use in the past. There was a “cursor” menu in settings but no cursor showed up on the screen. You also have full control over the sensitivity of the optical joystick. Making phone calls was comfortable and we didn’t have any issues with people hearing us or us hearing them.

Keyboard

The keyboard is a sensitive area for many people. Anyone who follows us know we take it very seriously — we put them all through the ringer! So, it pains us to report, that at least with our particular unit, the keyboard wasn’t great. It didn’t take time to get used to it, it just didnt perform like the way we had hoped. The reason is because the keys almost are completely flush with the case and don’t give good tactile feedback when pressed. Odly enough, the spacebar was actually ok. It faired the best out of all of them. We understand why there really is no travel in the keys — there is a huge sliding mechanism right over them — but we would have liked to see a little more feedback when typing. They have this triangular pattern on top which does make it easy to feel them, but you don’t get a good response when actually pressing them down. The backlight on the QWERTY ‘board successfully helped us find the keys when it was nightime, but that still didn’t help when typing. We said this before, but if we had to compare the keyboard to anything, it would be Sony’s UX-series computers. It’s the same exact thing.

If you asked the general public what the #1 Windows Mobile device they’re waiting for, you’d probably lose count of how many times people said XPERIA. Sony Ericcson, for the first time, has entered into the Windows Mobile market, and our first impressions? Wow. You really couldn’t throw better specs on this thing if you tried. From your local flavor of UMTS/HSDPA, to an optical joystick (fire!), to a whopping 800×480 VGA screen, and even cool funky notification lights, this thing is packed! Let’s not forget the physical design of the device as it’s one of the coolest and hippest-looking phones we’ve seen in a very long time. Since our unit isn’t a production version, the software runs a little slow. Even so, in most tasks, it performs very well. We can’t wait to play with a final production unit. It has us that impressed! One major flaw, though… Do you really want to know? The keyboard! Listen guys, if you’re going to throw on a QWERTY, at least make sure it’s worth having, ok? Not to say that this keyboardis absolutely terrible, but it’s one of the worst. Think Sony UX computer, for those of you that have one or have used one. The sliding mechanism comes right ontop of the keys, and thus, the keys don’t travel a lot when pressed. They give little to no feedback despite having a cool triangular design. We’re putting together our review, but in the meantime, you know where the goodies are!

Click on over to our Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 gallery!

As we continue to continue to continue to wait for the XPERIA X1 that we’ve all seen and read so much about, a new whitepaper has just been issued. It basically just does a good job of telling us what we’ve already known for a while, but there is some new juice to be drunk. Namely, the X1 will be issued in two servings; one for America and one for the rest of the world of course. This people, is pretty solid news. Sony Ericsson hasn’t been known to show the US much love when it comes to its higher-end models. They know they’ve got a winner with the X1 though, or at least we’d like to think they do.

• X1a – Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900Mhz), tri-band (850/1900/2100Mhz) UMTS/HSPA
• X1c – Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900Mhz), tri-band (900/1900/2100Mhz) UMTS/HSPA

Solid. We can’t wait to get our grubby mits on one of these puppies. Assuming, that is, Sony Ericsson actually releases it some day. Also of note in the whitepaper is a claimed 10 hours of GSM talk time or 6.5 hours of talk time over 3G. Impressive indeed.

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This one is a long shot but crazier things have surely happened. A new promo video from Sony Ericsson is now making its way across the internet. Many people who have seen the video are jumping to the conclusion that the handset featured in it is none other than the XPERIA X2. Sure, it is possible that the second model from the XPERIA line is leaked before the first model is even released. It’s happened before. What people have failed to mention so far however, is that the video actually depicts two entirely different handsets. The device being used by the girl in this video (pictured center above) clearly omits the three buttons along the bottom of the “X2″ being used by the guy. Also, it looks like the handset is sporting a front-facing camera and a light sensor above the ear speaker; both missing from the guy’s phone. Can we assume that the girl’s handset in the video is the X3? Then again, these could just be mock-ups built by the producers of the video. If that’s the case, Sony Ericsson should think about bringing this producer on board because those phones look pretty sweet. Hit the read link for the full video.

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Time to drool-guard your keyboard. Two of the most highly-anticipated handsets of 2008 were found mingling side by side and CNMO scored some shots. Granted, they’re not the best quality or lighting, but you get the idea. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 pictured above to the left, is Sony’s eventual first entry into its high-end XPERIA line. We hear that at some point, Sony Ericsson is actually going to make it available to consumers. To the right is the HTC Diamond, the ultra-sleek touch-only gem that was announced recently. If we had to chose only one… Well, luckily we don’t. More pics after the jump.

UPDATE: It turns out some nefarious site watermarked WMExperts’ pictures. We’ve updated the links to their site.

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