Hands-on review: Sony Xperia X1

[nodramachicks]

It's not an iPhone, and for many that's half the appeal: Sony's $800 (unlocked) Xperia X1 is the most expensive mainstream cell phone on the market, but it's one of the sexiest handsets around that doesn't start with an "i" and end in "phone."

The main X1 interface is unlike any other handset you've tried, and you'll notice the difference immediately as you punch into the XPanel home screen, a custom dashboard that lets you quickly -- and stylishly -- jump from one application to another, usually with just a single touch. You get nine panes to work with. By default they include an FM radio, calendar, clock, photo viewer, and the Opera web browser (a much appreciated improvement over the IE browser included with Windows Mobile, atop which all of this is built). Some Xperia-specific apps, including a bizarre system that uses colored fish as alerts, are also on tap to baffle you for months. Dig into the settings and you can mix and match the apps you want to appear and download new apps from Sony's website.

The phone is a horizontal slider, and when closed the front of the phone features a three-inch touchscreen (with a whopping 800 x 480 pixel resolution) with a small collection of buttons beneath it. Of special note is the center action button, which also works as a tiny touchpad in many applications while you drag your fingertip around on it.

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[Viper89]

well as cool as it looke and screen pixals the phone aint worth 800. Ive seen reviews and read reviews saying the panel interface is very slow like annoying slow so anybody out there who is about to drop 800 on this phone be careful.