High Powered Heavyweight: the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2

We are not excited over a new Windows Mobile phone. Windows Mobile 6.5 professional can take a hike and the world would not miss it. Maybe Windows Mobile 7 will be great, maybe not; but the operating system we have right now is the 6.5 and we are not impressed. With that point of clarification made in order, we can finally say that we are impressed with the Sony Erisson XPERIA X2.

It’s a good mobile smart phone. Yes, we are impressed and it is good. We are not very impressed and it is not great. The reason we are also clarifying that is because we actually expected to be totally blown away by the X2. The XPERIA X1 suffered from a lot of preproduction flaws that were never fixed. We had high hopes that the X2 would surpass this and deliver that high end device we were all promised.

Sony Ericsson designed the XPERIA line to be their top tier mobile phones. The series was dedicated to delivering the most powerful hardware and best software applications. It has got Windows Mobile 6.5, and we know something is wrong.

The Problem with Windows

Windows Mobile 6.5 is made for touch screen phones, particularly, resistive touch screen phones. Look at the thin buttons, small texts and oddly placed menus, these are not made for you to access with your finger tips, these have been designed with a stylus in mind.

Install the Windows Mobile 6.5 on a basic smart phone with a resistive touch screen and you will be fine. But on a device like the XPERIA X2 which deserves a capacitive touch screen and you will see how a bad operating system can really make a good phone look bad.

The worst part is, even with the resistive touch screen, using WinMo 6.5 is still a major drag. Not that any of the previous versions are better. Compared to HTC Sense, the S60, LiMo and other operating systems, choosing Windows Mobile has got to be one of the worst decisions Sony Ercisson has made.

Good Hardware

Despite the terrible operating system, the X2 does live up to the name of having great hardware. In fact, the 3.2 resistive touch screen display can display resolutions of up to 800 x 480 pixels; easily matching other HD devices –we are not surprised, Sony has been leading the HD display market for a while now.

The phone is a little slow with the old Qualcomm MSM 7200 528 MHz processor. Probably chosen to cut down on manufacturing costs, and because WinMo will waste the power of a 1GHz Snapdragon.

The Road to X3

The silver lining to all the dreary info comes in the announcement of Sony Ericsson that they will no longer be using WinMo after the Sony Erisson XPERIA X2. Hopefully, this means that we might see the Sony Cross Media Bar on the X3, or the rumours that the X3 will use Google Android 2.0 Éclair are true. As long as Sony delivers the hardware and gets a better OS, the X3 will certainly achieve what the X2 has failed to do.