Sony Ericsson has created phones around the Symbian operating system, jumped quietly onto the Windows Mobile bandwagon with the announcement here today of its Xperian X1 smartphone.
Today marked the launch of XPERIA™ and a new era in mobile communications with the announcement of the XPERIA™ X1, a stand-out, arc slider phone from Sony Ericsson designed to address the growing need for a premium, converged mobile experience.
In fact, the handset has a custom user interface–consisting of 9 square icons that Sony Ericsson calls panels–which sits on top of the usual Windows Mobile 6 interface. The company also said the Xperia brand was not tied to Windows Mobile, so that future Xperia models could support other mobile phone platforms.
However Rikko Sakaguchi, head of Portfolios and Propositions for Sony Ericsson, said using Windows Mobile would allow the company to broaden its customer base, and also said it was the best platform in terms of PC integration.
The handset itself has a resistive 3-inch VGA touchscreen atop an optical navigation pad; the display slides sideways in a gently curved arc (and changes screen orientation to landscape mode) to reveal a roomy QWERTY keyboard. It supports assisted GPS and Wi-Fi as well as HSDPA, and has a built-in 3.2-megapixel camera.
Sony Ericsson also announced a slew of other phones, including new Walkman and Cyber-shot handsets, plus a couple of high-speed HSPA XpressCards.
Sony Ericsson XPERIATM X1 – energised communication, the premium experience.
- Convergence of multimedia entertainment and mobile Web communication
- Unique arc slider with wide pitch easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard
- XPERIA™ panels – arrange as you want for easy access
- Enjoy multimedia entertainment on bright wide VGA display
- Windows Mobile® capabilities
The X1 won’t appear until the second half of this year, but most of the others should begin shipping worldwide by mid year. Most of the phones support either HSDPA or its slightly slower (but still considered broadband) sibling, UMTS–although some only support the latter in Europe (and are therefore unlikely to ship in the U.S.).
source:sonyericsson