Fix your Xperia X10

Many reviewers test a product over a period of 1 week and feel they can adequately give someone advice on whether or not to buy a certain product. I’ve lived with the Xperia X10 for almost a year now so my review is very personal and will touch on all the –ve’s and positives for the phone.

Camera

The camera on the phone is great and it was one of the key buying points when I got the phone. I have however realised that I don’t use the camera nearly as often as I thought I would. The camera is good compared to other phones, but no where near as good as a good 5 megapixel camera – such as Canon IXUS range.

The dedicated camera button can take 4-10 seconds to launch camera app – that is annoying. I have not found a fix for that yet.

TimeScape and MediaScape

Those 2 apps were another reason I bought the phone. They were great for about 2-3 weeks, after which I wanted toknow how to get rid of them. The problem with those 2 apps is that you can get many apps on the market that can do a better job. For example, I don’t use MediaScape for music or video – instead I use PowerAmp and RockPlayer. Not X10 users I know use MediaScape. As for TimeScape – I used it for 1 week and never touched it again. It’s a shame that these are the 2 apps that hold back quick Android updates on the X10 – one has to wonder just how important they are to Sony Ericsson (yes no user would mind if you got rid of them)?

Perhaps Sony Ericsson would do well to offer a customised version of X10 and a non customised version. If there was ever a phone that could have toppled the iPhone it was this phone. Sony Ericsson needs to be very careful not to fall in the Microsoft trap – for 10 years Microsoft thought it had the formula for Smartphones figured out. Users view their Smartphones like Computers. When a new OS comes out – give me the ability to update. If Sony Ericsson employees have computers, they will understand how important it is to be able to remove manufacturer add-ons – like MediaScape and TimeScape. Instead of wasting money on MediaScape why not just buy PowerAmp????

On the Move Music Player Test

You cannot select music using MediaScape if you’re walking. IMPOSSIBLE! The buttons are too small and the swipe bar at the bottom is just too thin. iPhone music player buttons are bigger and easy to select music as you walk. Blackberry Bold is also easy, albeit not touch screen. Sony Ericsson – maybe it’s time you fired you UX team! Seriously, pick uo one of the phones and walk at a moderate pace and try and select Album – Scroll to one in the middle of the list – select a song in the middle of the album! IMPOSSIBLE! Yet, this is an afterthought for iPhone or people who download a 3rd party app!


Fixing Headset Volume on Xperia X10

A quick look around on any train ride and ½ the people have headphones on. Music player functionality just has to be spot-on in this day and age where the iPod/iPhone set the benchmark over 3-4 years ago.

The headset volume of Xperia X10 running Android 1.6 is just terrible. Many of you will say that the X10 is now on Android 2.1 Éclair. Great – so I retested and decided that the 2.1 results would be the best and most up to date. I compared it to 2 of my old phones – the iPhone 3G the Blackberry Bold (9000) and my wife’s iPhone 4. I conducted the test with a pair of in-ear JVC-FXC80 headphones and over-ear AKG 701. The X10 volume is still terrible. It is about ½ as loud as the iPhone 3G. The Blackberry Bold is very loud and clear – the iPhone 4 has no reception but sounds great all the same.

I downloaded PowerAmp and tried to boost the volume that way. DISTORTION! That’s right, when it’s loud the music is simply too distorted. This is obviously not the fix for the volume. PowerAmp is a great music player, but it is definitely not going to sort out your music playing experience on the X10.

I did a quick search using Google and there were suggestions that the Nordic ROM would fix the headphone problem. So at last after almost 10 months I decided to download a custom ROM and root my phone whilst I was at it.

So I went here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=835308 and downloaded the custom ROM, loaded it on the X10 and fired up the music player.

FIXED!

Yes, the music is now louder. Shame on you Sony Ericsson!

Saving Battery

Here is the best tip anyone can give you. Download a plain black background and use it as your wallpaper. Turn down your screen brightness (contrast is better with the black wall paper) and there you have it. 20-30% better battery!

Keyboard

Does anyone actually use the Default X10 keyboard? I use SwiftKey.

Making Phone calls

The buttons are now bigger and pressing the call button does not tale you to another menu item like in 1.6 but makes the call! Good job. I think the calling functionality is good. Just make the letters a little bigger on the contacts menu.

Hindsight

In hindsight I probably should have gone for the Google Nexus One. The fact that it receives updates before any other phone is justification enough. I have lived on Android 1.6 for almost 12 months and my contract ends in 6 months time. Logic would suggest – once bitten twice shy. The other reason is the volume on the Nexus One. I could play my music properly.

My next phone will run be an HTC or Vanilla Android. I’m not interested in silly customisations that delay software upgrades – HTC somehow has their upgrades figured out.

In 6 months time I’ll upgrade to a phone with better than 640 x 960 resolution. If Samsung can get AMOLED screens to 640 X 960 then they have a winner. But it would be silly to play catch up with the iPhone. I would suggest 640 X 1024.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10: Has The Playing Field Changed Since it Was Announced in 2009?

HARDWARE

The hardware was great when it was first introduced, things I would suggest to make this phone truly great hardware-wise are:

• AMOLED screen
• At least 8GB internal memory
• 512 MB Ram
• HD Video (720P)
• HDMI output

Those changes alone (even running Android 1.6) would see this phone sell like crazy. I'd go as far as saying just having 16GB of internal memory and micro-SD would make this the best phone to get.

Negatives Hardware

Last year when Sony announced this phone it was the best hardware you could get. Now HTC Bravo, HTC Supersonic, Nexus One, Motorola Motoroi changed this since they introduce 720p video recording, AMOLED screens, 512 MB RAM, HDMI output depending on the particular phone.

SOFTWARE

The Sony UX interface is great, but the OS holds back the hardware. It's like taking a Ferrari for a spin during rush hour! Android 1.6 really holds back the hardware and here's why:

1. No HTML5 support

2. Poor white/black ratio compared to Android 2.0/2.1

3. Microsoft Exchange support not good/missing

4. No live wallpapers

5. Android 2.0 has better keyboard

6. Android 1.6 Only supports 65K colors vs 16 million for 2.0/2.1

7. Android 1.6 does not combine e-mail inboxes from multiple accounts in one page – does MediaScape offer this?

8. Search functionality for all saved SMS and MMS messages

9. Auto delete the oldest messages in a conversation when a defined limit is reached – does MediaScape provide this?

10. Support for double-tap zoom

11. No Bluetooth 2.1 (No Object Push Profile and Phone Book Access Profile) – MediaScape?

12. Android 1.6 has no multi-touch support

13. Android 1.6 has limited Speech-to-text support compared to 2.1 (All text fields!)

14. Android 2.1 has additional home screens

Sony Working on Two Xperia X10 Versions?

If you look at the two versions, the white one has 3 additional holes at the top of the face. The black one does not.

Should we expect 2 differenct versions of X10?

Xperia X10 Pictures

Pictures Courtesy http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2009/11/14/xperia-x10-sample-pictures-and-sample-video/


CLICK TO ENLARGE

Guide for Picking The Best Android Phone for You

Sony Xperia X10 vs Nexus One vs Motorola Droid vs Acer Liquid vs Archos

Xperia X10

Nexus One

Motorola Droid

Acer Liquid

(Updated: 21st Jan 2010) The Android handset landscape has changed drastically over the past year, from a literal handful of options to – the fingers on both your hands, the toes on both your feet and all the mistresses Tiger Woods has had in the past 24 hours (OK, maybe 4 hours). You get the point though, there are quite a few options and through the course of 2010 these options will only increase.

The only other mainstream handset smartphone option that rivals the Android handset options available in 2010 will be the Windows mobile platform – and we're all rushing for it – not!

So what are the handsets to consider in 2010? The ones currently released on the market that we will look at are the Acer Liquid and Motorola Droid and an additional three to be released early 2010, the Sony Xperia X10, Google Nexus One (Passion, HTC Bravo) and Archos Phone Tablet – though we only have a handful of details on the phone.

Archos Phone

We will look at hardware and software sub-categories, and compare the phones based based on the information we have.

HARDWARE

Processor

The Nexus One and Sony Xperia X10 have the snappier Qualcomm Snapdragon 1Ghz processor onboard. The Acer Liquid has a downclocked version of the Snapdragon running at 728Mhz – perhaps to conserve battery. This would probably put the Acer Liquids performance more on par with the Motorola Droids. The Archos Phone promises to be a really fast phone with an upgraded ARM Cortex processor running at 1Ghz and also with improved GPU over Droid and iPhone.

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD 8250, 1.0 GHz	Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 550 Mhz	Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD 8250, 1.0 GHz	Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD 8250, 768 MHz	ARM Cortex 1Ghz

Graphics

The Snapdragon's Adreno 200 Graphics core is phenomenal on the triangle render benchmark, coming in with a score of approximately 22 million triangles per/sec compared to approximately 7 million triangles/sec on the Motorola's SGX530. This is an important element for 3D graphics. Interestingly, the iPhone 3GS has a similar CPU to Motorola Droid but an upgraded faster SGX535 GPU which is capable of 28 million triangles/sec and 400 M Pixels/sec. Archos may get better SGX GPU.

Xperia X-10 Graphics Demo

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Adreno 200 Graphics Core with OpenGLES 2.0	PowerVR SGX530 Graphics Core with OpenGLES 2.0	Adreno 200 Graphics Core with OpenGLES 2.0	Adreno 200 Graphics Core with OpenGLES 2.0	PowerVR SGX540?
22 M Triangles/sec	7 M Triangles/sec	22 M Triangles/sec	22 M Triangles/sec	35 M Triangles/sec
133 M Pixels/sec	250 M Pixels/sec	133 M Pixels/sec	133 M Pixels/sec	1000 M Pixels/sec
HD Decode (720p)	HD Decode (720p)	HD Decode (720p)	HD Decode (720p)

3-D Graphics Benchmark

Motorola Droid 20.7 FPS (Android 2.0).

Nexus One 27.6 FPS. (Android 2.1)

Acer Liquid 34 FPS. (Android 1.6)

Xperia X10 34FPS+ est. (Android 1.6)

Note: All phones tested running WVGA resolution 480 x 800 or 480 X 854. Different versions of Android will be a factor e.g. Android 2.0 + reproduces 16 million colors vs 56K for 1.6. Older phones such as G1, iPhone 3GS may score 25-30 FPS but they use lower 480 X 320 resolution.

Memory/Storage

The Nexus One comes in with an impeccable 512MB of RAM. This provides an element of future proofing for the hardware and puts it in a league of its own. The Xperia X10 comes with 1GB of ROM and 384 MB of RAM. The 1GB means you'll be able to have twice as many apps on your phone until Google lets you save on your removable memory. The Acer Liquid and Droid are more or less the same.

	Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
RAM	512 MB	256 MB	384 MB	256 MB
Flash	512 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	512 MB

Display

The Nexus One uses an AMOLED screen which provides crispy images and more saturated colors than a TFT-LCD. It's also more energy efficient. Xperia X10 packs a 4.0 inch TFT screen with 854 x 480 resolution. Expect similar picture quality to the Motorola Droid for the Sony Ericson phone. The Archos Phone promises to deliver an interesting experience that could potentially make it the King of Androids.

Spot the difference: Top TFT-LCD screen and bottom OLED

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
800 x 480 px, 3.7 in (94 mm), WVGA, AMOLED	854 x 480 px, 3.7 in (94 mm), WVGA, TFT-LCD	854 x 480 px, 4.0 in (102 mm), WVGA, TFT-LCD	800 x 480 px, 3.5 in (89 mm), WVGA, TFT-LCD	854x 480px, 4.3 in (109mm), WVGA, AMOLED

Display Input

All standard stuff here. All are pretty much Capacitative with multi-Touch depending on the continent you buy your phone from.

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Capacitative, Multi-Touch	Capacitative, Multi-Touch	Capacitative, Multi-Touch	Capacitative, Multi-Touch	Capacitative, Multi-Touch

Battery

The Xperia X10 has the largest battery – and might I add likely the best quality battery from the lot. It's the same battery used in the Xperia X1 and it performed admirable. Talk time for the Nexus One is very good and we expect the Xperia X10 to match this or be marginally better. Of concern is Nexus Ones 3G stand-by time of 250 hours. It's worse than the other phones but not bad at a little over 10 days! Updated 21st Jan 2010 - confirmed Xperia battery times. Xperia more or less performs at the same level as the other Android phones, delivering 5 hours talk time.

Sony 1500 mAh Battery

	Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
mAh	1400 Li-Po	1400 Li-Po	1500 Li-Po	1350 Li-Po
Talk/Standby 3G hrs/hrs	7/250	5/380	5/300	5/400

Communication

The phones are all capable of 3.5G (HSDPA 7.2 Mbit/s) data transfer. The Motorola Droid and Sony Xperia X10 can give you a little bit extra supporting 10.2 Mbit/s data transfer. Obviously the network must exist to support these speeds. Motorola is the only one with Class 12 EDGE, but this is not too important in this day and age of 3G.

	Nexus One, Bravo	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
HSDPA (Mbit/s)	7.2 (1700 band)	10.2	10.2	7.2
HSUPA	2.0 - 5.76	2.0-5.76	2.0-5.76	2.0-5.76
GSM (850, 900,1800,1900)	Y	Y	Y	Y
EDGE	Class 10	Class 12	Class 10	Class 10
UMTS band 1/4/8 (2100/AWS/900)	Y	Y	Y	Y
GPS	Y	Y	Y	Y
Network	3-3.5G	3-3.5G	3-3.5G	3-3.5G

Connectivity:Bluetooth/Wifi

Nexus One is the only Android phone that currently offers 802.11n connectivity. In fact, I can't think of any other phone out there that also has 802.11n. This might be the Google Talk phone we all thought was heading our way after all! All phones have either bluetooth 2.0 or 2.1. These will essentially be the same as far as data transfer (3 Mbit/s) is concerned. Version 2.1 offers better power efficiency though and a few other enhancements.

Nexus One - Broadcom 802.11n

	Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Bluetooth	2.1 + EDR	2.1 + EDR	2.1 + EDR	2.0 + EDR	Y
802.11 b	Y	Y	Y	N	Y
802.11 g	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
802.11 n	Y	N	N	N	Y

Ports/Connectors/Sensors

The 2GB shipped micro-SD card with the Acer Liquid is unrealistic by todays standards. The Motorola Droid offers the best deal with a 16GB micro-SD. The Sony Xperia X10 is shipped with an 8GB micro-SD card, but remember the Xperia X10 also has that slightly bigger 1GB flash memory on-board as well for and impressive total of 9GB expandable to a total of 33GB. Google decided to save on costs by only offering a 4GB micro-SD card with the Nexus One, but if the idea is to compete against the iPhone then 8GB should be the minimum. Clearly the Motorola is on the right track with 16GB shipped, and you can't ignore the impressive 1GB ROM on the Xperia X10.

SanDisk working on 128GB Micro-SD

	Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Sim Card	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
3.5 mm jack	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Micro USB	Y	Y	Y	Y
Shipped Micro SD/Supported (GB)	4/32 Class 2	16/32 Class 6	8/32 Unknown	2/32 Class 2	Unknown
Light Sensor	Y	Y	Y	Y
Proximity Sensor	Y	Y	Y	Y
Compass	Y	Y	Y	Y
Accelerometer	Y	Y	Y	Y
Cell/Wifi Positioning	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y

Case Material

The Motorola metal case is the sturdiest. Build quality for the Nexus One and Xperia X10 is very good. The Xperia X10 has a refelective plastic whilst the Nexus one is more industrial with teflon and metal on the bottom. Acer Liquid has average build quality, but that was always the intention with the Liquid in order to keep manufacturing costs low.

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Rubber/Plastic	Metal	Plastic	Plastic

Keyboard

If you want a physical keyboard then the Droid is your only choice in the list. The keys on the Droid keyboard are basically flush so you don't get the comfortable key separation feel on a Blackberry keyboard. The others (Droid as well) have virtual keyboards which work in portrait or landscape mode.

Droid Slide-out keyboard

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Virtual	Physical	Virtual	Virtual	Virtual

Camera

The Xperia X10 is one of the best camera phones. Sony used it's camera know how for their new smartphone lineup and it will be hard to match-up against Sony unless the other guys partner up with someone like Canon. The X10 comes with an 8.1 mp camera with X 16 digital zoom. The software has also been changed from standard Android to include typical camera options. Also included are a four face detection feature that recognizes faces in a photo and appropriately tags/files the photo. Motorola Droid comes in with a 5 mp camera with X4 digital zoom compared to the 5mp and x2 digital zoom on the Nexus One.

Xperia X10 sample photo

***Additional Photos***

Motorola Droid sample photo

Nexus One sample photo

Acer Liquid sample photo

	Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Megapixel	5	5	8.1	5
Zoom	X 2	X 4	x16	1
Flash	Y	Y (dual)	Y	Y

Video

Video wise, the Nexus One, Motorola Droid and Xperia will perform roughly the same.

	Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Video Res.	720x480	720x480	800x480	320x240
Flash	Y	Y	Y	N

Size/Height/Weight

Lightest and thinest is the Nexus one. Motorola is weighed down by the metal used. They all are roughly the same size as the iPhone 3Gs which comes in at 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm and weighs 135g.

	Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Height (mm)	119	115.8	119	115
Width (mm)	59.8	60	63	62.5
Depth (mm)	11.5	13.7	13	12.5	10
Weight (g)	130	169	135	135

SOFTWARE

OS Level

Nexus One has the most current OS level at 2.1. Motorola Droid is expected to upgrade soon as well as the Acer Liquid. The heavily customized Xperia X10 will be more of a challenge to upgrade to 2.1 because of the heavy customization.

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
2.1	2	1.6	1.6

Customization

Xperia X10 shines as far as demonstrating how customizable Android really is. The other 3 phones have very few changes to the standard Android OS.

Sony TimeScape/MediaScape

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
None	None	Rachael UI	Acer UI 3.0

Application Market

We are likely to see more App market emerge. Sony currently leads the way and Motorola and HTC (Nexus One) will follow suit as well.

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Android Market	Android Market	PlayNow, Android Market	Android Market

Media

Mediascape is an ambitious effort to add decent media functionality to Android. Sony succeeds and also introduces a fun way to organize your media. Acer has Spinlet which is not as complex as Mediascape.

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Android	Android	MediaScape	Spinlet

Social Networking

Sony again leds the customization way with Timescape. This is another good job by Sony to add extra functionality to Android. Timescape helps manage your contacts better and brings social networking and contacts onto one application.

Nexus One	Motorola Droid	Sony Xperia X10	Acer Liquid	Archos Phone
Android	Android	TimeScape	Android

Google vs. Apple

The Android vs. iPhone battle is a fight reincarnated that we witnessed decades ago. It's a battle Apple once lost.

Google therefore decided to steal a page from a small startup called Microsoft and and their Windows OS. Google is doing this by offering Android on multiple hardware platforms compared to Apple that is doing what it has always done since the early 80's back - proprietary. Why won't Apple learn - well - because they still make money.

The advantage Google has over Apple, much like in the PC world, is they have companies that make cheap handsets and sell them - cheap. This obviously reduces Googles risk since they don't need to sell any hardware. This is analogous to the relationship between Dell, HP etc and Microsoft (back then Linux was not available). These companies put Android OS on their hardware because it's cheap (FREE) and thus increases Google market share.

Then you get the higher-end phones - with some surpassing the Apple hardware. Apple can't match the might of a collective market - Sony, Acer, Dell, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, LG, etc.

Apple will be bigger (turnover) than any single one of the hardware manufacturers. But combined they will account for more than 50%+ of handsets on the market in 2-3 years time.

Just like Microsoft, Google will have the leading OS for handsets. If hardware manufacturers just come up with a way to upgrade hardware - eg RAM, SD cards (doable)!, CPU, Battery (doable)! then it's the Microsoft+PC vs Apple+MAC battle. We all know Microsoft won that battle.

Let's not forget the direction Google hinted it wants to take for the payment system of Market Place - all Apps bought, will be charged through Carrier. It couldn't be any easier!


LOOKOUT FOR THIS PHONE:



I think the Sony Xperia X10 is the Android phone to beat. It's iPhone competitor will be the 4G. The Sony Rachael UI (UX) is very impressive. The downside is the phone runs Android 1.6 which only support 65K colors, unlike Android 2.x wich support 16 million colors. The UI is tightly woven into android 1.6, could this be a problem when it comes to updating the OS?

HARDWARE

Camera:
1) 8MP with 16x digital zoom
2) Face recognition (automatically recognizes upto 5 faces in a Photo)
3) Smile Detection (Takes picture when you smile)
4) + all the usual stuff like video call, geo-tagging, camera/video flash etc.

CPU:
1 Ghz Snapdragon

Memory:
1 GB internal memory - 384MB RAM

Display:
4.1 Inch Capacitative (480 x 854 - WVGA)

Communication:
HSDPA and HSUPA

SOFTWARE

1) Sony PlayNow - Music/Video/Game/Applications downloads
2) Sony TimeScape - Social Networking/Communication



3) Sony MediaScape - Media Player



4) Sony PS3 Remote Play (In development)

KILLER APPLICATIONS

1) Layer



2) Speed Forge 3D



ACCESSORIES

100+ Sony Accessories

OTHER ANDROID PHONES

HTC Bravo, Nexus One, Motorola Shadow (Rumoured) - AMOLED Touch screen, multi-mics, 5MP camera, 720p Video recording, HDMI port, 802.11 b/g/n

Nexus One:


APPLE

iPhone 4G (June 2010) - 5MP, AMOLED, Video Calling, 802.11 b/g/n

Concept 4G:

Google vs. Apple

This blog will contrast and compare hardware developments.