Sony Ericsson's
XPERIA X1 hasn't been the
easiest handset to procure here on US soil, despite being "
available" since Black Friday. Still, we know hardcore HTC / SE fanatics have figured out a way to get their palms in touch with the X1a (or X1i for international users). You already heard
our spill on the handset, but now we're interested in finding out how you'd tweak things if given the all-important keys to the design lab. Would you keep everything the same and just add Android? Would you rework the keyboard? Swap out the touchscreen with a capacitive replacement? Make it available only in turquoise and lime? It's a pretty
safe bet that this isn't the last Xx smartphone you'll see from SE, so your thoughts on the matter may actually prove beneficial in time. And... go!
posted Dec 26th 2008 7:20PM
I just wish it had a better Camera..5.0MP or better
Just because there is more megapixel does not mean the camera is that much better. You have not seen the actual quality of 3.2mp because all the other phones have crapshooter (sorry the dictionary thought 'craptastic' was not good enough) 480x272 screens which actually make the picture look worse than it really is. Get a N73/K850i (3.2mp) and take a photo, upload it to your computer and check it out. Also lighting is important does the camera have a reasonable flash?... there are many other factors i am sure.
the K850i has a 5mp camera. i have it and its nice but stability is a huge issue with the pics even when the auto-stabilizer is on. good pictures in daylight, not so great in the night.
last
Capacitive multi-touch, and android.
If only Apple iPhone design placed a slide out keyboard directly underneath it while keeping the rest of the phone the same - or adding battery life too.
Android, cap-touch, number row on kb...smells like french fries
Haha, well played va jj, +1 for you.
If your user ID ever gets banned you can always come back as pu ss
What's with Engadget's recent hardon for capacitive touch screens? I like my resistive screens. I can wear gloves, use a stylus (or the back of a pen), etc.
I don't see what it gains you to go with a more expensive, less useful touch technology. What am I missing here?
In Engadget America, capacitive screen TOUCHES YOU.
Same form factor (sliding keybord)
-Screen should be at least 3.2” without increasing the total size of the phone. Seems doable if they optimize the unused space and relocate some of the buttons to the side. 3.2” should be the new 2.8. 3.2 is also much friendlier for hand use and easier on the eyes
- faster CPU. Samsung already using 624mhz and asus will use 800mhz very soon
- built in falsh should be at least 2 or 4 GB just for convenience+ the sd card.
- jogdial and maybe an extra button on the side (record, comm., ok…etc) to improve usability with 1 hand use
- keyboard needs a fifth raw with a slight increase in button travel distance.
- the panels is bloated and takes too much memory and slow. It needs to be optimized
- accelerometer. Too many developers are starting to make use of this
- very quick release date. Its not like we are asking them to do a totally new hardware. All these things seem like tweeks to the current model. No later than first half of 09
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=438524
Brad - capacitives are much more responsive, as in, you can BARELY touch the screen with the tip of your finger and click a link. They are also more accurate, as they are based on the average of the user's input (read: finger). This makes casual use much easier to implement. Take any Verizon phone with a touch screen, or any WinMo phone with an altered GUI catered to casual finger use, and they just suck ass. Pressing buttons two or three times, sometimes getting the wrong ones when you are CLEARLY pressing the right one is annoying as hell.
The only downside that I've seen switching from resistive to capacitive is that you don't have the accuracy of a stylus. The screens are definitely capable of the accuracy, which is present when touching a tiny tiny link on a fully zoomed out webpage, as long as it isn't surrounded by other links. Pinpointing text is not very fun either. These are all things that could be fixed up when you combine the capacitive screen with an additional form of input; arrow keys, joystick toggle, trackball, etc.
But that's just my two cents. I heart capacitive, but it doesn't mean you can't heart resistive. I have to say, Solitaire on a resistive screen in WinMo is wayyyy more fun and accurate than any app store Solitaire.
Levi, have you tried Solitaire City? (free and $ versions.) I find it hard to believe there's a better solitaire app for *any* mobile device!
Capacitive touch screens FTW. There's no way I'd go back to a resistive again, ever.
Make it an iPh-
uh, I mean...
Lower the price!
/obvious sarcasm
Agreed. Lower the price.
Perhaps WiMo 7 when it comes out.
Mobile OS X?
why mobile osX why not android or fuure WinMo (7)?
making it with osX would turn it into an iphone 4G...
i think we all can agree that we do not want that.
No, it would make it into a 3rd Generation iPhone, the 3G right now is referring to the fact that it runs on a 3G network. Unless they put WiMAX or LTE into an OS X Mobile version of this.
I dont know why you were low ranked, ryan-c. I think Mobile OSX is a very good OS. Sure it may not be as 'open' as Android but its responsive, intuitive and with the inclusion on the app store, has a great potential. It just needs some basic things which everyone has been asking for like MMS, Copy and Paste, Flash support, voice dialing, voice guided navigation software and a better app acceptance system.
Despite these shortcomings, I feel like its arguably the most user-friendly OS I've ever used and I think it would do great on a design like X1. As far as the X1 hardware goes, I think it needs the following things:
Slimmer design,
Capacitive Touch Screen
I know its not carried by a carrier but its ridiculously expensive, so either reduce the price or have a US carrier
For its price now, it should get atleast a 5MP camera
As an iPhone user, I would still like to see Android develop rapidly. Competition is good! And, at least everything will interoperate. UIQ wasn't horrible on the old SE Ps, but SE always under powers these devices. WinMo always looks great in the next revision. It's been like this forever, and is lesson MS learned back in the Win 1.0 days. Just wait till the next revision! Somebody always waits.
I'm looking forward to the Android, OS X, Blackberry future, and hopefully Blackberry (for BB) will get their development perspective sorted. Oh yes, there's Palm too! Cough.
make it available while there was still hype
too late for that though
yeha man, making it available in australia would be awesome
1-Lower the price
2-Get the bootloader HardSPL'd so we can flash it
3-Get a GOOD WinMo 6.1 ROM that isn't full of bloatware
4-There is no four
5-?????
6-PROFIT!
These jokes are just getting incredibly dull.
'cept im not joking. I mean all of what I said.
Fewer panels, less eye candy for more speed and higher reliability.
Android.
Robots.
Terminator 3
Wall-E
1. Make it cheaper.
2. Add built-in memory (at least 8GB)
3. Better camera.
4. Don't announce it 1 year early.
5. Stop using physical frames around screens, keep it all leveled up like the Omnia or the iPhone.
Adding inbuilt memory is only a good idea if it a) doesn't seriously affect the price and b) if they also allow for an expansion slot.
Exactly TomMaroney, just like the Samsung Omnia did; amazing price, built-in memory (8 and 16 GB), and an expansion Mini SD slot (Up to 16 GB).
1. WinMo - GTFO
2. Android
3. a bit larger keyboard
4. lower price
5. ???
6. PROFIT!
Release it at a time when it would seem most popular.
Typing on an X1i now. Keyboard is good, but I miss cursor keys (the phone cursor requires moving to the upper part of the phone) and a few symbols that I have to use softkeys to get to, like dollar sign and underscore. Opera is an improvement over IE, but it could be faster (goes non-responsive at times), and it fails rendering some pages. Size is good, battery is good, call quality is good.
CDMA version.
Or you could just switch to gsm...
@Mitch: Some of us like our faster and cheaper networks despite the fact that they aren't the international standard. It's a trade-off.
It's a tradeoff. Therefore, by going with the alternative, you know that there's lots of hot GSM sexiness that you're going to be missing out on.
Remember, before the iPhone, all the sexy phones were from Europe and Japan.
1. Make the damn thing lighter
2. Make it thinner; OK, it has a QWERTY keyboard, but still... a few mm makes a big perceivable difference
3. More touch friendly capacitive screen (a la G1) wouldn't hurt, although the arguement againest is that it's bad for stylii? WM6 does need a stylus, so....
4. Auto-rotating the screen layout when err, rotated; It's a feature of the SE K800i, so why not the top of the line SE smartphone?
5. Not too sure if it was just the demo unit (fully working in-store at the CPW (uk mobile store), but build quality felt bad, plasticy, but I guess a better one usually flies in the face of point 1?
Other than that, the SE S/W for ONCE doesn't suck... The X-Panel thingy-ma-bob worked well when I used it, and I can't got back to a non-QWERTY keyboard (I mean an actual real tactile one) smartphone..... I think [Touch HD looks sexy too :S]
Errrr
*flips K800i around....* Screen aint moving O_O
:P
he means an accelerometer so when u turn the phone on its side the screen auto-rotates. it is featured on the k850i at least. dunno about the k800i.
ANDROID! Cupcake, plz.
I can haz cupcake?
I wouldn't, because I'm crap at soldering and I'd probably make a complete hash of it.
cheaper
if it was at a reasonable price, i would buy one. 800 bucks? Hell no
I will make it disappear
it is perfect!!!
i would add full flash support
a 5Mpixel camera
Accelerometer just for fun
and 8GB of available memory (or more)
but it is still perfect the way it is
You realize that doesn't make sense, right?
"It's perfect! BTW, here's how I'd improve it..."
Make the up/down Dpad keys eaier to use! There's only a small area you can push, otherwise you hit plastic....did anyone actually test this phone before they released it?
dont you hit plastic of you hit the key itself too?
........I GOT A X X1 SEVERAL WEEKS AGO, OFF OF THE BAY. I USED IT AND CHECKED IT OUT FOR ABOUT 2 DAYS, AND VERY QUICKLY PUT IT BACK ON THE BAY AND WAS HAPPY TO SELL IT FOR ABOUT WHAT I PAID FOR IT.....I COULD NOT WAIT TO GET RID OF IT.........
IN A NUT SHELL: 1) IT IS TWO DAM.....SMALL....BOTH HIGHT, AND WIDE.....JUST TWO DAM SMALL.....GOT IT.....
2) ALSO, IT'S QUALITY OF CONSTRUCTION IS A BIT ON THE CHEAP/FLIMSLY SIDE.....CHEEP MATERIALS.....I DOUGHT IT WOULD LAST 2 YEARS, WITH JUST NORMIAL USE........WITHOUT HEAVY REPAIR REQUIRED..
ENOUGH SAID.....
L
do you have a caps only keyboard?
No spell checker?
1) Add a destroy Lee button and disguise it as a caps lock or shift key.
2) Disguise it as a miniture S550 and cause it to self destruct when Flashpoint brags about it.
F
make it an iPhone, which means having OS X.
dont be stupid
1) Android
2) Faster CPU/GPU (throw some Tegra on this techhhh)
3) More RAM
4) Flash memory to at least 8 GBs BUT DON'T YOU DARE REMOVE THAT MICROSDHC SLOT
5) Accelerometer
6) Improve the optical joystick
7) Capacitive touchscreen
8) Keep/improve battery life
Thank You.
and ..................... 1280x720 Display .... one can only dream.
Get a carrier.
one year ago, whenit was announced and presented with much fanfare, it would have been the state of the art. Now it's born already beaten.
Both the Omnia and HTC's touch HD are far superior devices in all respects they may not sport a qwerty board, but they make up for it with top virtual kboards and in the case of the Omnia with the genial mini mousepad.
Since both devices are cheaper too there is hardly any reason left to buy an Xperia X1.
SE must try to sell as many handsets it can before Nokia brings the N97 to the game.
That will be the final stone on the tomb of this unfortunate handset.
It will always be remebered as the smartphone that was born with a bright future behind its shoulders.
The groundwork for failure was laid long ago by SE with the ridiculous P990i / P1 series. Sony kinda lost it when it comes to software, it's bizarre. The P990i was so bad it convinced me to never, ever buy a Sony phone again. It was the worst gadget I have ever owned. I had a god-awful and near-useless 1st generation Creative Nomad but the P990i was even worse than that.
Capacative Multi-Touch touch screen.
hand over all responsibilities to HTC, including pricing
I swear to god, if anyone says "make it an iPhone" I will find you and rip out your (i)eye
late much?
Pretty much.
LOWER THE PRICE....DRASTICALLY.
I would make the bottom part a display, and a removable keyboard should sit on top of that display (pop out or slide out) so it can be swapped with a gamepad. I reckon third parties will make cool thin gamepads and custom keyboards that allow the user to see through to the LCD underneath.
The second display should obviously be able to turn off when not in use or covered by the keyboard. The phone should still be able to be4 closed with the keyboard in it, so I am willing to sacrfice thickness for it.
And yeah I'd be willing to pay more for it since it's going to come with two displays.
WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?
SO SONY ERICSSON CAN HEAR THE SUGGESTIONS OVER THE LOUD DIN HERE ON THE INTERWEBS....
LOL
LOUD NOISES.
all non-caps combo-breaker1
I would change those funny looking X shaped buttons on the front.
Capacitive screen. (Speaking of which why do windows mobile phones never have capacitive screens?)
Make it run android.
5 mp camera
Xenon flash (LED's suck)
32 gigs onboard memory plus micro sd
Use a better keyboard (RIM designed qwerty)
Let AT&T pick it up and subsidize the hell out of it.
Windows Mobile Pro does not support capacitive screens yet. I believe it only supports resistive touch screens.
The price is the biggest change that should happen. Eight hundred dollars for a phone is absurd
I just wish SE could hire or pay good money to some of the guys over the xda-developers forums that have done a very good job at making a good phone even better and then take their apps and install them in a firmware. Then to make the battery to be a bit cooler (after 10-20 min of use -game or video- is very hot). Bigger internal memory. Also options to be even more customizable. And instead of having either WM or Android why not to have a Android panel in WM or vise versa ?
Hmm. Not so important its the speaker imo, is a bit weak but it good for calls. Also the keys to be a bit bigger and the letters to be more visible, and the joystick (not the optical one, then normal) the up and down are very thin.
More panels please, there are only a handful of good ones and that's it.
But even with these "complains/requests" i like this phone a lot and is near perfection. I totally recommend this phone to anyone that wants a serious phone.
Retail version is a bit rubbish.
After added custom cooked firmware it's a far better device.
Original UI is just pants since it's the standard WM6.1 interface. Adding TouchFLO3D makes it a far better device and far nicer to use.
Panels is nice, just slow.
FM Radio on mine seems to have a fit every so often and crashes the device. Not sure if that's hardware of software. I have found a way to sort this by making sure I do things in a certain order when turning the radio off. Annoying.
The HTC onscreen keyboards are a must. I prefer the Keypad keyboard to any other.
QWERTY keyboard feels a little small but that keeps the device small(ish) so I can't really complain about that.
The cell/radio seems to be poor compared to other HTC devices, this should be sortable will new/custom radio flashes.
I only bought mine after the HardSPL hack had been made meaning cooked firmwares were flashable, otherwise I wouldn't have touched it.
Mine came with a 4GB card, that made me happy. Obviously I would've liked larger but it was free and they could've easily given a token 512MB card.
TomTom Navigator 7 works a treat on this for me.
The screen is fantastic, amazing resolution. Makes looking an my old QVGA Hermes quite an awful experience!
Overall, good phone and hardware, poor retail software/firmware.
replace it with nokia N97.
Just lower the price.
$400 and it will be the bomb.
1. Can somebody get a phone version of Unbuntu on a a WinMo device already?
2. 5mp Camera
3 . 8-16gb+ onboard memory plus card slot
4. Capacitive Multitouch
5. Accelerometer
Then I'll consider $800
UnBuntu? What's that, like the opposite of Ubuntu?
Funny. Unfortunately it was just a typo.
Stuff Android in there
AND
Add Capacitive touch
OR
Make it an iPho.. Ehem... Cough... Cough
Sorry that was a typo
The X1 runs Android - it also runs HTC TOuchFlo if you want it. All of the instructions on how to download these apps to the X1 are on pocketnow. I think the camera should have been 5.0 or better because of the technology today. Also, the screen is just as good as the iPhone - just as good I tell you. Can you run android on the iPhone? Shoot video? The X1 can. I think the price should be lower. It could be lighter but they used a lot of metal and good materials. The screen not smooth and embedded does suck but it apparently makes it more responsive. The buttons on the bottom may not appeal to everyone but are really cool to have: D pad, optical mouse, quick OK and Cancel buttons, ect! This really is a good phone as it is but with a hefty price tag, no carrier and for Christ sake nowhere to be found in the USA!
Have it run android os rather than window mobile. And better battery life.
How about a capacitive touch screen (Apple owns multitouch people) and a faster processor w/ more RAM and a better GPU. This will let it run the Spaces thing, without lag, and be able to be used. I would get one if AT&T picked this up. Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 (SEX2) ftw.
well...
1. put 4(or 5) way button with the qwerty keyboard
2. bring it on att network
3. full flash support
4. full flush screen
5. (and please no capacitive touchscreen...handwriting recognition is good)
...and you have a winner!!!
How about cutting its price by at least 50%?
Put the OS and all the features that are on Samsung's Eternity into this phone and cut the price by half (at least) and then I might CONSIDER buying this phone.
price it at$98 ,so it can have a chance to survive here in the usa.it might steel some iphone customers.,
I own an Xperia X1i (here in Santiago, Chile) and i have a customized firmware for it that is based on the HTC Touch HD applications (keyboard, dial pad, touch flo 3D, youtube, etc) ported to xperia, and it looks and works perfectly. I lost the panels, but I prefer touch flo instead. My experiencia is going better and better so far. I really recommend this device to all of you, and i expect they would eventually offer it at lower prices.
Greetings from Chile.
What about making it affordable...please :)
MAKE IT ALOT CHEAPER... that thing is not worth 400dollars more than a ps3.... get a damn carrier.... no carrier wanted it because it was probably so damn expensive, though the price would go down it would still be a lot more expensive than the IPhone. From when I first heard about this I was like " man if this was the same price as the 3G or even a hundred dollars more I would get it" and I believed that because I thought " they arent stupid, the common consumer would say" smartphone touchscreen thingy that costs 800 that not many ppl know about and iphone 200 and is a sick phone... SE dissapointed me with this one... though the phone is good
Better camera... but I AM NOT asking for more megapixels (that is kinda stupid) ... but for more quality images (like K800i) , videos with AAC Audio and not the old AMR... that's all ... :D
Wait, what? I agree with having better camera, but without increasing MPs?
Also, what's wrong with more MPs? For the X1 to stand more of a chance against the upcoming N97 (or the whole N series for that matter) it's gonna need 5MPs. Hell, Samsung has pulled 8MPs in a phone before! 3.2 is the new 2.0.
I say we revolt.
Death to Styli ! (i think thats the plural of stylus...)
It is suprising that nearly every review site condemn the resistive stylus poking screens, yet manufacturers continue to make them. Either its cheaper, or they need a slap in the face with a fish!