New Sony Ericsson Rachael UI video hits, still looks nothing like Android
By Paul Miller 
posted October 31st 2009 11:56PM
posted October 31st 2009 11:56PM
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posted October 31st 2009 11:56PM
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I'm going with sexy, fluid, and fun to use. Please Lord, send this phone to Tmobile first.
T-Mobile never gets phones this sick. Currently I'm planning on getting the Behold II on the 18th, but if this phone is released in 2009, I might just wait for it and get it unlocked. I'll even pay up to $600 for it.... but there's a good chance an unlocked version is more than that. Acer's phone is also on my radar...
looks amazing. doubting between this and an iphone. just have one question, will this be upgradeable like the iphone? for example, can I instal 3.0 on an android phone when it comes out or do I have to wait for the manufacturer to give me an update?
more on topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd1OPwfXnK0&feature=player_embedded
Yeah, you need to depend on the Manufacturer for updates... luckily the Android community is very active and you may be able to get a modded ver or something if the manufacturer doesn't provide an update. This is exactly why I didn't get a LG BL40. Who knows when they decide to actually fix bugs etc.
The interface looks quite slick and I like the media layout
I'm just wondering why Sony Ericsson didn't make this sort of effort skinning windows mobile 6.5 with the xperia x2.
why? oh why had they to put the greatest douchbags of all time in the ad?
still, probably great phone.
I am getting very excited....first HD2's awesome sense UI & hardware and now X10 even sexier UI & hardware.....suck on that apple and you dumb fanboys....
i wonder how WinMo7 and Maemo6 make it out....
this is all too much good stuff..... :)
I would dump my iphone without a second thought for these babies...
It's kind of funny how suddenly everyone has quit saying the phrase "iPhone killer" after so many killer disappointments
No one can yet successfully compete with the iPhone but it's nice to see Sony trying. Maybe they will have a smash hit with this phone and I hope they do. That will mean more and more users will realize WinMo is a complete piece of garbage and dump that OS and everyone will benefit out of that.
If the real product is as smooth as the demo, this would be awesome. Yeah Verizon fanboys, see if your "droid" can do this. :P
Nice, but a little too busy for my taste. Love the HTC senses UI though.
This also reminds me of one of the most underrated media playback UI: Windows Media Centre.
OMG this interface is so slick & sexy I hope this is the interface of the x10??, cant wait for the 3rd nov.
Is this Android?? hope so, but there are only 3 hardware buttons, could this be Symbian OS????
I assume this will be a GSM/Europe phone for quite some time and maybe come to t-mo later in 2010?
GET OVER IT !
You had the Pre for what 6 months now ?
And what about Moto Droid ?
We always get the goodies late, let us enjoy for once :)
(BTW : we are gonna pay 600euros for this phone, you will pay $600 hence we deserve it)
I'm split between this and the HD2. the HD2 has a larger screen, but this is rumored to have 16gb internal storage, and a screen that should be more than sufficient for me (currently on a 3" LG Incite, cooked ROMS and all). If this is priced comparably to the HD2 unlocked and has internal storage, I'm getting it. The Zune-y interface is a winner for me. I'm glad they seem to be going for the Zune Classic big-ass album art view rather than the smaller art of the ZHD.
You do realize that hd2 runs windows mobile... which is a terrible, terrible mobile OS, right?
I just like how this person has Abba and Korn in there. Diverse, or maybe the library of a mental patient?
Looks pretty nice. Should be easily ported for the Droid with it having the same resolution, just need a full dump and someone with the know-how.
Yawns, IPhone is still the best smart phone out there, NEXT.
Technical the iphone is not a smart phone because it cannot do multitasking, just wish this phone would have a dock port on the bottom so u could connect to dock speakers like the iphone :o(
Actually, I disagree. I would think that due to its ubiquity, it would be on the lowest end of smartphones. There's no real definition of featurephones or smartphones, and I suspect that most people would consider it a smartphone because it has a touchscreeen (note that by that definition there then are other low-end smartphones, like the LG Chocolate Touch).
That being said, I still have no interest in the iPhone. November 6th can't come soon enough for me.
technically speaking, the iPhone is by far the most popular smartphone in the market. It is now #2 in the market and fast approaching RIM. And technically speaking, the iPhone does multi-tasking. That's why you can browse the web while it plays music in the background, or have a conversation and simultaneously have the phone receive e-mail or browse the web, etc.
Wow. I hope this goes to Sprint sooner or later.
don't get your hopes up. WRT North America, SE avoids CDMA networks like the plague. I'll be switching to TMo's $60/m voice+data plan after my AT&T contract expires, so I hope it'll be available at a reasonable price (unlocked probably) then.
Looks very impressive!
The only thing that may get annoying is when accessing your contacts, it takes a while to get to them, and not because the phone is slow, but because the animation is long.
The interface you saw is not the Contacts list. It's a contacts aggregate feed.
Ok so say this is better than "thephone"
ui. It should have no problem outselling it right?
I know where bloggers coming from where they wholeheartedly are supporting a new ui due to current ones are now too popular. They trying to be different somehow Believin they will now get a chic,lol!
Wow a $700 ui,,!
Talk is cheap money talks.
A UI like this always looks sleek and fancy until you realize you don't have any professionally-shot photos of all your contacts, and that low-res pic of your friend with his face half-sucked into a bong doesn't look as good as stuff you saw in the leaked videos...
While the UI looks very sweet, the amount of customization to the base Android will effect how quickly you will get updates when Google updates the base OS. Hmmm, decision decision...
I like this.
I hope Android focuses on the Media Player in Android 2.1 or buys a company that'll spiff up their music app.
It really is horrible and can't compete in the consumer market vs. an iPod/iPhone.
the specs are actually better
4.1 amoled touchscreen
32 gb
1 ghz snapdragon
8mp camera
thats better than anything ive seen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7jtC6jRzp8&feature=player_embedded
8mb camera on a phone? that sensor must have some ridiculous tiny receptors. No good for high ISO shots, pics will probably look like sand. The sweet spot is 5mb or 6mb at most.
Here's my problem with this from the perspective of long-term marketshare for companies like SE:
I think this looks awesome - but to me it adds to the ongoing clutter of competing UIs / OSs / brands and in the end, the overall lack of focus brought to the table by the Android ecosystem makes it very difficult for any of these manufacturers to compete with the likes of Apple. Will the average consumer think of this as anything but an exotic but complex beast that - like all of the similar complicated devices / UIs / OSs offered by other manufactures (not just Android but Win Mobile, etc) - isn't easily understandable in terms of how to use it as a phone AND media device the same way that the iPhone can be understood? Say what you will about Apple and the iPhone (I'm not personally a fan) but it is super easy to get. Its a simple slab that looks nice, easy to use (everybody in the world with a TV has seen that grid of icons on the phones screen) and knows that it works with iTunes (which they also get because they have used it for years now). All of that is wrapped up in that clean little Apple logo.
Android is awesomeness and these devices will certainly appeal to the geek crowd. But all of these manufacturers are probably not just looking to slice that small pie (the geek market) into 50 tiny, tiny slices - they are hoping to compete for a share of the mainstream consumer market and they wont keep at it if they are only getting a marginal piece of it.
Its SO obvious that I cant believe that these companies don't at least understand that - in addition to competing with each other - they need to pull together with a unified Android branding / marketing campaign and spend at least as much money as Apple on a clear, ongoing, VERY expensive TV / print / web based advertising blitz to match Apple. A marketing blitz with a CLEAR message. Anything else guarantees failure or at least total marginalization for these companies.
All of this is just the tip of the problem: its worse when you throw in Windows Mobile (amazingly bad at competing with Apple in this space themselves - their marketing people should be fired, period, for making Win Mob nothing more than a murky complex entity in the eyes of the public - the public that even knows what Windows Mobile is), various Linux up-and-comers offering interesting products that don't stand a chance, Nokia OS experiments in tablet / smartphones, webOS (which at least has the right idea in terms of marketing and device focus - unfortunately they don't have the cash to really come out swinging too hard and for too long with both R&D and marketing - we'll see though). And there are hundreds of other 'cool' fringe device / mobile environments that don't stand a snowballs chance in hell of making it beyond the next 2 years (amazing that they bother given absolutely NO understanding of the required marketing). Add all of these together and its no wonder that Steve Jobs always wears that annoyingly smug smile on his face. He's probably thinking 'fantastic SE! bring more, MORE devices running something new to the table. Everybody please: more OSs, more devices with only a trickle of marketing!' and laughs himself to sleep.
I know that Google obviously has deep pockets and that Android will keep going and growing because of this - so buying one of these phones is a safe bet from a user point-of-view - no worry there. But I cant help scratch my head wondering why companies like SE, Motorola, etc don't understand what they have to do to compete with Apple. No surprise though - Sony let Apple walk right in and take the portable media playback market right out of its hands (i know we're talking SE here not Sony - but same thing in terms of their mistake). So what do they do? Keep on with the same old strategy that has failed them before: bring 100 completely different overlapping devices to market every year and expect consumers to go out of their way to get what they are about, with a murky half-hearted marketing effort behind each product. I mean, just look at all of these god damned phones in their current line-up: http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones?cc=us&lc=en . Not one of my relatives could name a single model if their life was on the line.
Dumb.
Jesus - that was MUCH bigger post than I intended. Sorry!
You raise some some good points. And indeed, Android's dynamism is also its Achilles heel in the context that while it is highly modifiable it also creates consumer confusion as to what Android actually is. While consumers see on ads what the iPhone actually is, the same thing does not happen with Android; everyone has their own customized interfaces so there is no unified look and feel. Notice that when you see TV ads for Android phones you never actually see/hear the word "Android." Instead, those phones are marketed with the "with Google" meme. Also, the same dynamism in Android install base leads to very highly different user experiences. A phone like the Moto Droid may feel creamy smooth but the same Android OS installed on some one else's crappy hardware will leave the user dissatisfied. By extension, this leads to more problems because app developers only get the incentive to produce for the lowest common denominator (in order to sell more apps) so apps are not as good as they could be and the more powerful phones are not able to use their power. Devs also have to make their apps function in different screen sizes and resolutions too. So all these things affect the customer's satisfaction with the platform.
This also presents a dilema for 3rd party phone makers. To present a unified front to the end user, they would have to work together in integrating a competitive and functional UI. However doing so would basically eliminate a big part of the identity that each manufacturer would want to infuse in their Android phones to differentiate them from the others and gain a competitive advantage.
The result of the 2 points above simply ends in a highly fragmented platform with several interested parties pulling their own way. In contrast, I suspect that's why Palm and RIM utilize their own OS only in phones that they themselves manufacture, like the iPhone. I'm not saying Android is bad, it is great, but Google needs to learn the lessons of the soon-to-be-deceased WinMo and enforce tighter control to steer their own ship.
It seems like you guys are looking at things through iPhone lenses.
Not every phone has to be like the iPhone. For example most of the phones on the SE site are dumbphones. For dumbphones, it doesn't matter how much market share an individual phone has (it's not going to lead to more developers or anything). So the point is invalid for those types of phones. The idea of dumbphones is to cover as wide a market as possible and that means many different phones.
So now let's move to smart phones. First of all, let's put forth Android's goal was never to spawn the next "iPhone killer" or to destroy the iPhone (if it was, Google wouldn't be moving all of the features they have on Android over to the iPhone whenever possible). Therefore Android doesn't really need an approach like Apple does.
We have seen what happened to companies which tried the Apple approach. For the most part they failed (BB Storm and the Palm Pre). The problem is there isn't a single phone company that has the same branding power that Apple does, so it's not that easy to have success using the same approach.
Now look at the Android approach. Android will launch on many different hardware profiles and companies. This will ensure that there's a good chance there will be at least one phone with the form factor and from a company/carrier you like. Android also leverages Google's brand identity to convince consumers this is worth looking at. Android also allows a hardware company to save resources from developing their own OS and to tap into the developer community for Android in general.
Yes, Android risks fragmentation, but there's actually quite a few things Google has done to reduce the impact. First is minimum specs, for example requiring some hardware buttons (back, home, menu) and a touchscreen. Dpad/trackball/optical-pad input is correlated so a developer doesn't have to have separate code to support each type. For screen resolutions, 1.6 added support for resolution scaling (and there's only 3 resolutions, W/H/QVGA, so far, even if you want to do optimization). Android also runs on a VM which further isolates developers from the specific hardware. So in terms of actual work developers have to do to support the "hardware fragmentation," it's very little (a couple of minutes is what I hear) compared to the actual app (many, many hours) and the plus side is you have a much larger install base potential with hardware diversity.
As for software fragmentation, none of these custom versions of Android actually change compatibility with the base OS. It's just a UI skin on top of Android and some custom apps to replace some of the base apps of Android. You can still run the other apps like you can on vanilla Android. Yes, having a custom UI version of Android means you are tied to the phone maker to update the UI to support a newer version of Android, but that's it in terms of risk. And custom UIs allow phone makers to differentiate from each other. They aren't going to contribute much to base Android because of this; Google will still be the main contributor. Can Android benefit from a unified marketing approach? Maybe, but it seems Android is already picking up momentum without this approach. Certainly it's not just geeks picking up Android phones.
I was originally going to buy the X1.... I waited and waited.....(and so on) & finally bought my iPhone...
I am now SO BORED of my my iPhone, sure it's shinny, but I've realised there's a lot to be said for customisation: background wallpaper, your own SMS alert tone, a decent camera!
So now SE have drawn me in again with the X10, just can't wait!! My biggest hope are that the video recording doesn't suck balls (like all SE phones) and that the camera has a lens cover?? (the teaser video suggests it might... as long as it's not interior to the outer glass... like on a previous SE POS, I forget the model number).
So I am really really hoping this will be out 3 Nov 09 and not 2010...
The best customization you can do to your iPhone is browse the App store and install apps to your heart's content.
Smart phones are about satisfying apps, functionality and productivity. Otherwise, might as well grab any generic phone and customize it with Hello Kitty stickers and glitter.
@[Highest Ranked]
I don't get this argument. Installing a new app ISN'T customization. That's just the definition of a smart phone; any smart phone can do it. This is customization: wallpaper for the home screen, being able to put the icons however you want (not just in a grid) and also organize them in folders, having widgets for quick access, etc. I'm going to add having themes (being able to change default system icons and other textures, font etc) would be a good addition to Android.
And I'm not at all convinced there is no demand for customization on the iPhone, just look at WinterBoard.
I think they might have just hit a home run :)
and I hope the ball hits Ballmer and his WinMo in the head.
What font is that they're using? It looks like Zegoe, the Zune font but I'm not sure.
Hopefully snapdragon can keep up... Looks lovely though :)
Very excited about this phone...
jajaja
32gb internal memory
android 2.0
the best screen :-S
snapdragon 1ghz :-S
did u see the review video??
is slower than my 85 years old grandma
well a dissapoint