Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 preview: First look

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 has been in the center of attention ever since its first unofficial shots leaked online. Much like most other gadgeteers, we've had our hands itching to get one and luckily our wishes just came true.

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 is one impressive device full of industry leading features - it's the first Windows Mobile smartphone with an 8 megapixel camera and WVGA video recording and it's actually the first ever full QWERTY phone to have that sort of imaging prowess as well.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2

The XPERIA X2 most other features, though not as innovative, are a nice match as well. We guess they are worth going through one more time.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz, EDGE class 10, HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps
• Form factor: Slide-and-tilt QWERTY touch phone
• Dimensions: 110 x 54 x 16 mm, weight 155 grams
• Display: 3.2" TFT resistive touchscreen, 800 x 480 pixels
• Platform: Qualcomm MSM 7200 528 MHz processor
• OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
• Memory: 110MB storage, 256 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM, microSD card slot
• Camera: 8-megapixels auto-focus camera, LED flash, touch focus, geotagging, face detection, image stabilizer, Smart Contrast, WVGA@30fps video recording
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, TV-out
• Misc: Optical trackpad, accelerometer for motion-based gaming, office document viewer and editor, XviD video support
• Battery: 1500 mAh Li-Po battery

We just got the XPERIA X2 and we wanted to share with you our first impressions of the device. So consider this article as a quick and dirty preview, with a more detailed one coming up in the following week. We hope to get as much as possible from our encounter with the X2 and you can bet we surely won't keep anything to ourselves.

UPDATE 8 Sept: We decided to update this article with some new stuff instead of creating a new preview as the XPERIA X2 hardly deserves any further detailing at this early stage of its development. It still has quite a few software issues that will without a doubt be fixed in the future software builds.

So today we've added a whole new page on the messaging, web browser and 3D games and we've also updated our conclusion to take the most viable market alternatives into account. We really hope to see the XPERIA X2 again for a full-blown review, once its hits the stores all nice and bug-free.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 in our office

The XPERIA X2 should be available in two colors - Elegant Black and Modern Silver. There's hardly anything missing from the broad range of connectivity options. Perhaps the only two things it seems to lack are the FM radio and the automatic screen rotation. Yes, there's an accelerometer on board alright, but the screen doesn't auto rotate to match the orientation of the handset.

While the XPERIA X2 uses the vanilla Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional, the thing that sets it apart from competing products is the X-panels interface. X panels have gone a long way since the XPERIA X1 and have turned into a full featured system for using various animated and interactive homescreens. But we'll get to that further down.

Anyways, enough talking, let's get to some walking. Jump on as explore what the XPERIA X2 is made of with even a brief rundown of the interface later on.