Sony Ericsson x10

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is a high-end smartphone designed by Sony Ericsson in the Xperia series. It is the first Sony Ericsson smartphone to run the Android operating system. The phone was shipped running Android 1.6 but an upgrade to Android 2.1 was made available starting from 31 October 2010, with a gradual rollout amongst global kits. Xperia X10 family will not receive upgrade to Froyo or beyond.

The phone features an 8.1 MP camera and a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU. The screen supports NTSC DVD wide-screen resolution. The phone runs Android OS, which enables the use of apps available in the Android Market. Connection speeds up to HSDPA (3G+) are possible with the handset. The UX platform gives Xperia X10 one application to lift together all the user's different communications, Timescape, and one to lift together all the users media, Mediascape.

An Xperia X10 functions as a camera phone, including text messaging, a portable media player, and an Internet client with e-mail, web browsing and Wi-Fi connectivity. The user interface is built around the device's touchscreen, including a virtual keyboard rather than a physical one (Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro goes with a physical keyboard). Third-party applications are available from Android Market, which launched in 2008 and now (20 November 2010) has over 200,000 apps. These apps have diverse functionalities, including games, reference, GPS navigation, social networking and advertising for television shows, films, and celebrities.

The Xperia X10 was released in one of its two home countries, Japan, on April 1, 2010 and has become the quickest-selling smartphone for the carrier NTT DoCoMo. The overall response has been positive for the hardware, camera and screen. However, there were negative comments about the lack of support for Android 2.1 until it was released later that year. The Xperia X10 has since been upgraded to Android 2.1 on October 31, 2010, which improved the battery life greatly.

The display is a wide screen, aspect ratio 16:9, with FWVGA resolution of 480 x 854 pixels, covered by a capacitive layer that is designed to detect touch by fingers. The 8.1 megapixel camera has a 16x digital zoom, image stabilizer, auto-focus, geo-tagging, smile detection and face detection. The camera can be accessed either through the touchscreen menu or by a separate camera button on the lower part of the right edge. It can also record video, and has a LED light for use in poor light conditions. The Xperia X10 has as a 3-axis accelerometer and built in GPS, and a lug for attaching a strap.

The hardware is capable of limited multi-touch functionality, it can track multiple touches, provided the X and Y are separated for each of the touches. The firmware to enable this functionality was first released in Japan via DoCoMo, and then to the rest of the world.

The Xperia X10 is referred to as a quad-band telephone as it covers all four GSM frequency bands, but it is also a dual mode telephone as it also covers three or four UMTS frequency bands too, depending on the market. The Xperia X10 is sold worldwide and therefore has both common frequency band layouts; these variants of the phone are internally called the Xperia X10a and the Xperia X10i by Sony Ericsson. The Xperia X10a sells in South America; the Xperia X10i sells in Asia, Europe and Oceania; both variants are sold in North America and Australia. The Xperia X10a is used by AT&T in the USA; Telstra in Australia; Rogers Wireless, and Bell in Canada. The Xperia X10i on the other hand, is used by T-Mobile in the USA; Wind Mobile and Mobilicity in Canada; Optus and VHA (under both the Vodafone and 3 brands) in Australia; Singtel, Starhub and M1 in Singapore. In Japan, the telephone is called the SO-01B and sold by operator NTT Docomo, using the Xperia X10a configuration.