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Sony Ericsson confirms Xperia X1 UK launch

Definitely the real date this time. Promise.

Numerous dates have been sloshed about for the UK release of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 Windows Mobile smartphone. But the firm’s finally given panting punters an official arrival date - and it’s soon.

Sony Ericsson Xperia 1

Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1: coming this month

The phone will hit UK shops on 30 September. An official UK price hasn’t been given, but online retailer Expansys is currently taking orders for the phone from those willing to lay down a whopping £585 ($1000/€730).

Sony Ericsson plans to launch the phone in Germany and Sweden on the same date as it unveils the talker to UK punters.

Asia, Latin America and the rest of Europe will get the phone at some unmentioned point in the fourth quarter of this year. Launch dates for North America, China and Russia will be announced “in the coming months”.

Hopefully, the firm’s been able to overcome the phone’s sub-par video playback, which a Sony Ericsson representative told Register Hardware last week meant the device wasn’t able to play video at the desired 30f/s.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, the Xperia X1 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 and supports HSDPA 3G connections. It also has a 3.2-megapixel camera, a 3in touch-screen, a slide-out Qwerty keyboard and measures roughly 110 x 53 x 17mm.

Latest Comments

Windows Mobile

It's great, everyone should try it, I get loads of work done with it, mostly when phone.exe dies, and nothing tells you apart from meeting someone in the same building who tells you that they've been trying to call you all morning. Still it's nothing a reboot doesn't fix for 24 hours.

WM, Windows you're stuck with no updates for, until you pay for a new phone...

So yes, that would be like Windows XP, with zero updates to it, or Windows Vista with no updates to it, and we all knew how good they were.

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Camera phones

Sensor size is the crucial thing and camera phones always have small sensors. I can't see the point of 8mp on a phone when half of the pixels will be chroma or luminence noise.

No amount of post processing on a camera phone shot will give you detail and low noise. You have to pick one or the other.

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@Graham Lockley

Maybe this is why your friend is an ex-pro photographer. Phone cameras are handy for a quick snap to illustrate something but you wouldn't want to be printing the images for your wall. The sensor is way too small to offer the quality that any real photographer would want.

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"Graham Lockley

> Ironic really, of the all the mobile platforms its the MS one that is most open :)

S60/Symbian is open source (or will be shortly). I can't see MS going open source for a while yet :)

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@Andrew Fenton

>A camera on a phone means rubbish pictures, full stop.

There are a couple of Nokia models with Zeiss ( if I remember correctly) lenses that are far from rubbish. A friend who is an ex-pro photographer is happy to keep his in his pocket for those moments when he doesnt have his EOS to hand. The results are excellent and he can make calls with it as well !

The point is that no camera/phone is ever going to be as good as a dedicated camera but some of them will come close enough to be acceptable.

Oh and to the Psion lovers/ WM haters... try it sometime, its a flexible platform that allows almost infinite customisation and has a sh*tload of software for almost every need. Ironic really, of the all the mobile platforms its the MS one that is most open :)

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