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The camera is of the 3.2-megapixel stripe and is fairly good as far as that goes. The Pics it takes are decent, with reasonably accurate colours. If the definition suffers in respect to those increasingly common five-megapixel affairs, that's only to be expected. Less excusable is the fact ot takes a good three seconds or so for the phone to get into camera mode. Autofocus adds further delay to the shutter time, so the X1 is not great for quick snaps.

All the camera settings are accessed on screen, and while there are a few pre-shot options - including multishot, though not SE's BestPic - there are few features here for post-shot editing. There's an LED photolight rather than a xenon flash, but a nice innovation is the touch focus mode, where you touch the screen at the point you want to be the main focus of your pic, which can make for some arty forced perspective shots.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

Sony Ericsson's Panels UI sits on top of Windows Mobile

Incidentally, video quality doesn't take too much of a downward step, since the X1 records and plays at 30f/s - 640 x 480 (VGA) only - giving smoother-than-expected recording and playback.

There's also a VGA camera on the front for video calls using the phone's HSDPA 3G connection. And speaking of connections, the X1's got everything you could need, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and infrared. Push email is available through Windows Outlook, and of course you get the main advantages of the Windows Mobile platform: easy syncing with a PC and a wealth of third-party applications.

The music player owes something to SE's Walkman series - there's also Windows Media Player if you feel the need - though it feels a bit under-specced in comparison. It will display album art, but there's no graphic equaliser and a limited number of filing options. The X1 doesn't come with Sony Ericsson's best headphones - they're reserved for the Walkman series - though they're really not bad at all.

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Latest Comments

I <3 Levente Szileszky

As someone said previously - stop comparing everything to the bloody iPhone.

And Levente is correct - there are so many horrible shortcomings in the iPhone... you can't forward an SMS? What's that about?

Can't wait to get my X1 when my o2 store has stock ;)

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WM unresponsiveness

It's true and unfortunately the X1 suffers from it too. IMHO what causes it is the absolutely fucking humungous amount of files in the windows directory. It takes and age to read anything out of it and any app that touches \Windows will suffer as a result.

I have touch-flo 3d installed on the X1 now and I'm as happy as a pig in shit, nonetheless.

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@Robin

"but my experience with other phones before iPhones were invented and trying to buy and install apps left me in no doubt that a non technical person wouldn't have a hope in hell"

So the average user can't manage "download .cab, tap it to install" or "download installer to PC, connect up phone to PC, run installer"? Even my mum can manage that.

Also, both of Levente Szileszky's posts are correct.

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