@Giles Jones

I don't know about the previous model but perhaps it only had "plain old" GPS and not **assisted** GPS (that this latest model is touted as having). Assisted GPS is an improvement over plain old GPS. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS for more info.

Let me see if I have got this right...

...SE would like me to buy another phone that freezes, randomly turns itself off, lacks support (new panels anyone), cracks and looks shabby after 6 months of careful ownership, and pay through the nose for the privilege?

I am on Vodaphone. Locked into a 2 year contract and the phone is a train wreck after only 6 months. Interestingly, Voda don’t even have the X1 on offer anymore. That tells me all I need to know.

I like Sony products (for all their ‘quirks’) but the X1 is just a shabby, badly made, badly implemented pile of poo…and it appears to be getting worse.

The thing that REALLY got my goat was the senior Sony bod who described the X1 as an “experiment”. Go ‘experiment’ with your own money, bozo.

Will I be buying the X2, X3 or whatever SE is offering in 18 months? Will I heck!

Android

Its not 'Android 2.0', Google's Android team are not using version numbers, they're using pastry names. 'Donut' has not been assigned a number.

I would expect SE to include whatever version of the OS is ready at the time they're ready to release the phone.

You haven't mentioned the very pretty UI and contacts app SE have added on top of Android - there are videos of it on Android/SE blogs.

I hope they add some Sony-specific stuff to it, like a top-quality music app ('Walkman'), headphone controls, maybe Playstation Remote Play like they're giving one of their cheaper phones at the moment.

And it needs to be better than the Samsung, which also looks lovely.

OOOOhhhhhh.

Now that is elegant. I want I want I want!

Looks like Android is slowly breaking through. This hardware was such a waste with WinMo installed. Android on a Sony Ericsson? I nearly s**t myself!

@W

Well said, sort of. I have a couple of DSLRs (and a selection of 35mm), several grand worth of lenses, a medium format camera and some Leica kit. I'm delaying buying a compact until after my next phone upgrade because the camera on a phone might suit my "always on me/unexpected chance for a photo" requirements well enough that I'd need a decent compact to do much better (and for *decent* compact money, I'd rather have another lens for my SLR); while I'd rather use a decent camera than the one on a mobile, the best camera is the one you remembered to bring with you.

But still, I'd like to know more about this phone than just how good its camera will be, since it's likely to fall into the range "awful" to "passable if necessary in good conditions". I'm tired of people advertising "12 megapixel mobiles" (the camera's 12MP; the bit I care about, the screen, that everyone spends all their time looking at, rarely gets a mention).

Anyway, I'll be interested in seeing whether S-E manage to get it right this time. "Mixed reviews" is being generous to the X1, from what I've seen; here's to some decent graphics acceleration for a start.

Can we talk about something other than the camera? I'm a photography bore, and *I'm* bored.