Sony Ericsson
Xperia X1

The X1 was the first phone from Sony Ericsson to be branded as Xperia – a name that became synonymous with Sony Ericsson Android-powered smartphone for years to come, despite the fact that the Xperia X1 used Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system. Announcing the Xperia brand, Sony Ericsson described it as “the first brand truly borne from within Sony Ericsson representing its vision for a premium, energised communication experience.” The X1 was made of high-quality brushed aluminium and featured a three-inch resistive touchscreen display and a qwerty keyboard which was exposed when the device slid open. Sony Ericsson called this design an “arc slider phone”. Underlining the high hopes Sony Ericsson had for the X1 at the time, it stated the device would put the company at “the forefront of mobile convergence” with the X1 delivering “a seamless blend of mobile Web communication and multimedia entertainment within a distinctive design”. Although the underlying operating system on the X1 was Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.1, the Xperia X1 was skinned with a 3D user interface called X-Panels. This provided the phone with seven pre-loaded panels including elements such as a calendar view, FM radio controls, a world clock and Google search. The X-Panels were essentially customisable home screens and users could install additional panels. The phone could support up to nine panels which could be scrolled through using a button on the front of the phone. After generating a frenzy of interest at its launch at Mobile World Congress in February 2008, many users were left disappointed when it arrived months later at the end of September. The X-Panel user interface, which at first had appeared extremely impressive, was badly hampered by poor performance which often meant it could take several seconds to scroll from one panel to another. The poor software integration on the device became its Achilles’ heel and badly damaged the reputation of the device. Furthermore, although the X-Panels were designed to offer a slick, modern user experience, this quickly disappeared as users went deeper into the menus on the device and it switched to the standard Windows Mobile 6.1 PDA-centric user interface which was not nearly as compelling. The hardware keyboard on the X1 looked fantastic but was cramped and difficult to type on. A particular issue was the top row of keys as they were extremely close to the bottom of the display. Furthermore, the buttons on the keyboard were almost flush to the body of the device and it was often hard to tell that you had pressed a key. The touch screen on the X1 used resistive technology and required a stylus or strong fingernails to interact successfully. Unfortunately, screen technology was evolving quickly at this time and the X1 was already being eclipsed by the capacitive touch screens on rival devices such as Apple’s iPhone and the T-Mobile G1. Behind the headlines associated with the product, the reality was that the X1 was actually an “off-the-shelf quick fix” that Sony Ericsson had sourced from rival phone maker HTC to fill a hole in its touch-screen smartphone portfolio. The company had realised that the Symbian operating system, using the UIQ user interface that had been the cornerstone of successful products such as the Sony Ericsson P800, had reached the end of its useful life. However, due to the sensitivities of developing a smartphone using a rival operating system, the X1 was developed in almost complete secrecy to avoid upsetting the Sony Ericsson employees who were working on another new product, the P5i (codename Paris). The P5i had been under development for two years and was cancelled shortly before the X1 was released. Many of the employees who worked on that project subsequently got made redundant. With the benefit of hindsight, the X1 was the product that formed the stepping-stone that enabled Sony Ericsson to make the transition from the Symbian / UIQ platform to Android and from the Ericsson Mobile Phone (EMP) silicon platform to Qualcomm's chips allowing the company to embark on its next chapter with mobile devices.