Will Xperia X10 recapture some glory for Sony Ericsson?

Sony Ericsson’s latest handset, the Xperia X10, announced in November last year, is rumored to hit the Middle East in the near future, after being launched in Sweden yesterday. Will it save the Japan-Sweden collaboration that once was a pioneer in the mobile phone field but has been fledgling in recent years?

Let’s take a quick look at the specs: 4 inch (480 x 854 pixel) WVGA display, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 1GB built-in memory (with MicroSD card slot), and a 8.1 megapixel camera. That’s pretty impressive.

Early reviews have basically said the smartphone looks great in best SE heritage but the early software is buggy and that it needs the latest Android version. Of course it’s unfair to judge a product on pre-production software and we reserve final judgment until we’ve tried one ourselves. I do think it looks like Sony Ericsson is on the right track after some confusing attempts lately to regain some of the former glory. For example, I tried the Satio last year before it was officially launched and it was a case of some pretty amazing hardware, like the 12 megapixel camera, hampered by questionable software (Symbian). That phone, I think, never really lived up to its potential and it was primarily because of the OS. With Android I think Sony Ericsson can focus on what they do best, design good-looking and exciting hardware. So without having tried the X10 yet, I agree with Engadget when they say it’s “perhaps the most promising of Sony Ericsson’s confusing crop of modern smartphones.”

I do wish Sony Ericsson all the best with this latest venture and hope they get back on the path that they somewhere along the way strayed from. I say this not just because I’m from Sweden, nor because of the fact that my first mobile phone in the late 1990s was an Ericsson phone, but because I do think they can come up with something really interesting.