Mobile operator AT&T has announced that it plans to start offering the Android-based Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 smartphone for sale starting August 15. Initially announced way back in November 2009, the Xperia X10 packs a 4-inch TFT touchscreen display, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, and an 8.1 megapixel camera with face recognition and smile detection. It also run Google’s Android operating system—although AT&T is being cagey about exactly what version that might be.
“Sony Ericsson is raising the bar for entertainment-rich phones with the launch of the Xperia X10,” said Sony Ericsson North America senior VP Paul Hamnett, in a statement. “With the convergence of our user experience platform and the Android OS, we are bringing consumers a smartphone experience that is not only exciting, but also very refined.”
The Xperia X10 sports UMTS HSPA 3G connectivity, along with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR wireless networking. The phone sports assisted GPS for mapping applications as well as geotagging photos, and boasts Sony Ericsson’s Mediascape entertainment platform that pulls together all music, photos, videos, and other content on your phone and from online sources into a unified interface: for instance, users can be listening to a song on their phone, then use Mediascape’s “infinite” feature to pull artist info from the phone’s memory as well as more songs and video content from sources like Google and YouTube. The Xperia X10 has about 400 MB of user storage and comes with a 2 GB microSD card; users can swap that out for a card offering up to 32 GB of storage; the camera sports an LED flash, and also features automatic scene detection to easy point-and-shoot pictures.
One possible hitch in the Xperia X10, however: although AT&T isn’t saying, the phone has been shipping in international markets with Android 1.6. As the U.S. Android market is finally starting to see Android 2.2 “Froyo” rolled out to compatible devices, it’s not entirely clear what version of Android the Xperia X10 will use—and, if it is Android 1.6, whether it will be upgradable.
AT&T plans to begin selling the Xperia X10 for $149.99 on August 15 with a new two-year service agreement; however, Sony itself says it wil be offering the device for $20 less.
