slycat | New Phone - Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 (Reply)

Well, I finally received the phone I've been after since it's announcement back in February 2008, but does it live up to my expectations?

Negative points:

Interface - I now realise why so many people moaned when they learned this device would be running Windows Mobile 6.1. It's because it's not a very intuitive or slick operating system. There seems to be multiple ways to do the same thing and it can be difficult to locate things you're after. I'm sure I'll get used to it in time, but it's quite a departure from the straight forward Symbian approach.
No Lefty Support - Being a lefty, I will tend to use the stylus in my left hand. The problem with this is that the vertical scroll bars are all on the right hand side of the screen and there is no option to move it to the left hand side. This seems to be a common complaint online and I'm surprised Microsoft havn't released a patch to let you switch the position of the scroll bar. It can't be too hard surely?
Contact Importing - Before getting the phone, I made sure I backed up my contacts onto my PC into Vista's contact database. With the new phone being based on Windows Mobile, I didn't think there would be any problems transferring the contacts back into my new phone. Much to my surprise then when I found that the sync software for Vista only supports Outlook and not windows Mail or Windows Contacts... which just seems absurd. So either I have to pirate me a copy of Outlook just to get my contacts into my phone or I have to type them in one by one (which is what I'm going at the moment). Such a backwards approach.
Occasional Sluggishness - It's not a major issue, but from time to tome, the phone can be a bit slow to respond which can be annoying.

Positive points:

Screen - The screen is simply awesome, I've never seen such a crisp image. With the device being so small and the resolution of the screen being 800x480, you can see every detail of web pages and naturally fit more on the screen which is handy for browsing.
Features - This is the main reason I went for the phone, and it certainly lived up to my expectations in this department. GPS, 3.5G (HSDPA), Bluetooth, Wifi, slide out keyboard, 3.2mp camera.
Software Compatibility - With this being an established operating system for a phone, there's already tonnes of stuff to get for the phone to play around with. I've got a decent IM client and a IRC client already :)
Build Quality - The phone feels really solid, which makes a great difference compared with my old phone which felt rather flimsy. The phone is also much smaller than I had expected so it's a really neat device.

In conclusion, it's a big step up from my old phone. It actually feels like a proper smart phone and has the features to back that up. It'll take a bit of getting used to, and a while to get all my contacts back in the phone (you could help me speed this up by texting me :P) but I think I'll learn to love it. The Register gave it 80% in a recent review, 10% below the other phone with a similar feature set which has recently come out, the HTC Touch Pro. I think I can live with my decision tho, they both use the same OS, there's just a smarter front end on top of the Touch Pro.