The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is a 2010

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in the

Xperia is a series of and the sole brand name of smartphones marketed by Sony. It also includes various related mobile hardware such as tablet computer, tablets as well as software. Xperia was originally developed by Sony Ericsson before becoming So ...

series produced by

Sony Ericsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc., originally Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, was a Multinational corporation, multinational consumer electronics and telecommunications company, best known for its Mobile phones, mobile phone products. The ...

. It was the first Sony Ericsson smartphone to run the Android operating system, and was designed to be the successor of the Xperia X2. The phone was shipped with Android 1.6 ( Donut), but an upgrade to 2.1 ( Eclair) was made available starting 31 October 2010, with a gradual international rollout. Originally, Sony Ericsson stated that the X10 would not receive an upgrade to Android 2.2 (Froyo) or beyond, but the phone was later upgraded to 2.3.3 (

Gingerbread Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger root, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar, or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a moist loaf cake to forms nearly ...

) with the updates starting on 29 July 2011. The phone features an 8.1 MP camera and a 1 GHz

Qualcomm Snapdragon Snapdragon is a suite of system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductor products for mobile devices designed and marketed by Qualcomm, who often refers to these SoCs as "mobile platforms". They typically integrate central processing units (CPU) based o ...

CPU. Its screen has a widescreen resolution, 480 x 854 pixels, and features a

virtual keyboard A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows the Input device, input of characters without the need for physical keys. Interaction with a virtual Computer keyboard, keyboard happens mostly via a touchscreen interface, but can also take p ...

rather than a physical one. It makes use of

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(3G+) for its mobile connection, giving it top download speeds of 7.2 Mbit/s. The UX platform features two applications which allow the user to consolidate all of their communications and media, Timescape and Mediascape, respectively.

Reception

The Xperia X10 was first revealed on 3 November 2009. It was first released in Japan on 1 April 2010, and has since become the quickest-selling smartphone for NTT DoCoMo. The overall response has been positive for the hardware, camera and screen. There were negative comments about the lack of support for Android 2.1 which were quelled when it was released later that year.

Hardware

The display is a wide TFT Capacitive

touchscreen A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of electronic visual display, display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically l ...

, with a 16:9 aspect ratio and FWVGA resolution of 480 x 854 pixels, along with a multi-touch enabled screen, the first from Sony. The 8.1-megapixel camera features 16x

digital zoom Digital zoom is a method of decreasing the precise angle of view of a digital photograph or video image. It is accomplished by cropping an image down to an area with the same aspect ratio as the original, and scaling the image up to the dimens ...

, image stabilization, auto-focus,

geo-tagging Geotagging, or GeoTagging, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RgSSfeeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data ...

, smile detection, and face detection. It can also record video, with an

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for use in poor light conditions. It has a 3-axis accelerometer and built in

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

. Its CPU is 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 with its GPU is Adreno 200 (AMD Z430). The hardware is limited in its multi-touch functionality. It can only track multiple touches where their X and Y coordinates are different. The firmware to enable this functionality was first released in Japan.

Networks

The Xperia X10 uses the 850/900/1800/1900 frequency bands for

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

. Both versions use 850/900/1800/1900 frequency bands for GSM while they differ regarding the UMTS frequency bands; the X10a uses 800/850/1900/2100 bands, and the X10i uses 900/1700/2100. The X10a is used by

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in the US,

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in Australia, and

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in Canada. It is also used in South America. The X10i is used by

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in the USA; Wind Mobile and Mobilicity in Canada;

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and VHA (under both the

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and 3 brands) in Australia;

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and M1 in Singapore; and through the rest of Asia, Europe, and Oceania. In Japan, it is called the SO-01B and sold by NTT Docomo, using the X10a configuration.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

The X10 has built in Wi-Fi b/g and Bluetooth 2.1, with the option to tether other devices. With the Android 2.3 update, the phone can also create a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Software

Sony Ericsson has its own Android overlay called UX, short for User eXperience. It consists of design elements, themes and custom applications. The main applications are Sony Ericsson Timescape and Sony Ericsson Mediascape. Timescape is a program that brings together

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, and email into a column on the home screen. Mediascape is a player and library application for media files. It can also connect to Facebook and Picasa accounts and to the phone's contacts list. This makes it possible to attach photos users have taken with the camera to their contacts or send them directly to their Facebook account.

Updates

The Xperia X10 was released with Android 1.6, with an upgrade to Android 2.1 released on 31 October 2010. On 20 January 21, an update was released which enabled multi-touch. On 1 February 2011, Sony Ericsson announced a future update for Xperia X10 that would bring optimizations and bug fixes along with language additions and the pinch-to-zoom feature. On 29 July 2011, the Android 2.3.3 update was released.

Rooting

As of 1 April 2011, the bootloader has been bypassed via

kexec kexec (kernel execute), analogous to the Unix/Linux kernel call Exec (system call), exec, is a mechanism of the Linux kernel that allows booting of a new kernel (operating system), kernel from the currently running one. Details Essentially, kexe ...

which enables the loading of custom kernels. Custom ROMs have been developed, however they still use the 2.1 kernel so some features such as native Wi-Fi

tethering Tethering or phone-as-modem (PAM) is the sharing of a mobile device's cellular data connection with other connected computers. It effectively turns the transmitting device into a modem to allow others to use its cellular network as a gateway for ...

are missing. As of 20 January 2011 there are two custom roms being developed based on 2.2 (both of which have working camera drivers). All X10 devices running the Gingerbread firmware (2.3.x) are vulnerable to the zergRush rooting method.

Issues

The initial 3UK (and possibly other Mobile Operators) release of firmware contained bugs. Some users have reported

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

connection disruptions in early software versions. Several users from sonyericsson, and 4pda forums reported a self-rebooting bug on their X10i's. It is believed the bug appears because of defects on the phone's motherboard. Since the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) update the phone has suffered a stuttering in play or streaming of music regardless of file association. The only solution currently is to root the phone and apply a patch located on the XDA developers forum. Sony refuses to acknowledge the problem and have as of late offered no solution to this bug.

Xperia Series

Sony Ericsson announced two mini versions of the Xperia X10 at the Mobile World Congress 2010. The X10 Mini and the X10 Mini Pro were released in June 2010.

References

External links

*
Xperia X10 specificationsOverview of Expert & User Reviews of the X10

Xperia X10 Reviews
{{Sony phones Xperia X10 Android (operating system) devices Mobile phones introduced in 2010 Mobile phones with user-replaceable battery Discontinued smartphones