I’m comparing the GPS on the Xperia X1 with the one on my Nokia N95. I’ve not used too many GPS’s, but a friend of mine let me borrow his Garmin on a trip to Toronto, so I at least know what to expect. The N95 has a decent GPS, but it takes a while for it to find satalites to determine your initial location, typically this takes at least 10 minutes, compared to the Garmin, that’s not too impressive. But once it’s triangulated, the GPS works well. Unfortunately, you need to pay extra to Nokia to unlock the turn by turn voice navigation. Otherwise, you’re no your own to look at the GPS while it tracks your progress.

The Xperia comes with Google Maps installed and uses desktop and windows mobile software called WayPoint. From my initial loading of the software, Waypoint’s desktop client is used to get maps for the phone version to use. I grabbed the New York area maps, and I thought they loaded ok, but when I went to use it today, it didn’t have any maps… It also turns out that Waypoint is only a trial. I’ve not looked into what it’ll cost yet, but it comes up with a buy notice now. But does let me in… I’ve not played around with this much, since it has no maps…

There’s additional software on the phone called “Quick GPS”, which downloads your location from the nearby cell towers which seems to speed up locating you, but that’s not all that accurate, not until the satellites hone in on you does it get better. I recently added a data plan to my existing T-Mobile plan, so I don’t know if this feature works without a data plan.

Using Google Maps is pretty simple, I was able to look up a restaurant on my way there, and it found it on the map and gave me directions based upon my GPS location. It also gave me detailed info including address and phone number. There’s doesn’t seem to be a real time turn by turn navigation with Google Maps, which is where Waypoint must come in.

Overall, so far the GPS doesn’t seem to be as easy to start with as the Nokia, since the GPS on the phone depends on the application you have on the phone running it. I’ll need to give this more time to see how it works overall. It does appear to have quite alot of potential in terms of what you are openly able to do with it, from a development standpoint, that seems pretty nice, but as it is now, it won’t get me to my destination any faster than my Nokia, or my friends Garman.

I clearly need to play with this a bit more

This past week my Archos 7 arrived from Best Buy! It’s nice, shiny and a fingerprint magnet! I actually have had it for about a week already, but to my disappointment, it arrived with a nice red dead pixel in the middle of the screen, something I find unacceptable for a $500 device. Luckily Best Buy was nice enough to send me a replacement. I’ll be writing up my own review of this device in the coming days. With my brief experience with it already, I have some interesting things to say about it. I’ll also be trying to wrap up my thoughts on my Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, things like the camera, GPS, and my final thoughts about it.

I’ve not published anything in a few days, I’ve been busy getting back into my routine at work after the holiday weekend. So, it’s been 9 days since I my Xperia X1 arrived. I’ve been putting the device through it’s paces and I’ve come up with mixed feelings. I’ll try and break down my experiences into sections to better organize my thoughts.

Video Continued:

From my previous posts, I’ve already talked about my disappointment with the video playback of mp4 files, which, the native software doesn’t playback well at all. This was especially disappointing when you consider that my iPod Touch and Nokia n95 (where they were recorded from) plays them perfectly.

I downloaded the Divx Mobile player and tested the playback of Divx files, the Divx Mobile Players is very rudimentary, the UI was not made for a touch screen, and it was also not made for the resolution the Xperia offers, it’s understandable, since up till now, every other mobile device has a screen with half the resolution. The player’s slider controls are hard to get at and the text on the menu’s is barely readable due to the small size. Overall, the playback of Divx files is adequate, but using the player leaves a lot to be desired.

I read in an article in Smartphone magazine that Core Player is good, but it’s commercial ($30), which I might try, but it’s a little disappointing that I have to buy another media player because the one that comes on it doesn’t really do the job well enough.

Lastly, the thing I noticed is that the media panel and the windows mobile player do not zoom the video up to fill the screen, there’s an area of black around the movie, which I find exceptionally wasteful in light of the awesome display that’s on Xperia.

Bluetooth:

Now that I’m using the phone, I needed to move my old Motorola headset from my n95. Windows Mobile did a nice job of easily finding my headset, but the UI doesn’t do a good job of notifying you that you now have a headset paired up and active. I see in the task bar that bluetooth is visible, but not until I make a call that there is any indication that the headset is working. Oddly enough, at times, I expect to talk through my headset, but the headset doesn’t go on, and the caller is then trying to talk to me through my handset… A tad annoying. The Xperia is also missing voice dialing, something I’m starting to miss. My old Nokia n95 had a rudimentary voice dialer, and although not great, it worked, so I could simply tap my headset, and say “home”, and it would call home. I can’t do that with the Xperia.

Looking online, it seems that my problems could be solved by buying the BlueAnt v1, which I might do, but I can’t find anyone talking about this for WinMo devices; the company demo shows it working with an iPhone. I might need to buy it and try it out, and then at least I’ll have something else to talk about on this blog.

I didn’t have too much luck getting the Xperia to sync up to my Compaq 2710p Tablet through Bluetooth. Xp spun around looking for my device… But the Xperia found my tablet… This is an area I’ll need to experiment a little more on.

Exchange Syncing:

I was curious to see if this had changed at all. I’m no stranger to Exchange and Windows Mobile. I’ve performed this task way back when I had a Compaq iPaq, and my Sprint/Hitachi G1000 WinMo phone. I didn’t expect any issues here. But I did run into an issue, the connection was easy enough, but it turns out my company’s exchange server required security to allow syncing, so unknowingly I said ok, and put a pin in… BIG MISTAKE, after that, the device required me to put that stupid pin in every time I wanted to use the damn thing. I can’t tell you how exceptionally annoying this was! Sadly, I couldn’t undo it! Under the Settings -> Lock, the checkbox option for “Prompt if unused for” was checked and it was grayed out, so I couldn’t turn it off! Long story short, I wasted an entire morning trying to figure out how to restore my device back to normal without resorting to a hard reset, luckily I found the problem. I had to install PHM Regedit and modify my registry on the phone to re-enable the option. Once I did that, I was able to turn off the password lock. This obviously is not a failing of the Xperia, but of WIndows Mobile. I was highly annoyed by this; I don’t appreciate anyone dictating how I can use my device. I wouldn’t mind putting my password in for syncing to Exchange, but to force the entire device to use a pin/password to even use it is unacceptable to me.

Besides the lock problem, the device sync’d up nice and easily, and once my credentials were stored in my profile, my email, notes, files, etc, all sync’d up nicely.

Music / Audio:

I next decided to try and drop music onto the device. Since, the device is stingy on installed memory, I put my 4gb MicroSD card in. I can’t be grateful enough for Sony Ericsson dropping their horrid Memory Stick format for this phone. I would have been even more thrilled if they would have just put an easy access door to access the MicroSD slot, but alas, it’s stuck behind the battery cover; which is nice and metal, but awfully hard to remove (my broken fingernails are a testament to that).

I simply dropped some mp3′s onto my MicroSD card, and went to the media panel. The media panel found my music without any problems, and I was able to quickly and easily start playing my music. The only thing I need to figure out now is how to build playlists and add album art. This is an area that Windows in general suffers, and Apple completely excels at. Using WIndows Media Player to manage media is about as much fun as stabbing forks in my eyes… Microsoft really really needs to work on this, because trying to show my wife how to manage her playlists in Media Player 11 for her Sandisk Sansa was really no fun…

Lastly, I wanted to customize my ringtones, so I simply dropped some mp3 clips I made into the Ringtones folder, and I was able to choose them for various notifications on the Xperia. My only complaint here is with the speaker on the Xperia, it’s on the lower left side behind a little slot. It’s very easy to block and muffle. The volume is also a little on the lighter side, it’s not bad, but my Nokia N95 had stereo speakers on both sides that could blow my house down…

Battery Life:

Overall, the battery life is ok, I wouldn’t say it’s stellar, and woe is the owner who forgets to turn WiFi off. I find that I’ll need to charge this thing at least once a day, and i’ll be pretty low if I let it go a day and a half. In general it’s ok for a WinMo device. This is an area that I’ve not paid too much attention to though, and I believe there are some guides out on the net for maximizing battery life, so I’ll need to dig up some info for better battery life.

Next Time:

This post is getting quite long, so I’m going to stop it here for now. I’m also going to stop day numbering my review, because I’m having difficulty keeping track of the days. The next post I’ll write about the Camera, my final thoughts and a final comparison of the Xperia against my other devices.

OK, so now that I’ve gotten the device on the internet and tried out it’s capabilities to surf around. I wanted to see how it played back videos and music. I took my 4GB microSD card out of my Nokia N95, and plugged it into the Xperia. Just in case people don’t know, the Xperia is only the second device that Sony Ericsson has ever made that actually uses MicroSD and not their horrid Memory Stick format, which is excellent. The bad side is that Sony Ericsson stuck the memory slot right behind the battery cover, so you need to pry the cover off to get access to the slot, and it doesn’t come off that easily.

On my memory card, I have about a years worth of videos and photos, taken with the n95. The n95 takes video directly in .mp4 format, and does so very well. I was sorely disappointed though to learn how badly the Xperia plays these files. The n95 comes with a version of Real Player, and plays back the .mp4′s perfectly. The Xperia will play them, but the frame rate and audio sync are beyond poor, I believe it probably had a frame rate of 1 frame a second ( I am not joking! ). These same .mp4′s also play back flawlessly on my iPod Touch, when moved to it by dragging from the memory card onto my iPod in iTunes. Very sad indeed.

The next thing I tried were some Divx files I converted using Divx Convertor. WinMo doesn’t support Divx, but the folks at Divx offer a free Mobile Divx player. I downloaded the latest one and installed it. The program ran, but it was clearly not designed for the immense resoltution of the Xperia. The text and options were impossible to click on with your finger, so I had to use the stylus, and even then, it was hard to read the options. Playback was also relatively poor, but at least it was better then the .mp4′s…

Lastly, I had some .3gp files I converted with 3gpConverter. I compressed them using the PSP playback settings of QVGA/29.97fps/768Kbps Stereo/126kps. I found this setup makes .3gp files that playback nicely on my PSP, Onda, N95 and the Xperia X1.

My video experience with the X1 is a tad disappointing. I would have hoped that with all this horsepower that it would at least play the mp4 files, but alas, no. So, the Xperia won’t be replacing my Creative Zen or Onda VX770 anytime soon.

Continuing on from my Day One post, I’ve stuck my T-Mobile Sim card into the device, and powered it on. To my surprise, the battery was fully charged, and the device auto detected the T-Mobile network settings. All wasn’t quite right though. The phone could make and receive calls, and the calls were nice and clear. However, trying to use my newly added data plan, the settings found T-Mobile’s EDGE network fine, but I could not access the internet. I then decided to try and see if things worked over my wireless network, and that work fine. Good speeds over my Wifi network, and it was easy to set up. The browser timed out with the following obscure error: http error:$CODE$.

So, now, I was stuck, something obviously wasn’t right with the T-Mobile network configuration. It worked the night before on my Nokia N95, so, I know the data portion of my plan is setup correctly. So, I went over to my local T-Mobile shop, and showed off the phone to the drooling store manager. Unfortunately, he wasn’t much help. I then went home and gave T-Mobile support a call. I didn’t know how they would treat me, since I’m in the US, using an unlocked/unsupported phone. Luckily, they were very pleasant (I’ve had good luck with T-Mobile, which is why I’m still a customer). I got sent over to Tier 3 support, and although the nice young lady on the other end wasn’t quite sure what to do, she had a script about setting up network connections on Windows Mobile devices. So, she got me to the general area to where I needed to fix. So, here’s the fix folks:

1. Go to the START menu -> Settings.
2. Click the Connections tab.
3. Click Connections Icon.
4. Select “Add a new modem connection“.
5. Give the connection some name, this isn’t important. Select Cellular Line (GPRS, 3G) for the modem. Click Next.
6. Access Point Name needs to be internet2.voicestream.com (I believe this is for the $25 add-on data plan, I recall someplace on the net I found a reference to internet3 for the next tier data plan). Click Next.
7. Leave the next set of options blank and click FINISH.
8. Back on the Connections page, click the “Set up my proxy server” option. Make sure you check the box next to “This network connects to the internet“.
9. Now the important one, click the Modem tab at the bottom. Select the connection you just added, make sure you DO NOT have the Auto Pick option selected.
10. Done, now you should be ready to surf the day away!

It turns out the problem stems from the phone auto detecting wap.voicestream.com access point, which I believe is their t-zones server. So, that was a fun waste of a few hours. So hopefully this information will help someone out.

Now that I got onto the net, how is the browser experience… With Internet Explorer, not so fantastic, but with Mobile Operat 9.5 it hurt less. This area is where the iPhone and iPod Touch’s trump the Windows Mobile device. The screen is already small, but with the resolution so high on this device the text is just that smaller. I’m now spoiled by the iPhone’s multi-touch zoom and overal responsiveness of the iPhone Safari browser. But Opera works well enough, and once I got used to working with it, I was equally productive. I was able to easily setup my Windows Messaging to pull email from my yahoo and google email accounts. The next thing I need to do, is sync it with my Exchange server at work.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about my experiences with hooking the thing up to my PC.

Fedex delivered on my package on the promised date, around 10am, and I was ecstatic beyond words at its arrival. The box itself is pretty simple, and smaller than I would have expected. Below are my snapshots of the box and it’s contents.

Opening the BoxPretty Box

Opening the Box

Look at all the hardware

Upon actually holding it, the first thing I noticed was how incredible it felt, the build quality of the phone is exceptional, many of the parts are actually metal! The phone is quite small, I think partly due to it’s side to side width (it’s a tall phone).

So, that’s in the box, well, we have a usb cable, a outlet converter for the usb cable, so you can charge it through its usb cable by plugging it into the wall. An extra stylus, ear buds, and a standard sony connector which has some basic walkman controls on it. The box has some simple to look at quick documentation, and a CD for the Activesync and Wayfinder GPS software (more on this later).

OK, so now what, well, it’s time to put the SIM card and battery in. For reference, my old phone is a Nokia N95, it’s a fantastic phone, and it’s still for the most part a top of the line phone, which has no equal in the US (as far as Nokia offers here).

Swapping SIM

To swap the SIM cards, I need to open up both phones, the first thing I noticed on the X1 is how sturdy the door was, it’s made of metal! My Nokia’s is a rather thin plastic door, it’s surprisingly durable, but it feels awefully fragile in comparison.You’ll also notice how much larger the battery on the X1 is too.

So, one the SIM was in, I powered it on, it took a bit to boot up, but it found my T-Mobile settings without issue, that is, the phone settings. Internet access was a problem, I’ll get to this a little later. The X1 screen sports a 800×480 screen! This is double the resolution of an IPhone or any other phone out there and at only 3 inches, needless to say, the screen is awesome!

For now, I’ll end this entry off with a snapshot of the X1 compared to my Nokia n95 and my trusty old Motorola Razr. I’ll let you be the judge for how it stacks up size wise, but in my opinion, the size is quite good in comparison, the thickness (which you can’t see here) is on par with the Nokia, and of course my Razr is much thinner.

Side by side with some of my older phones

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

For those that don’t know, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 the company’s latest Smartphone. It is probably the most advanced one to make it to market today, and I believe is a truely worthy contender in the iPhone killer category. My wife has blessed me with pre-ordering one for me, and it’s supposed to come in tomorrow!!! I can hardly contain my excitement for it! I’m itching to see how it stacks up with the capabilities of my iPod Touch — Yes I know what you’re thinking, the iPod Touch isn’t a cellphone, but I believe it’s pretty close, since I’m really not going to compare the two on their merits as a phone, but more along the lines of what productivity (and entertainment) enhancements the device offers. Besides, I’m not about to plunk down the cash for a two year data plan with AT&T when I already have T-Mobile (I’ll go on this rant another time). I promise to give a personal overview of the device when I get to spend some quality time with it over the holiday weekend!

If anyone cares to look, here’s a link to Sony Ericsson’s site about the X1. Click here to find out about the X1.

Welcome to my blog / website, this site is dedicated to the ongoing struggle of how humans interface with machines. Since the dawn of the computer age man has struggled to interface efficiently with machines. Over the last 30+ years, since computers made their way into our homes, we have made significant progress in how we interface with them, but the methods are still not as seamless as the prospect of one day plugging directly into one. Each step taken over the years has been quite evolutionary, and I myself have quite a collection of many of these efforts. I’ve decided to dedicate my efforts to sharing my thoughts, knowledge, and passion for this endeavour with the world. Thanks for visiting.

Dower