Xperia X1: Day Four, Video Playback Performance

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.