Xperia X1: Day Nine, The Experience So Far

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.