[XPERIA X1 General] pgamble:
The comment about the camera is correct. For printing up to A4, anything over 3mp is usually massively outweighed by the lens opening and quality. Small opening ... small amounts of light - causes issues regardless of the CCD or CMOS. It is also correct to suggest that the SE devices have a history of being closer to compact cameras in quality than the toy town stuff you usually get from HTC (I've had loads of HTC devices and love them but the cameras are of little practical use). The other thing worth saying that the X1 will shoot 640x480 video and 30fps like the Nokia E90 and N95. The quality of video of the latter two is almost up to the Hi-8 camcorders (if in good light) which makes them a genuinely useful camcorder alternative. The HD (and all native HTC devices) are still QVGA and the video looks rubbish even on a 2" window on a PC. This should be a huge plus for the X1.

My concerns about the X1 relate to the likely hood that SE won't support and develop the platform. There are many rumours about the Sony and Ericcson relationship as well as the SE / HTC one. Also, Sony will not commit to any future WM devices - infact, it seems they are completely non committal about future OS - UIQ, Android, WM etc. When you look at the P1 issues ... never resolved even after a huge backlash by customers ... it's not promising.

The X1 performance / tuning also worries me. It was announced that there were gfx / video perf issues with 30fps playback very shortly before the release date. They didn't answer any real questions in their pathetic webcast either ... I think there will be fairly horrible issues initially and worry they won't fix them. The added RAM so late in the day may sound positive ... but it shows they don't really know what they are doing. They will have added it because performance was too slow. Do remember that that amount of RAM with WVGA will really cane the battery - a negative which people aren't really considering.

I worry also about the keyboard ... I guess we will have to wait for the first purchasers to confirm either way. These things are enough to stop me pre-ordering when 3 months ago it was a definite purchase for me.

The HD has no keyboard ... I might be able to live without. The problem is more with the lack of button controls. Again, we know very little about it. I would hope HTC would include some kind of soft dpad with dynamic scaling which would allow apps to run VGA on top of the extra screen estate which would have the soft buttons / dpad. If they don't do this, I am very concerned about real day to day use. If they do deliver such a soft key set, then I think it would be almost perfect as long as something else is not missing - like TV-Out ... strangely not detailed ... even though some sites suggest in the spec it is there. The only massive irritation for me is the camera - no flash and no VGA 30fps capture on something this expensive. I was hoping to replace my TyTNII and N95 8GB with a single device .... and it looks like I will still need two - seems like a stupid oversight for such an expensive device. The 3.8" screen may still sway me though. I don't need tiny like lots of people ... as long as I have a decent belt case.

Paul.