[XPERIA X10 General] stan.s:
IME after 24 hours with 2.1

ATT X10A flashed to LAM/Brazil 2.1 update-1

Feel free to correct me if something here is different on your phone. This is what I noticed after 24 hours.

Issues:

1. Bluetooth STILL not a full implementation. I have a SE HS-DS980 stereo headset which I have used for several years with my prior SE phones for bluetooth. The unit still doesn't display the time, the music track's name and artist, and can't start the music player. I could do these with any non-android phone in the past.

I note that the Bluetooth displays a Notification Icon in the status bar when I requested the phone's contact list, and call log with the DS980. I had to give permission and checked the box for 'always allow' the data transfer.

I LIKE the Bluetooth button on the phone call (only shows when bt is active), press it and it transfers the call back to the phone.

It took me a while to connect these two. I had to do a hard reset on the DS980 to make the sync. Reconnecting it didn't have the 'phone' option listed, just the media player. I can pause and restart the player, I can skip tracks forward and back. The player stops when a call is received and resumes when it's over.

Doesn't function with the "Voice" search functions, which it did perfectly on cheap designer phones from SE.

I don't blame SE for this, this is definitely a Goggle problem.

2. Contacts Phonebook. WOW. This has so many new options. The problem here is that there are so many hidden sub-menus for configuration. Open the phonebook, press the people icon in the uppper left. There's a set of configurations. Press the left button, theres a Settings submenu for configurations. But here's the PITA, while you can sync from SyncML, SonySync, Google Sync, Moxier, Facebook (for android), Twitter (for android), as well as Facebook Timescape, and Twitter Timescape. Additionally, settings NOT in the phonebook may cause sync on the phone. You have to to go through and disable all the autosync throughout the phone (you can reach this spot either via the Home/Settings/Accts&Sync or from the Phonebook/Settings/Accts&Sync).

You can filter the results, but you can't pick and choose multiples, e.g., Facebook android + Twitter Android. You can pick one or "ALL" or "None" and this is a big problem, since with multiple programs for FB and TWR, you get multiple listings (combined) for each person. Add in a Google listing, and as an example, my kid's mobile number is in there 6 times. The Timescape versions DON'T show in the place were all accounts and data are sync'd so there doesn't seem to be a easy way to avoid them.

Pro's, I love the press Picture Icon in the listing to get the phone/nav/msg/edit icons. I like 'who's online' sort, I like the 'only listings with phone numbers' and I can't wait to try the "Join" contacts function with all those listings where I put in the phone number as a separate contact after the business or home information. (Join and a bunch of other functions are a long press on the contact.)

What's the real problem? Well, once you put in your Google acct (a unavoidable requirement) it thinks it wants to be the default sync for everything and is on by default in some cases. Make sure that you go into the Home/Settings/Accounts & Settings open the Google settings and turn on and off the Google products you wish/not wish sync to make sure that you aren't sucking down data all day long. It's got to be one of the problems with lag. I wish there was a setting for to time the updates to once an hour or so.

It is almost like if you want to have twitter and facebook updates on your phonebook, you have to use the Timescape versions. But again, there is no way to pick just those short of deleting the non-Timescape accounts. You can tell the system to not display the service you're least interested in.

3. Lag This is an interesting topic. 'Not an immediate response' is the definition. Defiantly, this version seems to almost always take a moment to start. Open the phone book, a couple seconds, Mediascape, a few seconds (I have 5K songs on my 32gb card), and so on. Is it bad? Not really, but just an annoyance. What could improve it?

a. no live wall papers: I've been looking at these, 10 3D fish as a default? Who's kidding you? It's not right and it's a killer for battery and processing power. The grass thing is fine, not overly annoying, and minimal motion.

b. go into the Application Management and you can stop apps from running in the background, including Timescape without a task killer.

c. Sync is running all the time in the background....it's got to be killer.

4. 3G vs H icon I have a widget called IP Widget and it shows the ATT connection type as well as mac, IP addressses, signal strength, etc. On AT&T's 1.6, it always showed UMTS. Never HSPA. Now, it alternates between the two. Frankly, HSPA in Metro NY, not so hot. I liked the UMTS service, it seemed more responsive. And why does Speednet testing think that the nearest server is in Washington DC when I'm connected to it? Doesn't AT&T have HSPA servers in NY/NJ the most densely populated area in the USA? No wonder it sucks.

5. Power On/Off To get to the state where the phone is 'off' and charging, I have to turn the phone off, then connect either a USB or wall charger. After a while the light turns Orange (charging) and a charging batter icon appears faintly on the screen. IF it's connected to a computer, the 'disk drive' aka SEMC Mass Storage and the ROM are connected but not fully accessible.

6. Thumbnails yes, they are sort of grainy, however, once the phonebook updates with Facebook et al, it seems to have gone mostly away. But it sort of seems a shame that it can't be forced to use the photos you want rather than your contact's FB choice. There's a cure, don't update, and use SE's Sync from PC companion to fix the resolution.

Overall well, that's an real opinion. As a applications manager for many many years, comparing 1.6 to 2.1, I think that its a hard call, 1.6 is really very usable, and 2.1 seems to have so much more in tweaks and frankly gimmicks which might be helpful on the surface but maybe not really underneath.

Is the Phonebook really the center of the world on your phone? (it is in the data sense, if you put all of your friends into it, all of your contacts, etc.) If you sync with FB, it will bring in the phone and email addresses listed for that 'friend' on their Info page, which may give you phone numbers and email addresses you never had before. (Do they vanish if they remove them from their profile, too?)

Will you go in and select the contact first from the phonebook with a long press to pop up the 'connection' bar to send a SMS or go right to the SMS icon and select them from where you type the message? You go 'aww that's nice' when you see that connection bar the first time but is it really useful?

A lot of things in 2.1 seem to be like that. I don't understand why they are there fully yet. But isn't a full Bluetooth stack yet that supports more profiles, more important?