I wasn’t lucky enough to get invited to Mobius this year but my good friend Judie of Gear Diary is at Seattle and has just put up her Mobius Day 1 report. Yup, they have been treated with a demo of the XPERIA X1. Check out what she has to say:

He gave us demos of the interface and most of the issues we had seen with lagging screens (mainly from Mobile World Congress reports) seem to have been resolved. They said it at the time, that this was not a finished device and that it was a work in progress, so it is great to see that progress is indeed being made.We tried to pin him down on a date for the release, but second half of the year was as specific as he would get. We did find out that the name XPERIA does not specifically mean Windows Mobile devices, it could be other mobile OSes; but all Windows Mobile Sony Ericsson products will be XPERIAs.

Great news! Folks from Mobiholics found the following at the Handango Partner Newsletter:

It seems like mid-September is the target XPERIA X1 release, in time for the holidays!

The XPERIA X1 will also have the Handango InHand service when it launches:

Handango InHand offers free and convenient access to mobile content directly from your smartphone. InHand simplifies the process of finding, installing and purchasing the content you want.

[Thanks Jeremy!]

UMPC Portal was lucky enough to bring home the XPERIA X1 and write up their initial impressions:

For the short time that I used the phone, I definitely got a positive impression. Sony Ericsson definitely has a great device that will surely please many people. To sum it up on the software side though, the interface and usability of Windows mobile wasn’t much improved yet. I hope Sony Ericsson can do more about that to make this a phone no one will have a problem with using.

They’ve managed to take a side-by-side pic of the XPERIA X1 with the Nokia N95, as well as other devices. I’ve enhanced the pics for better viewing:

Read the full review.

Geek.com just released an article on ideas on how to iPhone-ify a Windows Mobile device. I do think that the three apps mentioned, Vito Technology’s Communication Suite ($39.95), PointUI (free), and SPB Mobile Shell ($29.95), will be great add-ons to the XPERIA X1 (if they support the X1 screen resolution).

Below are some app screenshots from the article:

Vito Technology’s Communication Suite

PointUI

SPB Mobile Shell

What other apps do you all think will enhance the XPERIA experience?

Read the full article.

I was able to catch the first day of CTIA Wireless 2008 at Las Vegas. Udupi Bhat, Sony Ericsson Business Strategic Planner was doing most of the demo of the XPERIA X1. He was doing the standard demo, showing the panels, the curve, touch navigation, and other features. Aside from a pair of X1s in each of the secured XPERIA X1 cylindrical display cases, there was only one X1 on the floor being shown. Sony Ericsson was a bit kinder this time, maybe due to Microsoft officially launching Windows Mobile 6.1, allowing people to briefly touch and play with the X1.

I did get to find out that the 1700 Mhz was officially dropped for cost reasons. TrackID is also will not be on the device by default although this will be left for third party developers to add such an app.

Some thoughts. I love the XPERIA X1 size! It’s actually smaller than how it looks in pictures. I tried to take a lot of pics of the X1 on hand to hopefully give everyone an idea of how perfect the size is.

Enjoy the 16 pics after the jump.
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