Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

The Panel interface makes the Today screen a platform on which to run programs, almost making the Start menu secondary to the Windows Mobile experience.

    This is the main Panel interface that you access by pressing the Panel button on the phone. When the Panels are on the screen, they jiggle slightly, and the recent-most Panel is larger than the rest, as seen on the bottom. When you tap on a Panel, the device gives a small vibration.

If you flip the keyboard open, a cool animation begins....

...and the Panels will reorient into landscape.

In this other view, you can shuffle through Panels as if they were a bunch of cards. If you tap the wrench in the bottom right corner...

...you'll be able to modify any of the Panels. You can only have nine Panels on the screen at once.

In this screen, you can replace a Panel with another, or make it blank. Or, you can get more Panels.

And right now, the selection is slim for extra Panels. The bottom two don't work very well, but the top two are great. I'll cover the Spb Shell Panel below. All Panels are free.

Ok, this is the first Panel - one that you've seen before. It's the default Today screen Panel.

    Here is what I call my "daytime" Panel. It shows me what's going on at pocketnow.com and sister site AllShadow.com via their RSS feeds, plus has a list of four of my next appointments, and other info towards the top such as time, date, and temperature. If you tap Options on the bottom right...

...you can configure the Panel.

You can have multiple RSS feeds. If you wanted, you could have this Panel be comprised entirely of RSS feeds.

And, you can also add program shortcuts to the Panel.

    Here is the fish Panel. It's simple, but simple on purpose. It gives you the date and time. The gray fish will turn red when your battery is low. The small orange fish will turn gray when the sound is turned off. The large orange fish will turn gold when you have an unread message. And there's a fourth fish that only comes on the screen when you have a missed call.

This Panel is almost identical to the RSS Panel seen previously, but here I have it configured differently.

And, I should mention, all Panels work well in landscape.

This is the slick multimedia Panel that is completely finger-friendly, and has great animations that is somewhat reminiscent of Windows Media Center.

The photo gallery, which is flick-scrollable, shows you all of the pictures on your device or storage card.

If you tap on a picture, you can begin a slideshow.

In the Music section, you can dial down by Artist, Album, Tracks, and playlist.

Here's what it looks like when you play a track - complete with album art and all!

Here's the video library. You can flip your finger upwards to see all of them. When videos play, you get translucent on-screen play controls like an iPhone. Video playback is super smooth.

You can also flip through games through the multimedia Panel.

This is the FM radio Panel. You can only use the FM radio through the Panel - there is no program for it elsewhere.

Here is the Google Panel from where you can initiate a Google search or use their other services. Calling up this panel to do a search is slightly faster than opening up a browser through the Start menu.

We learned recently that Spb was making a Panel for the X1. Well, here it is. Basically, it gives you the full functionality of Spb Mobile Shell (a $30 program) for free. It's really great.

Spb Mobile Shell does weather.

If you hit the left button on the bottom, or swipe your finger left, you get the application launcher. This is all customizable.

And on the button on the right, we have a favorite people pane that we can use to list speed dials.

If you want to see a video demonstration of the Panels, check out the video above.

SOFTWARE

    So, being an HTC manufactured device, we get the HTC Task Manager, which lets us close programs selectively. We can also use this to dictate what happens when you press the "x" button in Windows Mobile. Sony Ericsson has set the default to "close" application. This keeps program memory wide open. Since the X1 has excellent performance, opening a program that is not in program memory is much faster than it is on other devices.

The X1 includes Microsoft Office 2007 Mobile.

Here is the first half of the Programs list. Because of the long screen, we see a lot of icons in one view. I should mention that the X1 has excellent flick-scrolling throughout the entire OS, like in this screen.

If we go into games, we see two added: Sodoku and Bejeweled 2. Both are from Astraware. Sudoku is the full version, while Bejewled is a trial.

Both games load in landscape.

This is Handango InHand - the only Windows Mobile app store.

It's better than nothing - but the interface is crude, the selection isn't great, there are no trials, and prices are still high on Windows Mobile software.

And here is the second frame of the Start Menu. We have a streaming video player. Using this, you can stream videos from m.youtube.com.

Opera Mobile 9.5 has been optimized on the X1, and performance is great. It rivals Safari on the iPhone in its ability to render webpages, and with the WVGA screen, pages look fantastic.

This particular version of Opera Mobile allows for the adjustment of the cache size.

PHONE

Here's the phone application, adorned in a nice-looking brushed metal theme.

When you press in on a button, you get a 3D effect.

Here is the call history tab, with icons along the bottom that continue the brushed metal look.

This is what happens when a call comes in. The left and right soft keys take on the role of Silence and Send Text. To answer a call, you must use the hardware call start or end keys on the phone.

And when you're on a call, this is what it looks like. You get an oversized call end button at the bottom of the screen. Overall, as a phone, the X1 does quite well. Call quality was above average, and reception was solid.

Click on to the next page as we cover Settings and camera quality on the XPERIA X1.