Sony Ericsson's first Android smartphone will be a very high-end touchscreen device most likely taking the iPhone head on, a Danish scoop shows. Codenamed the "Rachel," the phone would fit into the XPERIA line occupied only by the X1 but would emphasize speed, according to Mobil. Like the Windows Mobile-based Toshiba TG01, it would have a very high-end 1GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon processor at its heart; it may also compete against the iPhone 3GS through "great" 3D graphics capabilities.
The very minimalist device would also sit near the top in most other respects, with an 8-megapixel autofocusing camera, 3G up to 7.2Mbps and a particularly large display. Without a view of the interface, it's unclear whether the X1's custom panel interface will carry over to the Rachel or if Sony Ericsson will customize the interface further. However, the company has previously gone on record as saying that its first Android phone will use Android 2.0 and so have at least the device-wide search and other features being added to the release.
No clues are given as to the release date, but Sony Ericsson is unofficially expected to have its first Android phone ready by late 2009 at the earliest.
iPhone on hardware alone. Apple is fortunate to have more going for them than just hardware. I'm sure going to be amazed when they get a lot of battery life out of a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor.
Nice phone, it'll probably cost a boat load but it'll be the first phone by SE in a long time that's anywhere near it's price. The X1 is being sold on Rogers now for 250, and it's running Windows Mobile, it's a total joke, it's a nice enough looking phone but the fact is nobody wants to sell WIndows mobile cause trying to support customers who buy devices with it is just a pain. I don't know a single person who works for my company that will pitch a windows mobile device and I think one of the big reasons is nobody wants to try and figure out how to show the customer how to use the device.
Kind of like the XBox 360 and PS3 have the Wii beat in terms of hardware... yet the Wii sells just fine.
Only us geeks know that the 3Gs is 600MHz, while the 3G is 412MHz. To the majority of people using the iPhone, the specs don't matter -- they just care about the supreme iPhone experience.
Said before. Go to BestBuy. Look at hundreds of phones. Bewildering choices. Only one device equals simplicity equals sales. Get an iPhone and forget the rest. This X1 will just be lost like the others in the crowd.
The 8.1MP camera on these things are great. I replaced my iPhone with a C905 Sony with the 8.1MP camera and I love it for pictures and video. I had to drop my iPhone because the wife has one and with the way AT&Ts pricing is, it was just too expensive to own 2 iPhones in the household.
Nothing will ever match the simplicity of design and the superior OS of the iPhone, but for people who can't afford an iPhone there are plenty of options. This one will start out EXPENSIVE and soon drop considerably when Sony and its carrier see it can't compete.
Contrary to instinct, faster processors can actually be more power efficient - modern CPUs tend to be a lot better at powering down unused components, so it's more power effective to do a job (like rendering a web page) quickly, and then go idle, that it is to spend several seconds at 100% CPU power.
Except when someone claims that the iPhone 3gs is a subtle upgrade, and they get told it isn't, because of the speed increase and stuff makes it just so much better.
Said before. Go to BestBuy. Look at hundreds of phones. Bewildering choices. Only one device equals simplicity equals sales. Get an iPhone and forget the rest. This X1 will just be lost like the others in the crowd.
Excuse me? If you go to BestBuy and look at the hundreds of phones, the iPhone is one of that hundred. So how does having just 'one' iPhone suddenly make buying a smartphone easier? It only makes buying an iPhone easier.
But if you're just looking at BestBuy and looking to buy a smart phone, you still have 100 to go through. ("OMG! I've got to use my brain! Say it isn't so! I'll just ask the BestBuy salesperson his expert opinion instead")
And Apple has five models, not one. Unless in your mind different sizes, which equates to different costs, and different colors, don't count. Then you have two models. The 3G and 3GS.
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