Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 review: First look

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 launched this week. It's a sleek looking device that offers a blend of features for consumers and business users alike.

We quite liked Sony Ericsson's first Windows Mobile-powered handset, the Xperia X1, when we reviewed it back in December last year. Although felt it didn't quite live up to the hype surrounding it, we were pleasantly surprised with what it had to offer, considering the Marmite-like effect the Windows Mobile OS can have on handsets.

But that was then and this is now. We're no longer battling with the issues connected to Windows Mobile 6.1. Instead, we have Windows Mobile 6.5 (also known as Windows Phone) (). What's more, Sony Ericsson has also evolved, so much so the successor to the X1, the unsurprisingly named Xperia X2, has arrived on the scene.

At the launch event, we were mightily impressed with our brief hands-on first look. We'll bring you a full review as soon as we can get hold of a review unit, but in the meantime he's our initial thoughts.

The first thing that strikes you about the X2 is familiarity. The two handsets are definitely related. While that might sound like a pretty obvious statement to make, it's surprising how many manufacturers feel the need to reinvent the wheel every time they launch a new device.

Thankfully, the things we liked about the X1 are either still present and correct or have been enhanced to be even better.

There's a luscious 3.2in resistive touch screen display with 800x480 pixels resolution. And front of house, hard keys are kept fairly minimal. For the most part we found the screen quite responsive, but every now and again and generally when we needed a quick response we had to resort to the stylus, which is housed on the right-hand side of the device.

The handset is still a bit on the chunky side (54x16x110mm WDH), thanks to housing a keyboard with nice spring action underneath.

The keys on the QWERTY keyboard are nicely space and very easy to use. We found we were able to work up quite a speed and feel that such an attribute is extremely advantageous, not just to users who email or text all the time, but also for surfing the web.