Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
This rather falls under "mini project" if this is really a project. Main idea was to check if I can substitute current smartphone with old smartphone keeping main functionalities:
- phoning and sending SMS-es
- GPS navigation
- audio player
- communication over internet (Signal)
Well, it is easy to guess this is hardly viable, but practice tells more than theory.
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I got this piece of electronics for 150 PLN (~36 EUR), it does not look so great, especially back plastics which are "melting". At phone's best time it surely was better. I bought spare case and changed part of plastics + keyboard, but it was only front. Also I had to glue a plastic part, so it seems that previous owner was not treating phone nicely. The plus is stylus hidden in case which makes using phone much easier. For sure phone looks stylish, much different than during its times and also now.
Let's push power button.
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Phone runs Windows Mobile 6.1 - of course there is no way to update it via OTA, but on XDA it is possible to find upgrade to latest 6.5 version. I do not have Windows machine, so I have not bothered. If you had a chance to play around with PDA or Pocket PC, you will easily get how it works. As for 2025 WinMobile still works pretty nice, not super fast, but it is acceptable.
Of course there are all main things - WiFi, BT, SIM card and even microSD. What I REALLY like is that if you put a microSD card, you do not need any magic to view what it contains when you plug phone to PC, no MTP or WTF. Viewing phone internal file system needs some struggle, because in the past you would use Active Sync, fortunately now we can use Z-Push even on OpenBSD.
Another thing which I really like is keyboard, it is small, but typing is very satisfying, I would wish to have new smartphone with physical QWERTY keyboard.
Okay, I will return now to main goals of this phone.
- phoning and sending SMS-es - I did not test calls, typing is really nice, but writing itself is problematic as there is no Alt key
- GPS navigation - there are 2 things: (1) there is no application which allows to store maps locally, (2) GPS just sucks here
- audio player - plays really nice, there is a jack connector, so I can plug my headphones and listen whatever I want or fire up radio
- communication over internet (Signal) - here is the biggest pain, there is only IRC app working (I joined on #deadnet on Sunday for a while), but even no XMPP app
I also tried to test few other apps:
- Doom - it just does not start, probably because I tried to run .exe, not .cab
- PocketQuake - it starts for sure, but screen is so small that I do not realize how one can play if HUD takes almost half of screen
- Age of Empires 1 Gold - probably same as Doom, .exe file does not start
- PowerRadio - theoretically it allows to scan worldwide, but it does not find anything outside my local band + it hangs very often
Summary: it is really nice piece of history, I would wish to have few things from it (design, physical keyboard), but it will not replace my current smartphone. Almost certainly it will land in box with other electronic devices. Ah, did I mention that central button on front is touch-sensitive?
If you are looking for fancy
phone which you want to use for phone calls, SMS-es and playing music - this is one of nice options as it can connect with 3G. Or it can be used as micro-console for games (it needs more research to find which games work). For Internet it is bad choice, Opera Mobile works, but websites are fucked up.
