Sony Ericsson is a confusing brand – one day it’s making top end camera phones, the next great media players; and then, it goes in a completely different direction with the Xperia X10 Pureness.
– Watch our hands-on Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Pureness video
Instead of a phone with the latest and greatest snapper or 100GB of storage, this phone has one major USP – you can see through the screen when using the phone. That nugget of tech is what’s behind the £650 price tag.
This isn’t so much a phone as a design statement – you can see that from the moment you pick it up. The transparent screen is encased in clear plastic, which offers blinding white illumination to display the text and give the phone a special glowing look.
Model dimensions?
It’s also dinky to the extreme – dimensions of 112 x 43 x 13 mm mean it’s a real pocket pleaser and feels miniscule in the hand.
The keys are laid out flush to the device with the usual Sony Ericsson suspects on board – a central control key flanked by a D-pad, and two softkeys above the call/ terminate buttons. There’s also an application management key, with a clear/delete/backspace button for good measure.
But, it’s the things this phone doesn’t have that are equally startling – no 3.5mm headphone jack, no camera, no video player, not even Wi-Fi.
But Sony Ericsson has thought about this – that’s why it offers some delightful bundled Bluetooth headphones in the box, which mean you can take advantage of the music player on board with the 2GB of inbuilt memory.
The plastic chassis is a little poor in our eyes, as it feels a little bit cheap, especially when pressing the keys. It serves to keep the phone light, but at the same time, it means you feel like you’re playing with a low end Nokia phone at times rather than a plaything of the rich and artistic.
If you compare it to the luxury of Nokia’s Vertu range, which might be expensive but certainly feels premium, you have to wonder if Sony Ericsson really pushed the envelope as much as it could have done.
The transparent screen is a real novelty, it will take you ages to get bored of going up to your friends and putting your phone to your eye to show that you can still see them. They might not like it as much, but if you’re going to spend this much on a phone, you need to get your money’s worth.
While the screen is cool, it’s a little impractical in day to day use – you can’t actually see what’s on it most of the time, unless you hold it up to a dark surface to provide some contrast, and while it does look fairly high res, it doesn’t make it any better on the eyes.
Basic model?
There’s also only a basic internet browser on there – 3G is thankfully provided if you’re looking to get some quick football or cricket scores or check the latest news without having to wait an age – but it’s nothing at all like the WebKit enabled browsers we’re becoming used to on phones of this price.
The Sony Ericsson UI might be a little dated these days, but at least it works well – settings and applications and the like are all easily accessible through the menu, and conversations are threaded to provide easy tracking of what you’re actually saying to your mates.
A little extra treat – push email is included on the handset as well, so if your company is Exchange enabled you’re easily able to set yourself up to receive all the important messages on the go – be warned though, this sucks the life out of the battery very quickly.
Call quality is a little below average though – the device never really makes it easy to hear what’s being said to you, even if you get your lughole perfectly aligned over the speaker. At least call stability was good – we never had the phone accidentally hang up on us or anything.
Vacant and transparent?
Overall, we can see what Sony Ericsson is trying to do here – make a phone that eschews the current clamour for all the functionality in the world in one handset. It’s a striking-looking device, and even comes with its own concierge service – if you want a chicken burger at 2.30AM, you can phone someone up to get it for you (providing you pay for it, that is).
But we can’t help feeling like this phone misses a bit on actually being a phone first and foremost – so if you’re willing to pay for a device that might irritate you from time to time (but ultimately looks cool) then be prepared to part with £650.
Link: Sony Ericsson
