SmartPhones

Last year about this time Sony Ericsson rolled out its first Windows Mobile powered smartphone, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. Now, just announced on September 2 and right on time for the holiday season again, the company has released its second WinMo smartphone, appropriately the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2.

And just like its predecessor, the X2 features Sony Ericsson's trademark touch screen user interface - Panels - with handwriting recognition, shipping with 14 home-screen panels pre-installed and with 16 more downloadable home-screen panels available. The display screen is 3.2" with a startling 800 x 480 pixel resolution. Also stunning for the eyes is an 8.1 megapixel digital camera built-in with auto-focus (if you remember, the X1 only had a 3.2 megapixel camera - so this is a huge improvement). It also has touch focus and video recording and playback capabilities.

The Xperia X2 runs on the latest version of Microsoft's mobile platform, Windows Mobile 6.5, which comes with Internet Explorer's latest version browser pre-installed. It features a full slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard. The X2 has a TV out feature so that users can view documents and presentations on a big screen display.

For music listening enjoyment, the Xperia X2 uses Windows Media Player broadcast through its own built-in stereo speakers. For gaming enjoyment, it has a fully-featured PlayNow area with 3D gaming capabilities.

The Sony Ericsson X2 supports A2DP Bluetooth with both Bluetooth headsets and stereo headphones alike. It supports Wi-Fi and has a built-in GPS with geo-tagging support. And it supports both push email and calendar and contact syncing using Exchange ActiveSync.

It measures at 4.3" x 2.1" x 0.6" and weighs in at 4.1 oz. It has tri-band UMTS/HSPA and quad-band GSM/EDGE for total world roaming support. It has 110 MB of built in memory with 16 GB of expandable memory using its microSDHC card slot.

If you like visuals, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 may be just the smartphone to catch your eye this holiday season. The X2 will be available in stores in October in both silver and black. The one downside to the Sony Xperia X2, at least in its initial launching phase, is its price: rumored to be around $995.