Sony Ericsson X10 and Mobile in General

Sony is officially releasing the info on the X10 phone. Before I get into my thoughts on the phone and SE I must explain some things. I've been a little bit out of the loop on phones lately. A combination of no longer working in the mobile industry(not by choice) and the change the iPhone has made to the industry has made me feel less inclined to follow it frequently.

After the iPhone was announced there was a flood of touch phones into the market. Unfortunately most of the early phones were nowhere as capable as the iPhone, but incorporated some sort of touch feature to capitalize of the hype of a touch screen phone. Personally I'm not very keen on touch screens. I know my hands will end up smudging something on the screen and it would probably drive me crazy until the 'new' feeling wore off. It was also pointed out to me that my nails are in the way. Now I don't have some massive fake nails on my fingers. They are long enough that affects the way my fingers touch a screen. I don't want my nails scratching the screen so I have to adjust their placement. I always get frustrated in typing with an iPhone because it always hits the wrong letters. I suppose after time I would adjust to it and not have as many problems, but that's not my only reason for not getting an iPhone. Aside from the touch screen the iPhone had offered many features that weren't available on most US phones. They also offered (for the most part) a fully functional web browser. Soon enough a huge app store. I do wonder that if the iPhone wasn't released by Apple, but say by some unknown company if the device would have been as successful. They were many great phones out before the iPhone came out that were barely recognized by the mainstream. With a current name like Apple the result was amazing. Apple wasn't the only group to bring a change to the mobile industry. Google's Android OS came into play. Once again it gained everyone's attention. Now there's a wider audience to phones that are more and more like small computers.

I've been a Sony Ericsson fan for the past 5-6 years. I currently own a SE K850i. It is a small candy bar phone with a 5 megapixel camera, bluetooth support(for headphones and file transfer, sorry I don't know the technical term for that support), quadband, 3G, and some other features. There are some things I wish it could do, but I refuse to dump it for a phone that doesn't at least have the features I describe above (aside from the size). When I started seeing the X1 pop up I was excited, but unfortunately the phone didn't meet my requirements. Since then I've paid very little attention to new phones. I also get very impatient about phone releases. First you get some leaked photos or prototypes of a phone. Then you'll get the full press release which more than half of the time turns out to be a disappoint(they end up being a low end phone or one that's comparable to current models). When you do hear about a good phone it takes forever to come out. In the case of SE there is usually a delay between the release overseas and the release here. It's torture to sit there and think about buying one from abroad or waiting to get it cheaper when it's available locally. I really like SE Saito, but unfortunately I'm not too excited about the symbian OS. It appears that concerns seem justified because the reviews I've read all point out the OS as the biggest flaw. That's quite a shame.

With my love for SE and the previous requirements is the X10 really my next phone? I highly doubt it. I'm concerned about the actual camera quality. Once again the issue of the touch screen also comes into play. There are some cool things that I do like about the phone. I like the nice, big screen and nice, fast processor specifically. I guess I'll hold my true judgment until I see what people have to say about the phone. My other concern is who is manufacturing the phone. I don't really know if I would want a SE phone that isn't actually manufactured by SE. Did SE really need to go to others to manufacter phones? (I know they had financial issues and had big layoffs. I guess that's resulting in the need to depend on others) I'm not trying to saying that the other companies like HTC are bad, but I worry about SE products losing the reasons why I loved them.

Sorry if I've rambled on too much here. It's getting late and it's been so long since I've talked about mobile. I do think that I'm going to start searching into Japanese phones. It would be great if they would release world phones.