Sony Ericsson Xperia X1:




I needed a good email device with a decent keyboard, but I'm not a fan of the Blackberry form factor and didn't want the proprietary service lock-in that comes with them. I considered the Nokia E90, but that's over 18 months old now with no sign of an update, and runs Symbian, which looks to be on the way out. Also looked at the HTC Touch Pro, very similar spec and price, but the Xperia has a better screen and seems much better built (bizarrely, as it is also manufactured by HTC.)

The 800x480 screen really is something to behold, media and web capabilities are top notch. The battery has a decent capacity, but all that media functionaly is thirsty. With aggresive power saving settings you'll get maybe a day of intensive use, two days of moderate use, or a week of sitting in you pocket. In the month I've had it, it's behaved reasonably for first release of a smartphone. A couple of glitches required resets, not too bad - hopefully the stability with improve with firmware updates.

A tip for anyone who gets one of these: The default Windows Mobile interface is PDA-oriented and way too stylus dependent. The first thing you should do is download the "SPB Mobile Shell" panel available free on the SE site, which makes it much more thumb-friendly, like a phone should be.