Rumor has Sony Ericsson's won't release its new Xperia X1 smartphone this year as expected. It was supposed hit stores as early as the second quarter but likelier during the second half of 2008.

Instead, according to a table of release dates purported to be taken from a page on Sony Ericsson's own Web site (see below), the X1 may not see the light of day until February of 2009. While the date in the table looks like October 2, 2009 - to American eyes at least - since it is in the European format, it actually reads the much earlier but still too far away February 10,2009.

The possibility of a delay is disappointing because the X1 was, perhaps, the most talked about smartphone at last month's Mobile World Congress. Not so much for its cutting-edge features, of which there are some, but because it marked a significant departure or the Swedish/Japanese conglomerate.

Sony Ericsson's X1 is the company's first smartphone to run on Windows Mobile. You see, nearly all of Sony Ericsson's smartphones use the Symbian OS with its own UIQ interface. It's a major change in strategy for Sony Ericsson to climb on board the Microsoft bandwagon.



                                                                              image from engadget

"Our vision for the Xperia X1 is to deliver a seamless blend of mobile web communication and multimedia entertainment within a distinctive design," Sony Ericsson senior VP and head of product and application planning Rikko Sakaguchi said at the Mobile World Congress. "We thought we could do better than other handset makers with a Windows Mobile device."

We'll see if that's true. But it may not be as soon as we thought. Here's to hoping the date in Sony Ericsson's release schedule, as outlined in the leaked table, is a mistake.

More on the Xperia X1
Built by the Windows Mobile-device experts over at HTC- the most successful original design manufacturer of Windows Mobile smartphones ever-the Xperia X1 will run on the yet-to-be released 6.1 version of Windows Mobile, which is supposed to include a number of improvements over the current edition of Microsoft's smartphone operating system.

Since the Xperia X1 sports a touch screen-a 3-inch, 840 x 480-pixel (WVGA) resolution type-we also won't be surprised should Sony Ericsson ask HTC to graft a version of its iPhone-like TouchFLO interface onto Windows Mobile for the smartphone.

As with many other high-end Windows Mobile Professional devices today, many of which were built and designed by HTC by the way, you can slide the Xperia X1's display aside to reveal a full QWERTY thumb-keyboard.

As a quad-band GSM phone, you'll be able to use the smartphone to make voice calls in most world markets. It supports 3G cellular-wireless data networking in many countries as well.

There's also Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS for location-based services, FM receiver and 3.2 megapixel camera for picture and video.

A microSD slot is available to compliment the Xperia X1's 400MB of internal memory with gigabytes of additional storage.

The smartphone measures 4.3 x 2.1 x 0.66 inches (110 x 53 x 16.7 millimeters) and weighs in at 5.1 ounces (145 grams).

There's still no word on how much the Xperia X1 will cost or if the smartphone will become available directly from a wireless carrier. Sony Ericsson has a page devoted to the X1 here.

[via engadget]