SE-NSE Forums:

Good afternoon, although I’m not really online here these days I thought this was worth sharing:

As you may know, SE are (supposedly) rolling out the next updates for the X10 and X8 which add pinch/zoom and speed improvements to things like MediaScape and you have probably discovered that this is occurring in a typically slow fashion!

If, like me you have grown tired of waiting for the update to reach your region but don’t want to use other full flashing techniques, here is a method which may help:

• Root your phone if it is not already
• Locate the file /system/build.prop
  you will need to edit this file on the phone or use a root enabled file explorer to swap it with a modified version

• Locate the following two lines:
  ro.product.name=X10_XXXX-XXXX
  ro.semc.version.cust=XXXX-XXXX

• The XXXX-XXXX represents your current regional kit number
  my UK Generic was 1235-7379

• Replace the kit number in these two lines with the Global Generic number - 1232-9897
  you may also use other regions with the available update e.g. Nordic – 1234-8465

• Once the build.prop file is correctly edited, reboot the phone and connect to PC Companion or SEUS
• You should be prompted with the available update and will not lose any user data

This worked for my UK handset and the update is currently downloading, hopefully it will work for you too.

Mik

Credit to imugur for first posting this method.

Not for the first time, the Android Market is receiving a silent OTA update. Recently, Froyo features such as a separate comments tab were added to devices running previous versions of Android and now we have goodies previously thought to be rolling out with Gingerbread.
A rather useful new tab is appearing on each app listing which quickly shows you other related or similar apps. I particularly used those words because the tab seems to use both. Yes, my X10 shows “related” apps while the Hero here shows “similar”. Odd but the net result is the same, a very handy new feature added to the Market.
You should find the updated Market anytime but if yours is still not showing the new tab you can try clearing the Market cache in Settings > Applications.
Mik

There has been a lot said about the Xperia X10 and its support, or lack of it, for multitouch. Whether you like the feature or not, it is something of a “Phantom Menace” that perpetually rumbles on in the interwebs and with the X10 in particular we have endured quite the saga in terms of will it or won’t it!

What seems like an eternity ago, the X10 was announced with a capacitive screen but no support for multitouch and was met with incessant rants from users all demanding the same thing in rather an “Attack Of The Clones”. Sony Ericsson suffered greatly with negative reviews flowing in, not helped by the outdated OS, and it seemed the “Revenge Of The SE-haters” was stronger than ever. However, keen fans were offered “A New Hope” when Sony Ericsson suggested via their blog that the feature would be added in future updates:

That hope was soon dashed though as the “Empire Struck Back” when SE stated that the X10 would not be receiving multitouch and lacked support for the feature through both software and hardware limitations:

It appeared all hope was lost as without hardware support there was surely no way back but on a remote moon some determined hackers were not about to give up and managed to make rudimentary multitouch gestures work on the X10. SE apparently noticed this and decided, not to be shown up by the community, that they should get in on the act themselves which brings us officially to the “Return Of The Multitouch”!

Today SE announced on their blog that work is ongoing on bringing basic multitouch gestures such as pinch zoom to the X10 inthe next OTA firmware update!

You may be thinking “why did SE say the phone lacked hardware support”? Well in a way it still does and the X10 will only be given basic multitouch features, essentially the screen digitizer only supports dual touch and will encounter problems with some actions. This leads to certain restrictions as explained and demonstrated by SE in the video below. I believe it is these restrictions which led SE to previously dismiss multitouch support but it seems they have decided that the benefits of partial feature support are greater than the potential criticisms of it.

So when can we expect this update? Well Q1 2011 is stated but we all know how to take estimated deadlines from SE…

Personally I like to see the company reacting to feedback and improving their products accordingly, even if it does take an age. We can at least see that SE are prepared to listen and we should respect the fact that they may be taking a risk here by rolling out something which could cause a few problems to satisfy popular demand.

PS- I realised only after starting this article and researching the previous posts that scotsboy had previously done something similar with the puns but, I started so I finished lol!

mobile-review have got their hands on the latest hardware in usual fashion and posted some reasonable images of the Xperia X12. I wouldn’t really waste your time in bothering to read their typically biased and negative review but pictures are always good to see:

Anyone else think the camera button seems strangely positioned?

More images over at mobile-review.com

So Sony Ericsson just scraped into their “end of October” window last Sunday by forcing out just one regional version of their unfeasibly long awaited Eclair 2.1 update for the Xperia X10. Since then everyone else has been hanging on waiting for their own region to get the new firmware.

Well today the update has arrived in the only place that matters, where I live! The UK Generic kit was released earlier this morning and my phone detected it around 09:00. As the update is a full reflash it needs to be done via a computer so I went to connect to PC Companion only to be told that I already had the latest version, SEUS also did the same. By 09:30 SEUS finally acknowledged the existence of the update which my phone had already told me about and the new firmware was installed without a hitch, only taking a few minutes.

First impressions are, it’s much the same and not worth 12 months in waiting but that’s probably being unfair. The update is more a collection of improvements and less embarrassment than sweeping changes, here are the things you will notice:

• The previously attractive lock screen is gone, replaced with a lightly skinned version of the default Android 2.1 screen.
• The whole custom blue skin is darker, fading to black at the lower part of the screen.
• 5 homescreens with 5 rows & 4 columns of icons/widgets.
• The SE keyboard is completely different with both positive and negative changes (more on this later).
• Video camera supports “720p HD”, if you expect to see anything resembling actual HDTV quality from this, prepare to be disappointed.
• Social phonebook with profile pic updates, note that these don’t overwrite manually set images so you will need to delete those.
• Messaging app has been given a pleasing facelift.
• Android Market up to date.
• Eclair exchange email support removed! “Enjoy” the commercial bloatware that is Moxier instead!

So what about the signature features that are Timescape and mediascape? Well, so far I can see very little difference if I’m honest.

Timescape is still not as fast as it needs to be, requires too many presses to do anything useful and STILL doesn’t support Gmail. I will continue to use this purely as a regularly updating picture frame via the widget and nothing more.

Mediascape was always the better of the two and remains so but is still a bit clunky to use lacks many basic things such as a play queue, any way to create a playlist on the phone or select/delete multiple pictures. An accomplished music device, the X10 is not.

The update has also delivered the greatly improved and very attractive Android Gallery but SE have deemed this superfluous to their half baked effort and removed all links to it apart from via the picture frame widget. From the menus you wouldn’t even know it was there and indeed cannot open it but choosing a picture for a frame widget shows what you’re missing out on!

SE’s other main customisation is the keyboard. The previous version was initially disastrous before receiving a much needed update to make it a lot more user friendly though the main failing was the dubious auto-correction. It also had some very useful features such as left/right arrows for accurate text selection and a quick smilie shortcut key.

The new version bears no resemblance to it’s predecessor at all but that’s not to say it looks worse, it is actually very nice. The auto-correction is also greatly improved and pretty comparable to that of HTC. However, those nice shortcut keys I mentioned are gone, we have no arrow keys now and the smilies are accessed by a long press on the symbols key which, by the way has moved to the right and in it’s place is a totally unnecessary key to close the keyboard. Are you ready to see your keyboard disappear every time you go to insert a symbol until you get used to it. Another drawback of this is that the previous !? key has had to give way as well and now you need to change to symbols just to add either of these, then change back to text to carry on…this is not an improvement! Oh and you can’t manually teach it complex words anymore so the old trick of having the phone suggest your email address as a word doesn’t seem t work.

This may sound like the update is bad, it’s not but it doesn’t seem like it was worth waiting for. The phone is not ahead in any area, it’s just now not as far behind. The best thing is that we can finally put the endless wait to bed and enjoy the phone as it should have been when released. If this was how the X10 started it would have done so well but right now it’s too little too late.

Sony Ericsson have released another, this time more official looking, video to introduce the added features of the long awaited Eclair update for the Xperia X10.

I didn’t realise the keyboard was being replaced and I am unsure about that as the loss of the arrow keys looks like a significant detriment to me!

Anyway, take a look at the video below and as for SE, how about you give up with creating streams of videos to “show” us the Eclair update and just release the damn thing so we can see for ourselves!

PS- note the comedy value in the fact that he says “if you haven’t updated yet”…yeah, chance would be a fine thing!!!!!

via: SE Product Blog

It’s somewhat of a long standing joke now that Sony Ericsson delay everything and the once trend setting company has been behind the curve for quite some time now, no more than with their entry into the Android market with the Xperia X10. For what seems like an eternity the X10 has been languishing on a long since outdated of Android in the form of 1.6 (Donut) and everyone has been waiting, impatiently, for the promised Eclair update. Of course the wait might not be so bad if the current firmware was up to scratch

It is painfully laughable that Sony Ericsson have yet to move onto Eclair while many other manufacturers are already rolling out Froyo but at least we were finally “promised” a Q3 release window. Since then time has continued to tick by and the days left in Q3 have dwindled away still with no sign of Eclair leading to many people thinking that the update was very close, but no…this is Sony Ericsson we are talking about!

In time honored fashion this bunch of disorganised baboons with as much grasp of creating functional phone software as a snail randomly crawling over a keyboard have continued to work in geological time and have once more delayed the release of the Eclair updates for the Xperia range of devices.

The reason given is that they “need a couple of more weeks before we are ready to start the roll-out” and as such the update has been put on a revised plan to “start the roll-out from end of October and onwards“!

These incompetent fools seem to have real trouble with time scales, firstly this means the Eclair update has spectacularly missed the whole three month window of Q3 but also they don’t even appear able to understand the basic concept of days, weeks and months. The end of October, being a full month away, is certainly more than a “couple of weeks” and guess what, it gets even worse! The end of October is the very earliest anyone can expect to see Eclair on their X10 and most people will probably be waiting even longer:

“I’d also like to highlight that the update will be made available in a phased roll-out which means that different “kits” get the update at different times. It will take some additional weeks from end of October before all different kits have the new software available.”

So who knows when Eclair will actually reach the X10, it really is like a donkey chasing a carrot on a string! Well done SE, well done!

Mik

It’s been a long and painful wait for Sony Ericsson to get with the Android times but finally things are getting closer. Of course we heard that the Eclair updates should be arriving some time this month and now we are able to see the updated OS actually running on the Xperia X10.

One of the first things you may notice is the changed lock screen, removing SE’s nice themed version for a weakly skinned version of the default. I’m also disappointed to see the Moxier bloatware is still present but at least we have a nice selection of live wallpapers to look forward to.

Many of you will probably already know that two of the UK’s major networks now live under the same roof and may be wondering what benefits we are going to see from that. While there are no immediate plans to merge the brands, so no T-Morange then, there are very real plans to merge their network coverage.

As of 5th October both T-Mobile and Orange customers will be able to make use of both networks, connecting to which ever has the strongest signal. For now this is 2G only, hence their “talk and text in more places” tag line, but improved coverage is always a good thing and it is apparently free and we should be able to expect the same benefit with 3G data sometime next year.

Strangely you do have to register your interest for this, a strategy I think may be designed to stagger the launch a little rather than having both networks go down as everyone piles on. So, assuming you are interested (why wouldn’t you be), head over to your network’s page and let them know:

T-Mobile Customers: t-mobile.co.uk/share

Orange Customers: orange.co.uk/share

Press release: