As is customary with new Sony Ericsson devices, several irritating bugs can be expected until updates start to be rolled out and the Xperia X10 is no exception. The bug I’m pertaining to at the moment is the dropping of the phones WiFi connection for seemingly no reason, even while in use, only for it to then reconnect and operate normally after 10-20 seconds or so.

Some of you may have experienced this strange loss of WiFi connectivity, other will not. It’s currently unclear whether this bug was introduced with the R1FA016 firmware update or if the R1FA014 version is also affected but I have managed to track down the apparent cause of the problem.

Since updating to R1FA016 I had been noticing frequent WiFi disconnections even while actively browsing. Being in an area of poor GSM coverage at home this was particularly irritating with little or no network connection to fall back on for continued browsing. Shortly though it became apparent that this poor coverage is not only a separate irritation but is in fact directly causing the problems with the WiFi on the X10!

As you can see in the video below the WiFi is happily connected until the phone loses network coverage. At this point you would usually expect your WiFi to carry on regardless but the X10 mysteriously decides to turn off it’s WiFi before reactivating it and reconnecting to the network automatically:

If this wasn’t bad enough however, the same thing happens when the phone reconnects to the GSM network:

As you can imagine, in an area where the signal comes and goes quite frequently, this makes the WiFi about as reliable a connection as a water soluble rope in a rain storm! My concern at this point is how long it will take Sony Ericsson to acknowledge this issue and issue a fix, especially as it will not be experienced by users who don’t suffer from dropped network coverage.

Mik

Play.com have listed both the X10 Mini and Mini Pro with pricing and release dates. The X10 Mini comes in at £229.99 with a release date of 07-06-2010 while the X10 Mini Pro is a little more at £249.99 but releasing a couple of weeks earlier on 24-05-2010. Both of these apply to totally SIM free, unlocked handsets so you should expect them to be free on plenty of tariffs once the networks release them.

Take a look at the play.com pages here | Xperia X10 Mini | Xperia X10 Mini Pro

The accuracy of these may remain to be seen but as a ball park figure it seems the price point is going to be very reasonable and I’d expect them to do well at this level.

Mik

The first firmware update, v1.0.16, is allegedly available for the Xperia X10. Users who have successfully updated have reported performance improvements but we’ve yet to come across as certified list of changes.

The new version to replace Baseband 1.0.14 is still seemingly hard to find though and is not found by my device over the air, via Sony Ericsson PC Companion or Sony Ericsson Update Service. It seems reasonable to suspect that the availability is dependant on devices being totally SIM free as opposed to network provided, even with no apparent branding.

Mik

]]> http://blog.se-nse.net/xperia-x10-firmware-update-1-0-16/feed/ 24 http://blog.se-nse.net/x10-keyboard-woes/ http://blog.se-nse.net/x10-keyboard-woes/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:56:01 +0000 MikLSP http://blog.se-nse.net/?p=8161

Let’s get this straight, the Xperia X10 keyboard is AWFUL!!

Text input on this device is thoroughly obtuse! The keyboard itself looks nice and has some well thought out features like directional arrows and a smilies button but it simply doesn’t work! At first it was nothing more than disastrous with incorrect letters registering all over the place but it seemed to improve making me think/hope the device was learning my input habits. However it seems to have settled now on being inaccurate and with a nasty habit of ignoring a considerable percentage of your inputs. I literally have not been able to type a single sentence of respectable length without having to go back and retype things due to missing or incorrect letters.

My previous experience with Android was that even with deliberate errors the auto-correction was so good that things were put right but the SE keyboard does nothing of the sort and merely offers suggestions which you must manually choose and gets these totally wrong if your input error occurs on the first letter.

This really needs attention as it is simply intolerable for such a key component to provide constant irritation! Admittedly you can switch to the standard Android keyboard which performs a little better but there are still missed key presses which is leading me to think it may be down to the screen?! We can only hope otherwise and that updates will improve things before this torpedo hits the ship!

Mik

The Xperia X10 is getting closer by the day and you could have one in less than a week. After what seems like an eternity of watching the device lose popularity and appeal while gaining tough competition I have no doubt that the sales of this device won’t reach the heights they might have done with a smoother and more timely release but at least it’s getting carrier support. After T-Mobile started to take orders last week, Vodafone are now also preparing to ship the device and have even given a delivery date of the 6th of April, a mere 6 days from now.

Voda haven’t been quite as generous with their price plans as T-Mobile though (who will sell you an X10 for as little as £10/month), offering a choice of only £35 or £40 tariffs but with the phone free on either.  However, at least they have set a date unlike T-Mobile who are still showing the same “up to 10 days” they did 9 days ago!

Orange and o2 meanwhile are yet to list any specifics on the X10. We do know that Orange will be the only network to have the white variant but at the time of writing the Orange website simply lists “out of stock”

Mik

It seems that the Xperia X10 will be heading to O2-UK after they posted a pretty big give away on their site. There’s no clue as to when it should arrive just yet but the fact that their “Smart phones” page is now showing the X10 at front centre in their apparent lineup suggests that it can’t be far away.

Mik

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 – arguably the most hotly anticipated Android handset now that Google’s own Nexus One has landed – is now officially up with an April release date on the Vodafone UK site.

We’ve naturally become pretty intimate with the device over the last few months – it was expected at the end of last year – but the our excitement at the prospect of a Snapdragon-powered, 8-megapixel snapping beast like the XPERIA X10 has not diminished at all.

Smartphone specs like GPS, Wi-Fi and Exchange support are all present and correct, and the 4-inch capacitive touch display is the perfect home for Sony Ericsson’s heavily customised UX interface. We’re still eager to see if there are any elements of Android still peeking out of Time and Mediascape, but the tiles and threaded nature for contacts and messages are very much appealing.

Roll on April!