Let’s compare HTC Desire with Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 – one of the most attractive smartphones in the market of Android-devices.
Technical Specifications
Processor
Desire: Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 (1 GHz).
Xperia X10: Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 (1 GHz).
Random access memory (RAM)
Desire: 576 MB.
Xperia X10: 384 MB.
Operating system
Desire: Android 2.1 (HTC Sense UI).
Xperia X10: Android 1.6 (UX UI from Sony Ericsson).
Display
Desire: AMOLED touch-screen with a diagonal of 3.7 inches and a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels (252 pixels per inch).
Xperia X10: touchscreen TFT display with a diagonal of 4 inches and a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels (245 pixels per inch).
Camera
Desire: 5 megapixel, autofocus, LED flash, face and smile detection, geo-tagging
Xperia X10: 8,1 megapixel, autofocus, LED flash, face and smile detection, geo-tagging, image and video stabilization
Battery
Desire: 1400 mAh
Xperia X10: 1500 mAh
Screen
HTC Desire
The screen of this device has some double effect. At first glance the screen of Desire seems flawless, the picture is just amazing. However, when viewing photos and videos all the shortcomings of AMOLED technology are revealed (16-bit color in some applications, insufficient maximum brightness, etc.)
Xperia X10
Just wonderful! These two words come to mind when you think about the screen of X10. Such a high index of density of pixels per inch can be found in no other display. The picture is always perfect- no matter what you view on the screen – web pages, photos or videos.
Appearance
Externally Xperia X10 looks fascinating, but if you take the device in your hands, the initial magical impression disappears. The developers took a great risk by placing a sufficiently serious hardware stuffing into a case of very dubious quality. The abundance of “cheap” plastic elements is unjustified in case of such a high price of the device.
The smartphone HTC Desire differs a little bit from other devices of the same manufacturer. The defining bend at the bottom of the case is still there, but in a less underlined, more sophisticated form. The optical joystick also seems far more preferable to its mechanical counterparts, but it is still more comfortable to control the smartphone with the touchscreen offered.
User Interface
HTC Desire
Though both are based on Android OS, Desire has the HTC Sense UI over it. It offers users seven fully customizable screens with the ability of quick switching between them. There are also standard widgets that can be updated separately without having to update the whole OS.
Xperia X10
We should not blame Sony Ericsson for the desire to equip the smartphone with its own user interface, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Even the fastest mobile processor with a frequency of 1 GHz does not always cope with the animation menu, and a huge 4-inch screen seems to be too small. We get the feeling that the user interface was designed specifically to spoil the first good impression of Xperia X10.
Performance
It would be wrong to assume that the processor with a frequency of 1 GHz won’t be able to cope with any task, typical of a smartphone. However, the difference in performance between the two smartphones proves the opposite. While Desire has come close to the image of “dream phone” by its performance, the same cannot be said about Xperia. At times, the smartphone from Sony Ericsson faces serious difficulties when working with many requested apps.
However, it is not surprising, taking into account the amount of time that the developers of the HTC had to spend on development of Sense UI. As for Sony Ericsson, despite the ambitions of the user interface it looks damp and needs a really serious remaking and optimization.
Social
HTC Desire
Sense brings all social networks the FriendStream inset, which has rather wide functional capabilities. However, FriendStream is still far from the absolute convenience of use. In particular, there are not sufficient capabilities to view the messages simultaneously from the social networks Facebook and Twitter, as well as opportunities to follow the links in messages from Twitter directly without the need to run the Peep client.
Xperia X10
Sony Ericsson brings social into one Timescape app/widget. In contrast to FriendStream, Timescape can show messages from multiple sources at the same time, though the screen displays only the first few words of each message. As for the references in communications, the developers of UX have not provided this opportunity. After clicking on the link you go to the user profile in mobile.twitter.com web site. It is also noteworthy that the minimum frequency of downloading the updated messages in Timescape is 5 minutes for Twitter and an hour for Facebook, which is not that convenient for lovers of active communication.
Battery
Despite the fact that X10 has a battery which capacity is 100 mAh greater than that in Desire, such a difference is of minor importance for daily use.
In case of active use of both devices (enabled 3G connection, as well as Gmail and Twidroid working in the background) within a day both the batteries were discharged at 60%. Such levels can in no way be compared with products from Nokia or BlackBerry.
Multitouch
The smartphone Desire fully supports multitouch for zooming in the browser and when working with Google Maps service.
Unfortunately, X10 can not boast of such support. It is expected to appear after upgrading the OS of the device to Android 2.1 or 2.2, however it is still unknown when this will happen.
Multimedia
In this regard, both devices are almost on the same level. In standby mode, they do not support the popular DivX and FLAC formats, which will certainly disappoint the users who love watching movies and listening to high quality music. Though HTC has published plans to support the DivX format, which will be implemented in future firmware updates.
Access to media files in X10 is not distinguished with convenience, and the abundance of animations in transitions spoils the impression even more.
The convenience of working with multimedia library in Desire is comparable to iPhone / iPod. The navigation through menu items and access to folders is implemented smoothly and quickly. It is also worth mentioning playlists feature.
Conclusion
No doubt, the smartphone X10 has definite potential, and with the right approach from Sony Ericsson (making major improvements of user interface and expanding the list of supported file formats), this device will be able to compete with the certified leader in the market of smartphones.
As you have probably realized, in comparison with the competitor Desire definitely looks more preferable. Despite the imperfection of AMOLED screen, the new device from HTC deserves the title of the best smartphone of today running Android OS.
