Hands on: Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

Just about the most hyped handset to come out of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, the mysterious Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 has been lusted after by geeks ever since its initial showing. So we couldn't resist the urge to get hands-on with it at CTIA last week. Our thoughts? The phone is slick, shiny and feels awfully solid--not surprising given that it's manufactured by HTC. The hiptop-style slideout keypad is a pleasure to use and has a nice gliding motion to it. On the OS tip, it runs Windows Mobile 6.1 but manages to cover up WinMo with a number of user-selectable custom skins--there's one for Google users and one for world travelers, for example. Overall, the UI is fairly slick and looks good on the 800x400 resolution touchscreen, but during our hands-on was fairly laggy. That's somewhat understandable, however, when you consider that Sony has yet to announce a release date for this bad boy, outside of "late 2008." All-in-all, the Xperia looks like it could be a solid contender for Windows Mobile users with a case of hiptop envy.

For more on the Xperia X1:
- see this photo slideshow