The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is a phone of firsts, symbolising Sony Ericsson's swandive headfirst into uncharted Android waters for the Japanese-Swedish manufacturer.

A new operating system, a new platform, a new start for the troubled phone maker? We think so.

The X10 took its time coming to market, and as soon as you turn it on, it's obvious to see why. More than the HTC Desire, more than the Samsung Galaxy Portal, more than even Google's own Nexus One, Sony Ericsson has endeavoured to put their own stamp on the Android experience, offering something altogether more futuristic with UX.

Hardware

The lion's share of development time was clearly spent on that interface, as the X10 is good - but not great - to look at. The front is the typical smartphone monolithic display, with a more sparse layout than most Android phones, featuring a mere three buttons.

No trackball, no optical trackpad, nothing more than a menu key, a 'home' button, and a back button. This at least gives the X10 a novel front profile, the glossy black finish and chrome plastic accents offsetting the curved matte rear.

An 8.1-megapixel camera complete with LED flash is nestled in the back of the device, and the rest of the phone is devoid of buttons save for a volume rocker on the right and a power button on the top.

A 3.5mm audio jack and USB port round out the handset, the X10 creating a rival for the iPhone in terms of understated charm, if not build quality.

The 4-inch display is nothing short of epic, and the dimensions (119 x 63 x 13 mm) of this 135g device are entirely justified when looking at the X10 switched on.

Software

MediaScape and TimeScape are the core of this new UX platform, Android overlays that breathe new life into the platform and certainly offers a mobile phone experience like no other. Firing up the X10 is a dream for those that love things that look fancy, perfect for those that turn the graphics settings way up on their PC and enjoy all of the flourishes that make  gadgets look slick.

TimeScape handles contacts, merging on- and offline content, alerts, messages, pictures and updates into a single location on the X10, whilst MediaScape manages movies and music.

Presented as a spline of tiles down the centre of the screen, TimeScape acts as a digital Rolodex that can be flicked through, with contact images uploaded directly from Facebook, Twitter et al upon the handset's initial setup.

The downside of the X10's massive screen and social network pilfering is those that plumped for low-resolution profile images end up as blurry blobs (a larger issue with Twitter icons), but the majority look great and instantly bring a sense of personality to the device. The size of the display makes this interface easy to navigate, text remaining legible and the majority of images looking nothing short of gorgeous.

A vertical swipe cycles through the latest events in chronological order, with left and right sweeps filter in contacts, messages, e-mails, tweets and the like.

Pressing on a tile shows a message in its entireity, whilst the 'Infinity' button groups all correspondence with that individual person. Upon pressing this, the threaded layout evokes the iPhone's two-way speech bubbles, with the messaging back and forth much easier to keep track of.

Digging deeper into the Infinity options enables you to view all alerts, updates, even Facebook pictures that individual has been tagged in. It admittedly takes a bit of getting used to, and may be a little complex for the uninitiated, and perhaps a bit of online overkill for those not already Tweetblogging and FourSquaring their days away.

Whilst other social networking aggregators paddle at the side, the XPERIA X10 does enable you to tirelessly trawl through every single piece of information about all your synched-up contacts - the only question is whether you would really want to.

MediaScape is a far better advert for Sony's UX platform, however, taking content on your device and linking it to the web by automatically adding album art, presenting search results and even related YouTube videos.

Grouped by music, video and photos, the top half of the screen is dedicated to media on the X10 itself whilst the bottom half is home to search results, and even access to purchasing new content through Sony's PlayNow Arena.

MediaScape is far more suited to the Infinity button, discovering reams of new information about your favourite band or current movie at the press of a button is incredibly useful, albeit very heavy on the data usage.

Memory is a lean 1GB onboard, but support for the microSD card enables plenty of space for music and photos.

The greatest thing about Sony's new interface is also its biggest problem: it looks to have been designed as a technical demo rather than for ease of use. Images and icons beautifully flood the high resolution screen, images flow in and out in spirals and all the while your information is constantly updating, but the X10 just can't seem to hack it.

Despite boasting a super-fast SnapDragon procssor, the X10 often slows down to a crawl when attempting to pull data from its myriad of sources, with tiles stuttering and the  capacitive display becoming unresponsive as the phone creaks and buckles under the weight of Sony's extensive Android facelift.

Perhaps there is a reason that no other phone maker has gone this far in trying to mould Android into something special...

Another issue is that the X10 now sports a version of Google's Android that is already looking a little ancient alongside the smartphone elite. Whilst the latest HTC handsets are arriving upgraded to the latest 2.1 or 'Eclair' build of the mobile OS, the X10 is languishing on 1.6 (Donut).

Many of the latest updates and accoutrements that new versions of Android have brought are absent on the X10, and the job that Sony now has maintaining the compatibility of their own UX interface with Android revamps could result in similar delays with future devices.

The upside is that Android is very customisable, with the TimeScape and MediaScape interfaces can be dialled down to speed up proceedings. The downside is that they are probably the most alluring aspect of the X10 experience, and having to turn them off leaves you with a slightly bulky Android device with a very pretty font.

Nevertheless, the full suite of Android functionality can be brought to bear when using the X10. E-mails, accessing contacts and text messaging are all a cinch to use, but none has escaped the hand of Sony Ericsson in the customisation stakes, with the entire phone resulting in a generally sluggish feel if everything is turned up to 11.

Verdict

All in all, the X10 continues the XPERIA lineage - offering a flagship experience that is genuinely cutting edge as far as what can be done with smartphone tech is concerned. Unfortunately, it demonstrates what can be done with an old version of Android, and absences of basic touchscreen functionality like 'pinch to zoom' are a bitter pill to swallow on a phone that is ahead of the curve in so many other respects.

The lack of optimisation and occasional slowdown means that the X10 is a great handset to show off with on occasion, but is a little too tough to get to grips with on a regular basis. The XPERIA X10 is a strong handset from Sony Ericsson, and proves that they are committed to offering a higher quality user experience, on Android as well as other platforms.

A promising sign of things to come, despite being a sometimes frustrating XPERIA-nce.