By Kenji Hall
Thursday, August 21 2008 12:12 PM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,62045156,00.htm

news analysis The release of Sony Ericsson's Xperia mobile phone is still a couple of months away but there is a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about it.

The X1 was first unveiled at a mobile telco conference in Barcelona in February. It relies on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional software and is a personal digital assistant in the Blackberry mold, with a physical keyboard that slides out from under a touch screen. (Some sites are taking pre-orders.)

Is this Sony and Ericsson's long-awaited answer to Apple's iPhone and HTC's Diamond? There is a lot to like about this phone. It is slightly bulkier and a tad heavier than the iPhone 3G but it comes with a better camera and, like the iPhone, it has motion-sensing and aGPS, which is faster and does not use as much of the battery than plain vanilla GPS.

Whether Sony Ericsson can tweak the menus so they are as intuitive as the iPhone's is another matter.

But even before the Xperia X1 launch, there is already much ado in the online rumor mill about another Sony Ericsson gizmo.

It is not clear if this so-called Xperia X5 is an elaborate Photoshop fake or a leak from inside Sony Ericsson. As clever as the cellphone maker's marketers may be, I find it hard to believe that they would intentionally distract the digerati with talk of a futuristic Xperia before the X1 is on the market. My verdict: Do not believe the hype.

This article was first published as a blog on BusinessWeek.com.