Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is likely NTT DoCoMo's best selling smartphone -- ever

Japan's wireless networks have a longstanding, legendary reputation for existing in some parallel plane that's technologically light years ahead of the rest of the world, but that reputation's unquestionably in greater danger today than in any point in the past fifteen years. Why? Though the featurephones offered by NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank, and KDDI are ultra high-spec beasts, they're still featurephones at the end of the day -- and this comes at a time when smartphones are finally becoming true cultural phenomena across the remainder of the developed world (and, in some cases, the developing world).

There's no greater evidence of this than the word this week that Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 -- a phone that's been met with lukewarm reviews, including from Engadget Japanese's own Ittousai -- has allegedly become NTT DoCoMo's best-selling smartphone in history, a fact that would seem completely inexplicable in any other market globally. What makes it possible in Japan, of course, is DoCoMo's historically lame selection of true smartphones, a lineup that currently includes localized versions of the HTC Magic, and the original HTC Touch Diamond and BlackBerry Bold. What's more, many of these devices integrate poorly with popular carrier services on account of their super-tight control of the operating systems running across the featurephone lineup, something they've got less control over with a device running Android or Windows Mobile.

In other words, when it's reported that DoCoMo had sold 100,000 X10s in its first 20 days -- and a third-party retailer claims that the Magic-esque HT-03A is the next best seller at 80,000 units in 10 months -- it seems plausible, if not likely (and Ittousai agrees). Yeah, even though the localized device has been plagued with performance problems and bugs, incompatibilities with DoCoMo's i-mode push email, and so on. It's hard to say what it's going to take for these guys to make an honest-to-goodness transition to the brave new world of open platforms and freewheeling third-party development, but they're clearly not there yet.

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Xperia X10 Mini coming to Vodafone soon?

Weight: 88 grams. Talk time: 4 hours. Pictures and video: right here. We told you everything there was to know about Sony Ericsson's diminutive Xperia X10 mini during Mobile World Congress, but we didn't know when and where it might arrive. According to the image at right, the answers are "soon" and "Vodafone," respectively; Cool Smartphone tells us the pic was plucked from Vodafone's May catalog. Assuming it's the real deal, expect Robyn to land on European branches this summer for an undisclosed price, and appear in teenybopper music videos next fall.

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Sony Ericsson answers your nagging X10 questions, 'newer version' of Android will come

While we all continue to twiddle our thumbs in anticipation of the X10's general availability, Dutch site Tweakers took some time out with Sony Ericsson's Jacob Sten Harold de Kort to get a few pressing questions from the community answered. It's quite a test -- de Kort fielded over 80 questions in all -- and there were a few big takeaways that should be of interest to anyone who's got even glancing interest in putting this thing in their pocket in the next few months. First off, it's still scheduled to launch with Android 1.6 Donut, but his words along with a post over on SE's official Product Blog give us hope that we'll be seeing 2.0, 2.1, or something even fresher down the road (to quote the post's headline, the phone "will be upgradeable"). 1.6 doesn't support multitouch in the framework, and indeed, de Kort confirms that the X10 will be a unitouch device, though it's not clear whether that could change with a newer firmware or if there's a hardware issue involved. As for pricing, we can expect this to launch for €599 (about $817) -- in Holland, anyhow, where it's on track to hit shelves before the end of the quarter. The subsidized pricing should hopefully be a tad less heart-stopping.

[Thanks, Len B. and Moody]

Update: The questions were actually fielded by Harold de Kort, marketing manager for Sony Ericsson in the Netherlands, not Jacob Sten. Thanks, domipost!

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Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 gets its Vodafone spotlight at long last

There'd been some drama not long ago on news that Vodafone was scrubbing its exclusive launch of Sony Ericsson's troubled Xperia X2, but it turns out they still wanted a crack at the thing after all -- just not in the UK, apparently, where it had originally been listed as "coming soon." Instead, it's Voda's Spanish outpost that's taking a crack at the phone, which features WinMo 6.5 (you might recall that this thing was announced way back around the time of 6.5's release) alongside a WVGA AMOLED display, 8.1 megapixel camera, and full QWERTY keyboard -- not bad on paper. Of course, at the €700 ($957) they're charging sans contract, you're probably going to want to sign your name on the dotted line if you plan on picking it up.

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