Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 New Panels Tested

If you’ve got an Xperia X1 in your pocket and are not quite sick of your ‘mini aquarium’ but are still looking for something new, then this bit of news may be of interest. Sony Ericsson are looking to release a set of new panels for the Xperia and we’ve been fortunate enough to have gotten our hands on them to test out.

The first new addition to the panel screen is a CNN panel that is designed to keep you up to date with news, sport, and weather reported by the news network.

The interface is relatively straightforward, though you do need to play around a bit to get your weather screen off the default Barcelona setting onto your local area. Unless you’re in Barcelona of course. Once you’ve mastered this though, you do have the option to save a number of different cities so you can not only see if it’s fine in Manchester, but also in Jakarta.

As you would expect from an American network, most news is US-centered. I did select world news in the hope of getting some info from 10 Downing Street, or to see if the Czech Prime Minister has been replaced yet (I live for this kind of info). “World” news however provided me with half the amount of US news than before and a few headlines from the UK.

Still, the news provided is broken up into workable sections including technology and entertainment categories and I found it was an easy way to check on what had been happening in the world first thing in the morning.

Another big name to get a panel of its own is Skype. This is a great idea to allow you to use your mobile phone to call absolutely anyone in the world without having to fork out huge amounts of money.

This panel makes it easy to see your friends that are online at any time as well. This panel was very easy to navigate and I think is a brilliant addition to existing Xperia panels.

To lighten the mood a bit, there is also a new Mytopia panel which allows you to connect to other users to play different games. I spent a bit of time playing poker with someone on the other side of the Atlantic while I was waiting for my latte at a wi-fi enabled coffee shop, and found the interface again easy to use.

There is even the option to improve your world ranking by collecting virtual coins, so you can gamble without the chance of wiping out your mortgage.

Finally there is an On the Road panel which is designed to make the phone more user-friendly for you to use when you’re on the go.

It has a basic layout and larger icons so you can see at a glance how to turn up your music or how to reject a call.

The On the Road panel also includes navigation tools and is basically a trackometer in your pocket as you can programme it to track all of the distances you’ve traveled. It uses Google Maps to pinpoint your route from A to B and will also keep a history of your ventures. If you’re on the M25 more than you’re  in the pub, it’s quite a nifty calculation of the total amount of time you’ve spent on Britain’s largest car park.

There is no official word on when these panels will be released to everyone, but rumour has it that they may be out as early as this month.