Nokia N900 or Sony Ericsson Xperia X10?

Christmas is just around the corner and will come and go soon enough, making way for a new year of broken resolutions and bad weather. But despite the bleak winter months ahead 2010 promises to be a good year for mobile phones with some truly jaw-dropping handsets set for release in the first few months alone. Two of the most hotly anticipated phones set for release in early 2010 are the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the Nokia N900.

The Nokia N900 will see a move away from Symbian by Nokia, and some have heralded it as the dawn of a new era as the Finnish company moves to a far superior and advanced OS: Maemo. Unfortunately Nokia has revealed that the N900 will be the only Maemo phone that they will release next year and that Symbian is very much still part of their business plan. While some have taken this as bad news, it actually makes the N900 all the more special.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 on the other hand, will make use of the highly popular and already well established Android and will be the first phone to combine this with the speed and power of a 1GHz Snapdragon. With Android 2.0 Eclair available it is a shame that Sony Ericsson has opted for the older 1.6 Donut edition. Despite this, Sony Ericsson has worked wonders with the X10 through the use of their own Nexus interface that takes the whole Android experience up a level. Combined into this interface are Sony Ericsson’s new Mediascape and Timescape features. Timescape combines information from a wide range of sources such as messages, emails and social networking sites to provide a more intuitive interaction with your phone contacts, rather than having these services disjointed and unorganised.

While there is a trend towards this sort of functionality among many phone manufacturers today, Mediascape will offer something new by attempting the same sort of thing with multimedia. Combining music and video from a range of sources such as PlayNow and YouTube, Mediascape should promise to revolutionise mobile phone entertainment.

As for Maemo; the Linux-based OS is raising eyebrows due to its groundbreaking web-oriented design. Phones making use of Maemo, which for the time being will unfortunately only be the N900, should completely change the way in which people access online content on their phones. With multi-tasking screens and a novel new browser the N900 is certainly one for the web surfers.

For anyone holding out for buying a new touchscreen phone in the New Year the choice is a tough one, but certainly falls between these two phones. While the N900 will offer exceptional web browsing the Xperia X10 will offer a better all round experience and that’s probably the deciding factor, for me at least.