It has been rumored that the Sony has abandoned its scheduled February 10th release date of the Ericsson Xperia X10 and will begin shipping preorders out to the UK on January 18th. Either way, this is a phone that I am excited to see, and it ranks #1 on my “to buy” list for this year. I might as well start saving now, because this little baby will be retailing for £529.99…which is about $860! Of course, that is the price you pay for overseas unlocked phones. If you are (like me) willing to splurge on such a device, here are some of the physical specs you can expect:

- 4.7 x 2.5 x 0.5 inches
- 4.8 oz
- 480 x 854 pixels WVGA screen
- 65,536-color TFT touchscreen
- 1GB internal memory
- SanDisk microSD™ up to 16GB, 8GB included
- GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
- UMTS/HSPA 800/850/900/1700/1900/2100

As for some of the bells and whistles, the X10 will be, of course, running the Android OS. The 4 inch touch screen display is larger than the Motorola Droid, and the phone features an 8.1 megapixel camera that has a 16x digital zoom, as well as auto focus, image stabilization, smile detection, and touch focus. The phone’s processor will be the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon, which is faster than the iPhone’s 600MHz processor.

Sony Ericsson, like other companies, is taking its own spin on the Android OS, and it has integrated something called Timescape into the mix. Timescape organizes all your contacts and groups together all your interactions with that contact. This is all accessible via an “infinity” button. Mediascape is a similar addition that allows you intuitively to organize all the media stored on your phone.

There is no word yet when the X10 will officially hit the States, but that won’t be stopping some people (me) from jumping the gun and buying overpriced, unlocked devices. Again…start saving now.

Ericsson Xperia X10