The first announcements of the Barcelona-based Mobile World Congress have started and we begin the series with a quite surprising one: Sony Ericsson presented today seven new models, but the biggest hit amongst all of them is the new device named X1.

X comes from the word Xperia, thus demonstrating that from now the aim of developments at the manufacturer is the enhancement of user experience. Everything else remains in the background, although design has been also mentioned as an important field of development. X1 came absolutely unexpected, appeared from nowhere and it has no competitors within doors, nor any precedents. When asked if the phone will be the first of a series on the palette of Sony Ericsson models the representatives gave evasive answers.

The X1 is a handset with a 3" WVGA (800x480 pixels) touchscreen display that runs Windows Mobile 6.1. The device's user interface in closed state is an optical sensor, which follows the motion of our finger, thus controlling the cursor. When slided off we get a full QWERTY keypad, of which the manufacturer was very proud of as the keys are really large and there is enough space between them.

Regarding available features the phone is sure to support HSDPA, WLAN, aGPs and Bluettoth and the back of the device will be equipped with a 3.2 megapixel, autofocus camera. The memory is 400 MB large and it can be expanded with a microSD card. At first glance the software's user interface seems to be a WM 6.1 PPC version with a unique skin. The phone will be available in the market only in the second half of 2008.

Most of the participants of the press conference wanted to know why the phone didn't receive Symbian as an operating system but we did not hear any particular reasons. The organizers tried to stress that not the platform is important, but the user experience, still, many analyzers seemed to be disappointed by the lack of facts.