Since the Xperia X10 was released, there has been much speculation and banter over the handsets screen quality. The 4-inch display has seemed ‘washed-out’ in certain pictures, which prompted a number of questions on the official Sony Blog as well as the SE Developer Forums.
Sony Ericsson didn’t help themselves in the matter by releasing conflicting information on various press releases/websites. In terms of where we stand right now, when the Xperia X10 is released, it will support 65,536 colours according to marketing manager, Sumit Malhotra.
This does not mean that the hardware supports 65k colours, this is a limitation imposed by Android v1.6 (Donut), which supports 16-bit only. The hardware itself supports 16m colours, bringing it into line with other premium handsets.
It’s not entirely clear, whether full colour support will be seen in Android v2.0 (Éclair), but as the Droid supports 16m colours than I assume it would. So the question becomes will we see Android 2.0 on the Xperia X10? According to the Developer Forum we will: “The UX platform used for Xperia X10 will evolve to Android 2.0 over time.” Let’s just hope the Éclair update hits the phone not too long after release!