Xperia X10 Blog

Sony US misleading customers about multitouch on Xperia X10?

Multitouch on Xperia X10The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 launched in the United States last week at a very reasonable $129.99 with a two-year contract. However, one of the phone’s biggest talking points – the lack of multitouch – has come back in the frame after the Sony Style website claims that the Xperia X10 comes with a multitouch display.

The website says that the handset sports “an expansive, 4″ multi-touch screen, the X10 showcases your movies and photos in awe-inspiring fashion.” Now we don’t expect this to be anything other than a typo, especially as Sony Ericsson officials have laid this issue to rest a number of times in the past.

However, it’s inexcusable that Sony hasn’t corrected the typo. We’ve been checking the site over the last week to see if this would be corrected (a simple thing to do) but it’s still there today. For potential customers, multitouch may be a big deal and advertising as such is misleading. We sent the company an email earlier this week for clarification but have had no response back. Let’s hope Sony sorts this out quickly once and for all.

Update: Sony has now updated the page and removed the ‘multi-touch’ reference.

Multitouch on Xperia X10

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46 responses to “Sony US misleading customers about multitouch on Xperia X10?”

  1. Thank You for writing this article. A few hours ago, I realised the misleading statement and posted it on the SonyEricsson blog. Still had no reply from anyone. This happened in the UK too and it was one of the reasons I bought the X10. And now the US customers are being misleaded. Pathetic!

  2. the said also ” Every pixel is crisp, with saturated colors and details that come alive in the palm of your hand”. maybe we have 16M colors on the new update.

  3. The X10 HAS MULTI-TOUCH!!! The reason limited at the current moment is the Android 1.6! With the 2.x Update, X10 will be able to express 16M colors + Multi-Touch

  6. @Yiannos I do hope its true n will be soon. Would be great 2 experience those features 🙂

  7. theres a possibility that multitouch could be a surprise present for present for everyone. Although sony ericsson have denied that the device is not multi-touch capable, there are links to the screen having an ongoing battle with the apples patent. having researched this topic thoroughly, my conclusion is that we will see multi-touch on the X10, however, that may include someone swapping there screen for a samsung galaxy s screen to make a hybrid XGalaxy10.

  8. Lets push apps and items that are worth SE investing in on the X10….

    Location Free, Remote Play, DLNA, 16M colors, 720 recording, 2.1 / 2.2 etc…, Netflix, Movie Artwork, Flash, 8.1MP in 16:9 aspect ratio, Play Now for North America. Pushing the – / + buttons on pages isn’t that hard and there are apps / programs that allow one finger touch to zoom in and out.

  10. From what I’ve seen on other forums we’re only days away from alpha versions of 2.1/2.2 custom ROMS being tested by developers (hackers for want of a better word). If the project goes well we will have Eclair on our X10, X10 mini even before SE release their official update.

    The interesting thing about the x10 is that it uses a “multi-point” touch screen, meaning (in theory at least) it can register up to 20 different points of sensitivity. Of course whether SE develop this functionality is another thing altoghether.

  14. I think i read somewhere that it was only the mini that has a multi touch capable screen. Strange as the mini does not need it but on the x10 it could improve the user experience.

  15. Took a look at sony’s website, and the “typo” :lloll: seems to be solved 🙂

    Kinda sucks that SE is clearly trying to fool costumers into buying the x10 by lying about it’s capabilities.

  17. hxxp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=726813&page=21

    Any developers willing to help out are welcome, but please don’t bother them with newb questions.

  18. JO

    i cant find it!!
    where did you get this:

    The interesting thing about the x10 is that it uses a “multi-point” touch screen, meaning (in theory at least) it can register up to 20 different points of sensitivity. Of course whether SE develop this functionality is another thing altoghether.

  19. I really hope this phone gets multi touch. I first I didn’t really care, pinch to zoom isn’t that big of a deal for me. Then when I tried to play games on this phone, it’s hopeless without multi touch. I know Android games are lacking, but we can barely us any of the amazing NES, SNES etc, emulators on the Android market. Any future games that use multi touch that are coming our way are useless to us. And I won’t buy the rumored psp2 or xperia psp. I’ll stick with my “little boy” ipod touch for some multi touch gaming. I love this phone, but for Sony to be so short sighted in terms of gaming is almost unimaginable.

  20. I don’t think it’s impossible for the Xperia to get multi-touch. I think Sony needs to buy the patent for a large price and knowing their arrogance they think they can do without. If the dev hackers can make it possible for us to get the original Android on the X10, it might work…

    If not, this will be my last SE phone. Didn’t miss the multi-touch at first, but after hearing about the emulators (which require multi-touch) I kind of got pissed off.

  21. Oh, if you read further than the screen part on that site, you can see them talk about HD recording. I don’t know about the X10 in the US, is it released yet? If now this might be a hint of it coming with android 2.1 or maybe it’s another misleading piece.

    They also talk about about 50,000 games in the android market…without multi-touch the more advanced games won’t be playable…

  22. Yeah.. the other thing they don’t mention is that all the un-solicited “pre-installed” apps, some of them which carries a cost for purchase the app, CAN’T be removed from the phone, so not only they pose a threat, for anybody looking at the phone and clicking these apps, they do eat phone’s file system space and clutter the applications tab.
    …Of course not to mention the fact that AT&T removed the Sony Ericsson Sync app and while you can sync almost any phone with Google using SyncML, it’s limited the majority of the cases to the Contacts only.

    grgrg@@#$#@.. to AT&T

  23. the usa stuff also seemed to talk about 32gb sd cards, while the european one doesnt…

    did the sony marketing people even look at the phone specs or just guess like we did before the reality came out?

  24. xperia x10 has multitouch,
    using an emulator with vibrate on i was able to get multiple vibrates on the screen, the inputs were not recognised by the emulator but it vibrated.
    i guess there is hope.
    otherwise the xperia is an almost complete phone, as long as we get flash il be happy really.

  25. please refer to some of the blog here earlier… SE confirmed no MT on X10…. but now said got MT… are they trying to bluff the consumer or wat? Again… very disappointed with SE.

  27. They never announced to enable, but they CAN enable MultiTouch via updates, but that’s the case for the model in Japan.
    It seems like the hardware in Japan and in the states are different.

  28. OMG!! x10 cant support multitouch 🙁
    “We can confirm that the hardware of this handset does not support Multi-Touch. Therefore this will not be implimented with updates.”

  29. @david did u get that off thier facebook site? that was me argueing with them lol

    Mez 梅茨 Yes i saw this too, they are misleading customers again, or maybe they have somehow enabled it. Lets hope they have enabled it or i smell law a big suit. Mess with us in the UK you won’t get away with it in USA trust me
    Sunday at 09:12 · Like ·
    Mez 梅茨 looks like theyve removed it, shocking how they try to decieve people no wonder they cant compete companys a shambles in the last few years, sort it out
    Sunday at 14:44 · Like ·
    Sony Ericsson UK Hi Datu and Mez,

    Thank you for your post and comments.

    We can confirm that this was an accidental error on the USA Sony Style website which has now been corrected.

    The Sony Ericsson Xperia range of handsets do not have the correct hardware for multi-touch. Therefore it would not be possible for this feature to be implimented.

    Regards,
    The Sony Ericsson Facebook Team.
    2 minutes ago · Like ·

  30. no, i get it from twitter hahahaha
    so, what is the solution for this phone? this phone cant support multitouch, zzzz

  31. the solution is to dump this phone in the nearest trash as soon as a new cooler android phone get out, i’m tired and fully disappointed with it and SE.

  33. We have the best phone of the world, but SE is very ******* so the phone hasn’t a multi-touch ( i just want it for games… ) and the Android version is 1.6 and 2.2 has JIT etc, so SE is very very *******

    ANDROID = LINUX = OPEN SOURCE ! Take it f*cking SE !

  35. The number of people unhappy with their X10, which is made up predominantly of a single group of enthusiast geeks and gamers, represents about 0.1% of all users. I really can’t see Sony jeopardizing PSP sales to please such a small portion of the market.
    The last time I checked there were around 12,000 signatures in the online petition to get 2.2 onto the xperia 10. Hardly a consumer backlash in my opinion.

  37. once again ill say stop moaning about ppl who have opinons on what can be improved and go enjoy the phone waste your time trying to make other people have your opinions

  38. @Jo

    where do you get those figures? I would like to double check those numbers, there are few things that you’re not taking into consideration, not all Xperia X10 users know about that petition; if you’re basing it on a specific market lets say US and Canada thats fine, but you need to check how many X10s had been sold in both US and Canada and make sure all of the are aware of such petition, then you can argue that certain percentage of the market, which i doubt is .1% as you said above, are interested on multi-touch and/or 2.2 etc etc. Now if you take another thing into consideration, there are people who understand and/or have a reason for multitouch, froyo etc it could be for games, certain apps, performance, etc etc. and there are some others which sadly is a big part of the market they just want the most recent and advanced OS, digitizer, w/o a valid reason, they just want it because is the latest on this or that.

    I agree with you on this one, whether the X10 is good or bad, the PSP market wont be affected by it; and maybe just maybe Sony will learn from SE mistakes and deliver an amazing product.

    The X10 is a great phone, it lacks some features (multitouch, faster update, faster and more reliable customer service) but it has some advantages on other phones, such an amazing camera sensor (is still slow and buggy but the hardware is there).

  39. i just got my x10 today. It’s still Android 1.6.. May I know how to upgrade to Android 2.1 or 2.2?

  40. @sillycat

    Android 2.1 Sometime during Q3 it will “start rolling out on selected markets” and from there will get to the rest of us (here in the US probably early Q4)

    http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2010/05/05/sony-ericsson-xperia%E2%84%A2-x10-to-get-uxp-upgrade-in-q4-2010/

    then they posted this:

    http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2010/06/16/x8-announcement-and-xperia-updates/

    “update to Android 2.1 from the latter part of Q3 and onwards (timing will vary from market to market, some will be in Q4. Please follow this blog for further information with regards to exact timing of the upgrades).We are of course very glad to offer this upgrade earlier than originally planned. Xperia™ X10’s position will also be further strengthened through the addition of HD video recording as part of the same Q3 upgrade. A further upgrade to the Xperia™ X10 in Q4 will make it possible to connect and display wirelessly content on your television and enhance the Timescape™ and Mediascape applications.”

  42. Any one know of a web browser for the X10 that can display JAVA/Flash content like videos etc…..?

  45. Dave, no, but thanks for the spam.

    For me, it’s not just about MT but touch accuracy. For those of you who have used/owned a Galaxy S or iPhone, then you appreciate how accurate their touch sensors are. I hope that the X10’s lackluster touch responsiveness is partially software related, and that 2.1 includes better response. I’d take extremely accurate single touch over poor multi-touch (Nexus One, HTC Desire, neither of which has a true MT panel, just two-finger gestures).

  46. There won’t be multi-touch, as the it is not a SOFTWARE issue. It’s simply a HARDWARE issue. So unless we have to pay for a new version of the X10, with a multi-tap screen, we won’t get multi-touch. Sorry people… 🙁