Forgot about the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1? I nearly did as the smartphone was announced way back in February of this year. Of course there are rumors that the phone will be released in September (which seems like an awfully long time from now doesn’t it? Of course waiting for the second half of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica seems like an ETERNITY but I digress..) but that didn’t stop the Boy Genius from getting a hands-on look at an early unit. The first portion of the hands-on review was quite promising - the specs are great, the look is great, the software, although initially slow, seemed good enough.

Then came the doozy.. and I’ll just quote the Boy Genius himself:

One major flaw, though… Do you really want to know? The keyboard! Listen guys, if you’re going to throw on a QWERTY, at least make sure it’s worth having, ok? Not to say that this keyboardis absolutely terrible, but it’s one of the worst.

Oh boy.. let’s hope Sony fixes this one. Come on.. with so many good keyboard implementations out there, there’s absolutely no excuse for ANYONE to come up with a poor keyboard design. Quite honestly, the only reason to get a slider-based smartphone is because one wants a QWERTY keyboard. If the keyboard is going to suck.. then the XPERIA X1, no matter how cool or feature-rich it may be, will inevitably suck as well.

[Check it out via CrunchGear]

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