The announcement of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 obviously caused a few ripples. The notion that a founder member of the Symbian consortium and half owner of UIQ should need to call on an alternative smartphone OS seems something of an anathema. It was perhaps a serendipitous coincidence that my first day at WMC was largely occupied talking to Sony Ericsson and UIQ.

Ulf Wretling General Manager, Head of Developer Program and Communications for Sony Ericsson, described the choice of OS for the X1 very much as a point solution: the right tool for this particular job, given the device features and target market. The two significant points from our discussion were that the XPERIA brand was not tied to a particular OS and that UIQ remains a core, if not the core, of Sony Ericsson's mid to high end device strategy.

Ironically, from the short demo I had of the X1, the features Sony Ericsson is highlighting are of its own creation and not delivered by the underlying OS, with the exception of the drivers for a widescreen VGA display. This feature, a panels based touch interface, was also, in a different form, one of the key new features in the two UIQ phones Sony Ericsson launched, the G700 and G900. The idle screen on these devices now contains a set of panels in the lower portion of the screen that allow finger navigation of the key phone features, calendar, messages etc. In addition, the font size used in the UI has been increased so that most operations can be performed without a stylus. In fact the stylus delivered with the G700/900 is a short stubby affair and its use is now largely limited to specific “precession” activities, such as drawing in the new “postit note” style application. (Some images to follow, so please check back.)

These two new devices takes Sony Ericsson a step further away from the somewhat erudite early implementations of UIQ. Sony Ericsson no longer calls these device smartphones, but simply phones (the press release actually made no mention of UIQ.) Ulf pointed out that Sony Ericsson see UIQ as a mainstream OS for mainstream devices, albeit very powerful and feature rich ones.

An example of how sophisticated, yet simple to use Sony Ericsson is making these phones, on the G900 the camera application allows the user to select the focus point in the picture simply by pointing at the place in the preview image they want the focus to be on.

On thing is clear, Sony Ericsson sees its self as a company that thinks outside the box, however sometimes you do wonder if they are perhaps thinking too far outside the box. Just check out the latest Bluetooth speaker offering below!

UIQ certainly seemed largely unphased by the launch of the X1. In the case of Mats Barvesten, EVP Product Planning and Product Management at UIQ, this was because he had been on the product planning team at Sony Ericsson and was fully aware of the device. Talking to Mats the next phase of development in UIQ is all about user experience, aspects of which are embodied in the G700 and G900. Overall, no one from UIQ seemed overly concerned about the X1: they have their product road map and an anticipation of device roll outs from Sony Ericsson and Motorola, which is keeping them very busy.

Day 2 now dawns and another hectic schedule of meetings and stand visits. I hope to post a few more photos and videos from today (which won't be much of a challenge I hope considering how little I manged yesterday) so keep an eye on onsymbian..com World Mobile Congress 2008 photo album and my YouTube channel.