Today morning, thanks to Hal Goldstein, I was let in to the Mobius meeting. The Xperia X1 was also there – switched off. I’ve made some additional shots.

(as with my previous articles, click the images for a far larger version. The iPhone is that of a Mobius member. Sorry, everyone was in a hurry and couldn’t jot down his name – will definitely update this section when the other Windows Mobile sites publish this info.)

In Hall 8, on the official S-E booth, there has always been a big crowd looking at demos of Xperia X1:

When I checked this out, only the Sony-specific main Today-replacement launcher was demoed, nothing else – just like with the MobileFocus (held at the Aveninda Palace hotel) demos the previous evening. HOWEVER, in the Microsoft Q&A press conference held at 9 AM today at the Palace Hotel (MS’ main headquarters), I was sitting pretty close to a Japanese S-E guy that took out his Xperia from time to time to check his email (or, to just play with the device? It definitely wasn't the main Sony launcher screen). This may mean the firmware may be already in a better, not the always-crashing shape – for example, enabling users to run Messaging.

In addition, later in the afternoon, the Xperia was also showcased switched on with the traditional Windows Mobile Today screen (and not that of Sony):

Qualcomm chipset inside?!

Speaking of the Sony-Ericsson & Microsoft press conference, one of the questions addressed assisted GPS – that is, why the device doesn’t have a GPS chipset not necessarily requiring the help of an Assistance Server for quick locking. The Sony folks have stated they needed to reduce the physical size of the device; this is why they haven’t included a dedicated GPS chip(set) like that of SiRFstar III.

Consequently, it must be the core phone CPU / chipset that already has (assisted) GPS, which may mean it’s based on the well-known Qualcomm MSM7200/7500, as neither the TI OMAP nor the Intel (now, Marvell) Xscale architecture has GPS support built-in, not even in the latest versions (this is why, for example, the Nokia N95/N82, which are both based on the latest and excellent TI OMAP chipset, needed a separate SiRFstar II LP GPS chipset).

Then, however, other questions arise; most importantly, that of the 3D hardware acceleration. (And whether Sony will deliver, for gaming / emulation, usable graphic drivers or not.) Remember my yesterday’s post: in there, I’ve already mentioned the Sony-Ericsson guy demoing the X1 at MobileFocus refused to provide me a definite answer to whether the device will have 3D hardware acceleration or not. Yes, it’s in the specs as “HW 3D Graphics”, but the specs may be wrong, which clearly explains why the MobileFocus guy stated it’s not known whether the X1 will indeed have acceleration or not. I can only hope the HTC vs. Qualcomm fiasco won’t be repeated in Sony's case.