Karl Kummerle

FROM ITS GLITTER-infused black casing to its luminous 2.7-inch LCD and rock-solidly stabilized 12x lens, the HF10 is a work of art. Its good for your thumbs too, with a user-friendly mode dial, ever-so-rockable zoom lever and duplicate controls by the side of the screen.

Recording to either 16GB of internal memory an SDHC card, it captures 1080p of tasty eye candy, with the most vibrant, natural colors on test and confident detail. With good manual controls and photo flash, only slightly grainy skin tones let the optical side down.

The HF10 may not be as small and light as the Panasonic, or as metallic and elegant as the Sony, but the Canon wows you with superb features and brilliant handling. oh, and the glitter helped. We’re suckers for all types of glitter.

LOVE Beautiful colors. Classy 12x zoom. Strong manual features. Roomy 16GB internal memory.

HATE Not cheap. A touch of grain here and there.

There is no doubt that the release of Sony Ericsson’s third Xperia handset is one of the year’s most awaited launches.

After the successes that the company has enjoyed because of the first two Xperia mobile phones and last year’s Satio, Sony Ericsson n promises “to deliver a consistent user experience where communication truly becomes entertainment.

The X10 is perhaps one of the sleekest and most pleasing-to-the-eye handsets we have seen but this is not only why its much- awaited. The X10 is the company’s first Android smartphone.

The Android, when referring to phones, is not a robot designed to fetch water or coffee or perform simple accounting (as I had foolishly thought until two months ago) but simply an operating system first developed by Android Inc but bought by Google and later by the Open Handset Alliance. Its updates are named after pastries and sweets. For instance, the 1.5 is called Cupcake the 1.6 Donut the 2.0 Eclair and the 2.1 Flan but it is still considered apart of Eclair.  Subsequent updates will be catted FroYo and Gingerbread.

Sony Ericsson gave selected members of the Asian media a touch and interact with the X10 in Singapore.

The launch dubbed “evolve.engage.excite” introduced a number of new generation phones, including the celebrated X10 and two mini versions and two handsets with high-definition video.

Hirokazu Ishizuka, corporate vice president head of Asia Pacific region, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, calls the X10 the company’s “flagship phone.”

The X10 is not a light and small handset It is not for people with small hands (i.e. many Mans) but its a sleek and very elegant looking phone that comes in the colors black and white. The device has a 4-inch display so it’s only understandable that it’s not the thinnest phone on the planet but its rounded edges give the illusion of extra-thinness.

The Xperia X10 is the second Android handset sporting a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels called FWVGA which is short for Full Wide VGA. This means that it’s got pure 16:9 aspect ratio. That FWVGA resolution is actually quite common among widescreen multimedia projectors.