Xperia gets more panels

Faces have been blurred to protect the innocent
(Credit: CNET Asia)

Sony Ericsson has announced new panels for its Xperia X1 Windows Mobile phone, and this time, they are from Facebook and Windows Live.

In a nutshell, the panel interface in the X1 allows the user to choose from a number of Home screens to replace the original. It's a feature Sony Ericsson has used quite a bit to market its X1 as being different from other Windows Mobile smartphones. Currently, most of the panels are provided by Sony Ericsson with only a handful of third-party ones.

We downloaded the panels for a test run and found the Windows Live offering quite unimpressive. All it does is show a search bar and some shortcuts to services like MSN messenger and your email. The press release does mention that the search function can be activated by voice, a feature which some may find useful.

The Facebook app, on the other hand, looks very well-thought-out. After logging in using your Facebook credentials, your profile picture appears in the middle of the screen and all your friends who have recently updated their status surround you. Those which are unread have a green border while the rest have a white border. Tapping on any of the faces will cause the contact's current status to appear on the top of the screen.

Aside from that cool effect, you can see all your contacts in a list and call them directly if their phone numbers are listed in their profiles. There's even a camera icon you can tap on to take a photo and automatically upload it to Facebook.

Granted, we did find the Facebook panel a little slow when downloading updates, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it's very polished. We're quite sure Facebook addicts will love this panel. If Sony Ericsson can just get more companies to develop panels of this quality, it might just have a good thing going.

Both panels are available now and can be downloaded for free from Sony Ericsson's website.