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Anyone who likes touchscreen phones should be excited, because the two biggest names in the world of mobile phones have handsets to take touchscreens to a whole new level with the Nokia N97 and the Sony Ericsson X1 Xperia.

Squaring off in history - Sony Ericsson vs Nokia touchscreens of the past

Sony Ericsson are well known for having a history of touchscreen mobile phones, right back beyond the days of the P800. The P800, though, was their first mainstream, proper touchscreen mobile phone. And boy what a phone it was, leaving everything around it in the dust. Followed by the P900, the P910 (their best touchscreen phone before the X1 Xperia arrived), the P990 (a massive letdown) and the P1, their range of touchscreen mobile phones has dwindled somewhat over the years. Mind you, Nokia's never really got off the ground in the first place, with monstrous mobile phones like the 7700 and 7710. Their back-catalogue of touchscreen mobile phones is pretty grim, which is no doubt why the new 5800, their first mainstream touchscreen phone, is such a breath of fresh air.

But it's with two specific mobile phones that Sony Ericsson and Nokia are duking it out this time round: the Nokia N97, and the X1 Xperia.

Nokia N97 - Nokia's mightiest phone

With the Nokia 5800 on track to deliver touchscreen mobile phones to the mid-range market, that leaves a great big gap at the very top-end of the product range; well, there IS a touch-based mobile phone coming soon to fill that gap: the frankly awesome Nokia N97. This uses the same Symbian S60 Touch operating system and packages it inside the body of a proper, full-fat smartphone. So it has an even more huge, 3.5 inch screen, a kick out QWERTY keypad, and the camera now weighs in at a meaty 5 megapixels. The Nokia N97 is, as should be glaringly obvious, destined to be the new flagship Nseries mobile phone, and it's genuinely as hyper-powered as we'd heard from rumours, with HSDPA, sat-nav, digital compass, and built-in Flash, so that you have an internet experience like no other mobile phones! Put simply the Nokia N97 is unbelievable.

However... there IS a phone that could rain on its parade: fresh from Sony Ericsson, it's the glamorous X1 Xperia.

X1 Xperia - Xperience a world of cool stuff

Ok, so the Nokia N97 is one heck of a phone, and frankly, it does wonderful things to make Symbian S60 Touch into a mega-powerful player in the world of mobile phones. But it's up against a seriously heavyweight rival, in the form of Windows Mobile, with the sexiest WM phone ever, the X1 Xperia from Sony Ericsson, their latest flagship mobile phone. And what a phone it is! Packing in more power and connectivity options than most mobile phones can even dream of, the X1 Xperia is a true smartphone, designed to be anything you need it to be. Media is handled beautifully, thanks to an interface similar to the PS3, and although the camera is lower resolution than the Nokia N97, the X1 Xperia has nothing to be ashamed of. Sony Ericsson make frighteningly good cameras for their phones, so a 3MP SE camera isn't actually that far off from a 5MP Nokia one, in terms of quality. Basically, the X1 Xperia is quite simply one of the most powerful mobile phones ever released, sporting tons of connectivity options (including WiFi and HSDPA), GPS, full Office functionality, and as if al that wasn't enough, the Sony Ericsson X1 Xperia packages all that in a premium metal body, that is SO much nicer than the Nokia's shell. In the final analysis, although the Nokia N97 is slightly more powerful on paper, by far the more desirable of the two is the stunning, the exceptional, the downright insanely brilliant, Sony Ericsson X1 Xperia.

About the Author:

Expert on mobile phones, having worked in the industry for over 7 years.