Sony Ericsson booth tour CTIA Las Vegas 2008

Sony Ericsson, not one to break the cone of handset-silence at CTIA Las Vegas 2008, didn’t have anything new to show today. They won’t have anything new to show tomorrow, or the next day. The booth was small, but they did have a live music show. An electronic music DJ and violinist make for an interesting duet, in a good way.

Unfortunately, the music show and the Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) XPERIA X1 were the biggest highlights of the booth. Sony Ericsson’s Cybershot cameraphones and cool Bluetooth watches made a showing, but the XPERIA X1 was the center of attention. And, this time, Sony Ericsson actually let me touch the Windows Mobile 6.1 superphone(!).

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is an incredibly solid and slick handset. The slider mechanism is smooth and springy. The keyboard is a joy to use, it provides great tactile feedback. And, the display is just amazing. Having 800 pixels span the width of the display makes for some incredibly sharp images.

From the pictures, you don’t really get a sense of the size (and heft, obviously), so let me tell you that it fits very nicely in the hand. It’s not too light as to feel cheap, but not so heavy that you are burdened with another load in your pocket.

Unfortunately, Sony Ericsson is still tweaking their custom panel UI overlay on the newly announced Windows Mobile 6.1 OS. That meant the device was still slow to respond to some inputs, but this thing’s got some serious potential.

The XPERIA X1’s launch is still a long way off, so I’m not going to hold our breath for this thing any more. I’ve come to terms with waiting for this superphone to become a reality.

Enjoy the pics.