On Friday, Vodafone announced that its customers can now pre-order the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. The handset will be available on 2 April and will come free with a two year £35 monthly contract (900 minutes, unlimited texts, 500 MB mobile internet).

The phone is a touchscreen phone and touted by Sony to be the flagship of their early 2010 offerings. Operating on the New UX (user experience) platform, the Xperia provides the user with integrated entertainment features, social media services, and other signature applications on a rich graphical user interface.

The X10’s signature applications include Timescape and Mediascape. Timescape is a communications application which allows the user to manage all of their communications with one person in one place. For instance, taking any social interaction via Facebook, email, Twitter, text, and/or photo and linking them together to create a comprehensive picture of communication with that person. Mediascape, the phone’s music application, accesses content – from YouTube, PlayNow, your phone, etc. – and presents it in a user-friendly way. Intelligent capabilities integrated into the applications recognise the connections between contacts, content, and media and can recommend alternative ways to communicate.

The OS is open platform and Xperia X10 users will be able to download applications from a variety of the application stores, including Android Market and PlayNow. The phone also features wireless hi-fi FM headset that allows you to listen without actually having your phone on you. The phone comes in “sensuous black” and “luster white”, with the latter colour being exclusively on offer via Orange.