Potentially rubbish news coming from Sony Ericsson, courtesy of their release date database (which you can see here): according to the dates online, the XPERIA X1�-�which grabbed so many headlines at the Mobile World Congress last month -�won’t be released until February 10th 2009.� The WM6.1-powered touchscreen smartphone was originally slated to launch mid-to-late 2008.

The potential ray of sunlight comes from the fact that the dates look pretty formulaic: release an exact year from “coming soon”, then expiry four years to the day after that.� This could mean that the information is merely boilerplate in the absence of real dates.

I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that the information is wrong; released this year and the X1 could be a winner, but by 2009 there’ll be strong competition from a 3G iPhone and whatever Nokia and the rest can come up with.