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.