Competing for news time over the widely-covered Nokia World event, Sony Ericsson today announced the much-anticipated Xperia X2 smartphone, the second of its Windows Mobile handsets. Sporting version 6.5 of the WinMo operating system, the X2 will feature the panels touchscreen interface with 14 panels pre-installed and 16 others available for download.

The X2 offers a slew of high-end features including a 3.2 inch touchscreen with 800×480 resolution, a full QWERTY keyboard available via slide-out and a whopping 8.1 megapixel camera with autofocus, geotagging and touch-focus. WiFi is also featured.

Multimedia features include built-in stereo speakers, Bluetooth 2.0 for wireless headsets and pre-loaded apps like PlayNow Arena from Sony Ericsson and standard WinMo media software. A TV-out function also exists for displaying everything from pictures to presentations.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X2, with quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band UMTS/HSPA support allowing for true global roaming, will be available in Q4 2009 in black and silver color schemes; no pricing information has been released.