Are you a developer that missed the boat for the Google Android Challenge and/or the Apple iPhone Developers competition? Here’s your chance to achieve eternal glory, fame, and fortune. SE is apparently preparing to launch a developer challenge tailored to their Xperia X1 Windows Mobile handset. As you well know, SE has implemented a proprietary panel-based UI on the X1, bringing quick-look access to a variety of aspects of the handsets OS in an innovative and aesthetically pleasing way. To mark the phone’s launch, the company is challenging developers to come up with the most creative and useful implementation of the panels interface. Exciting? Sure, but wait until you hear about the prize. The winner of this competition will pocket a brand spanking new….Xperia X1. Yep. That’s it. With a prize like that, we can’t imagine anyone worth mentioning will spend much time trying to best their competition. We can’t help but wonder why SE would launch something like this in the first place.
UPDATE: Sony Ericsson contacted us with a bit more info regarding the contest. It turns out that the prize is actually a bit more comprehensive than the free X1 we’ve mentioned above. In addition to receiving a new handset, the winner will be flow to SE’s headquarters in Lund for a 2-day, all expenses paid trip to meet with the company’s design team. Sounds a lot better to us, though we’re still waiting for an actual X1 release stateside. Hmmm.