I love technology as much as the next guy. Even seemingly useless technology catches my eye; I want to be able to control my PS3 from my laptop, my car from my phone, my lights and speakers from my iPod Touch. But still, sometimes I see technological “advances” that I just don’t understand.

Sony, makers of all things fancy, quality and expensive, has gone all out with their new XPERIA X10 phone. It has all the features of a high-end smart phone: huge touchscreen, Wifi, the Android OS and an absolutely absurd 8.1MP camera with up to 16X zoom. Yes, a phone with a camera better than many people’s stand-alone digital camera. While I don’t see why someone would need an 8.1MP, 16X zoom camera on a phone, that’s not even the technology I don’t get.

The XPERIA X10 has the coolest, less-practically-useful feature I’ve seen in a while: facial recognition software. Apparently, with this phone, when you take a picture of someone whom you’ve photographed in the past, the camera picks up on the face and gives you immediate access to all the other pictures of that person you’ve taken in the past. It also groups them together in the media folder. This sounds like a great idea and, according to the video I saw of it working, seems to function just as described.

Still, I can’t imagine a scenario where this would we necessary. If you take enough pictures to want an 8.1MP camera on your phone, why wouldn’t you just buy a decent digital camera? I take a decent number of pics from my phone, but simply using folders seems like enough organization for me.

Add that to the reported $850+ price tag (I’m sure it’s less with a contract) and I see this as another awesome Sony product that doesn’t quite fit anyone’s needs.

More about the phone here and watch the short video of this feature over here.