Last week, much to my disgust, my iPhone decided to give up the ghost and present me with nothing but a white screen. The phone still worked but the display was no more. After trying various suggested fixes and failing, I came to the conclusion that it was dead and due to its age, not worth repairing. This left me sans smartphone... Not a respectable situation for a respectable geek to be in so I toddled off to the O2 shop and bought a Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 Android phone.

First impressions

My first impressions of the unit were that it felt really slow and clunky. After using an iPhone for a couple of years, I guess most things would but this felt particularly bad. Out of the box it runs Android 1.6 so I set about upgrading to 2.1 as soon as I got home. Unfortunately, I needed to borrow my sister's PC for this because the upgrade couldn't be performed on the unit its self (although subsequent upgrades now can) and there are no compatible drivers/software for the Mac. With Android 2.1 installed, it felt a lot snappier (provided I didn't try to do too much). I didn't feel quite so let down after that!

Hardware

What can I say about a resistive touch screen that hasn't already been said? It's spongey and not as nice as a capacitive touch screen! Having said that, I was surprised at how responsive the screen is. It actually works very well and with a pretty high degree of accuracy. In other hardware news, the case is very plasticky and even the smallest drop causes bits of case and battery to fly around the room like crazed banshees on crack.

Task management

One of the things that slows this phone down is the poor task management. Basically, out of the box there is none to speak of. Lots of applications build up in the background until the phone grinds to a standstill. Fortunately there are plenty of apps available on the Android market to fix this.

Apps

There are lots of aps available on the Android market so it didn't take me long to get back up and running with Twitter, Facebook and all the other services that I used on my trusty iPhone. One thing I did notice is that from a user experience point of view, none of the apps seem to be as good as their iPhone counterpart.

Phone

As an actual phone (remember those?), the X8 works really well. In this department it beats the iPhone hands down. Calls are clear, clean and the earpiece is loud enough to actually hear what's going on. The call management stuff on the phone is pretty good too. Thumbs up in this department.

Camera

It's only got a pin prick of a lens and as far as I can see, it appears to be fixed focus so I'll go gentle on it. The overall picture quality is OK but feels like I've gone back in time about 5 years with the technology. It doesn't seem to deal with changeable ambient conditions very well and in anything other than good clear sunlight (something we've not had much of lately) it produces a pretty dull and lifeless result.

Music

As an MP3 player, it's OK. It's certainly not an iPod but it works. The built in music player gets the job done and the supplied earbuds even manage to make it sound pretty good. One criticism I do have is the inability to segue from one track to the next without an audible gap. Very annoying when listening to a DJ mix compilation.

Gameplay

With lots of games available from the Android market, there was plenty of scope to see what this thing can do. Actually not a lot. If you don't clear all tasks it struggles even to play Angry Birds and even if you do, playback is jerky on some levels and will occasionally freeze altogether. Simply put: Don't buy this phone if you're into gaming.

Overall

I'm going to go with "Okay" on this. For the price it's a pretty capable unit but the fact that you need to do quite a lot of work to get it functioning in a respectable manner means many a less savvy customer (most like the kind of person that would actually buy this phone) may be left with a bad taste in their mouth. It lacks finesse but packs plenty of functionality for a very low price tag. Unfortunately, I will be replacing it as soon as I can and probably not with another Android.