Keeping up with the Joneses
In my last review I took a look at the mid-range WP7 smartphone option - the HTC Trophy. I concluded that it offered much of the same that you could expect from a more expensive WP7 phone, and thus represented good value for money.
Now I've switched my attention to an Android equivalent - the Sony Ericsson X8 - which was first unveiled by SE back on the summer. As with any lower-end smartphone, my focus will be not on the the limits of its capabilities, but whether the lower cost is enough to compensate for the lower spec.
This review will be a bit shorter than some of my other ones as I've already explored Android in previous reviews, and by definition this is a less complex piece of kit. But let's start with a quick bit of context.
Sony Ericsson has struggled to keep up with the smartphone revolution. It makes some pretty popular feature-phones, but was late to the smartphone party, finally deciding Android was the way forward and launching the high-end Xperia X10 late last year. Since then there have been a few variants on that theme and some mass-market phones, including the X8.
Before I get into the relative merits of the X8, I must confront the overriding Achilles Heel of SE in the smartphone market: its slowness in releasing new versions of Android. Whether it's because it was late to the game, or devotes insufficient resource, or is simply incompetent, SE takes much longer than everyone else to release Android updates.
A great illustration of this was my review unit, received in early December, which arrived with Android 1.6 preinstalled. This coincided with Google unveiling Android 2.3 - a full three iterations further along from 1.6. Many other Android phones are already at 2.2, and even the laggards are on 2.1. So why SE thinks there will be demand for 1.6 phone in late 2010 is an utter mystery to me.
The good news is that the 2.1 upgrade was finally made available while I've had the phone, so I got to assess the ease of that process with SE and remind myself what you get with the upgrade. I'll go into that in greater depth in the software and services section, but first let's look at the hardware.
