Software, services and conclusions
SE has made some minor tweaks to the Android interface. Immediately apparent is the presence of four quarter-circles in each corner of the screen that provide shortcuts to commonly-used functions such as phone, contacts, messaging, etc. They're customisable.
The rest of the screen is devoted to widgets, of which you're only allowed one per screen, scrolling laterally between screens to access others. To get to the ‘wall of apps' you need to drag the screen up from the bottom, which is all a bit fiddly. I prefer the app icons and widgets to co-exist on the same screen.
There's one widget that seems to be unique to Sony Ericsson, which is quite handy. It's called Timescape and it provides a ‘rolodex' stile cascade of the latest ‘events' to have happened in chronological order. You can also sync your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and control which accounts and types of event are chronicled.
As I already said, most of the user experience is defined by Android, and that's something I really appreciate. There's a certain, guaranteed user experience from and Android phone which, given how increasingly diverse they are, is not a bad effort.
One note of caution, however: if you have an active Android Marketplace account, and have actually paid for something, it's very easy for anyone to then buy things on your account. If found this out when I let my six-year-old son play a free game I'd downloaded for him only to find, when I'd retrieved the phone, that he'd downloaded a bunch of other games and apps, some of which he paid for!
As ever, things like Gmail, Google Maps, etc add a lot of value, although this Gmail seemed reluctant to provide push email - requiring me to manually update sometimes. The speed of connection to mobile data and GPS was pleasantly quick. Sometimes I get frustrated by the apparent reluctance of high-end phones to connect to some networks.
On the whole, using this phone in the field, I was able to do all the things I've become accustomed to as an Android phone user. The screen is a distinct downgrade, and it was weird coping with the many minor limitations of Android 1.6 while I still had that, but it's an adequate Android phone.
Bit of a faff
The upgrade procedure was a bit of a faff, certainly compared to the OTA experience I had with Motorola, but tolerable. I was advised to backup my settings, contacts and apps, and shown how to do so. That all seemed to go smoothly, and I went back to the (not preinstalled) restore app after the update, but it failed to restore anything.
But the only way ‘adequate' is going to cut the mustard is if sufficient concession is made with the price. Here, in collaboration with O2, which has UK exclusivity on this phone, is its downfall.
At first, when you go to the O2 site, you think the opposite. You can get the X8 for ‘free' for as little as £10 per month on a two year contract. Yes, you don't get many minutes, but that's pretty cheap for an Android phone. But here's the punchline: the tariff doesn't include data!
It gets better. I had a look at the tariffs on offer with this phone, to see the cheapest one I could get with data, and there aren't any. O2 doesn't offer smartphone tariffs for this phone. WTF!
Then I has a look at other Sony Ericsson phones and you can get the Xperia X10 mini pro for ‘free' on a £30 smartphone tariff, while you have to sign up to at least £40 per month if you want a full X10 without shelling out anything up-front.
I don't know what's going on with the tariff on the X8. I have to assume it's a mistake as what would be the point of getting an Android phone without a data connection, but then again O2 and SE have had plenty of time to rectify it, if that's the case.
O2's cheapest two year smartphone tariff is £25. But even if it offered the X8 for free on this tariff, you could get an HTC Desire for the same price. If I've missed something, and you can get the X8 for £10 per month with data, then that's a different story.
All in all the Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 fells very much like a ‘me too' Android phone that would only have relevance at the right price. The strangeness on the O2 site, coupled with SE's dodgy software update track record make this a difficult phone to recommend, with so many other excellent mid-range Android phones on offer.
Good
- Android, and got to 2.1 eventually
- Timescape is handy
- Compact and light
Bad
- Sony Ericsson's Android update/support track-record
- Not available with a data tariff
- Cheerful but nowhere near cheap enough
HEXUS Rating
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