Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 review

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 arrived with little fanfare in India, following on from the moderately successful Xperia X10.

The X8 is a bulky handset and looks as though it should have a sliding Qwerty keyboard like its Xperia X10 mini pro sibling.

However, we discovered there was no Qwerty keyboard, only a rather fat-looking 3.2-inch touchscreen.

We received the white version of the device, with the screen surround taking on a bright white plastic look, whereas the back panel has more of a pearl appearance. This makes the handset look pretty cheap in our eyes.

The buttons are an improvement. There are three conveniently placed silver hardware buttons along the base of the screen, with a dedicated camera and volume buttons along the right side.

The charging port and power buttons are along the top, with a cover over the the port to keep it clean. Although the cover is pretty flimsy, it helps to keep some strong lines with the white colour scheme.

The power button is also used for locking the phone, which works very well as it was almost impossible to accidentally make a call or text.

The screen is a bit of a saving grace as it uses capacitive technology rather than resistive, which tends to be the preference of lower cost handsets. But the 320x480 pixel resolution screen makes it look misty on the eye and it lacks the sharp precision of other screens.

The buttons along the bottom are a good inclusion as the main touchscreen buttons are strangely placed.

Instead of linear positioning, the screen has a button in each corner, which again look blurry and ruins any chance of a smooth and sleek look to the main screen.

They buttons are customisable though, so you can pick your top four apps for ease of access.

To get to the main menu, there's a choice between the middle silver button or you can gesture up along the bottom of the screen to make it slide into appearance.

However, with the ageing Android 1.6 operating system, this motion feels very slow and again reminded us we were using a budget phone rather than a top of the range Android handset.

One screen positive though was the number of widgets we could choose to add. There are several on offer, from Calendar to Facebook, and we could easily slide between homescreens to view them.

Again though, the lag lets it down and despite a large choice of widgets, it got on our nerves how long it took to get there.

The 3.2-megapixel camera is more than sufficient for this style of mobile.

The dedicated camera button along the right side makes it very easy to use and it's simple to share photos straight from taking them, with an option to share via MMS, social networking or email.

There's also an FM radio included and, as a music player, the sound is very clear, showing off Sony's musical background.

Phone memory comes in at 128MB with MicroSD support for up to 16GB. However, you will have to tear off the back of the handset to get to the slot, which feels flimsy but is at least easy to do.

Call quality is clear and the phone has a substantial speaker along the top, making it comfortable for calls.

Texting is a little less desirable though. Whilst we like the conversation layout of the texts, the on-screen keyboard is far too small for us and makes it quite difficult to text without making mistakes.

Again, the laggy operating system reared its ugly head here as well.

Battery life does impress us though. With heavy use, we were still keeping it going after two days and with light use it seemed to last forever – or over three days to be more precise.

It also didn't seem to take too long to charge and we're pleased with having the convenience of a micro USB.

It does the job but does not have the finesse of the more expensive Android handsets.

Perhaps if it was more aesthetically pleasing, we would have fallen for it more but as it was both unattractive and laggy, we wouldn't be shelling out for the Xperia X8.