Sony Ericsson Original MN800 Live View Android Smartphone Accessory

I got the live view for £25 so thought it was worth a punt despite the poor reviews.

My plan was to use liveview as a watch, however you have to remove the strap to charge the device, this wouldn't be so bad if it was easy to remove it from the wrist strap cradle, I broke a nail and had to resort to a using a knife!

The point of a device like this is it should make your life easier, I had visions of using it to control my music, it can do this but only for the album you are playing, I expected to be able to browse my music find the album and then play it, but you have to select the album or play list on the phone first.

I thought I could use it as a watch, it comes with a watch strap so this seems a fair assumption, there are some nice plug-ins that look like they can do this and look cool, the watch it comes with is a bit basic, however for the plug-ins to really work well they have to be the application that launches when the unit is turned on, the software lets you decide which application to bring to focus on start-up but the plug-ins are excluded, so you end up having to scroll to the plugins folder the select the watch plug-in, frankly it is easier to get your phone out to read the time. So I settled for the built in clock however I found that whenever I wanted to know the time the liveview would say 00:00 so if fails 100% as a watch.

My first day of use looked somethign like this...

left on charge over night having set-up my phone and proved it worked.
Took off charge at 7am walked to work, tried to change the volume whilst walking to work, failed and had to use phone.
In lift at work, checked the time it said 00:00, so had to use the phone
Got the live view reconnected proved it was working again.
Checked time later in the day it said 00:00, so had to use the phone.
Came home, on the train tried to work out what was wrong, but it seemed to be working then the battery failed, I had warn the watch for about 12 hours and all I had done was check the time twice, tried once to change the volume and spent a few minutes reconnecting it using the phone interface.

This device needs.
1) better control of plugin's so they can be launched when pressing the hardware buttons
2) better control of music - album art, ability to navigate tracks
3) a decent strap
4) better connection to the phone - the discconection problems that the phone had at launch a year ago were supposed to have been fixed this was not my experience.
5) ability to charge without taking a knife to the device to get it out of the cradle
6) a decent watch function that doesn't rely on the phone time and performs like a good digital watch - the liveview will show the time as 00:00 when you press the button, I found I ended up pressing the button a number of times before it would show the correct time - you have to do this whenever the live view goes to sleep - i.e. every time you want to know the time!.
7) decent battery life

overall I expected it to be poor but hoped it to be better, Sony really have produced a clanger and damaged their reputation in the process.

Most of the faults could have been fixed in the firmware before launch, the stupid strap/charging issue could have been prevented at the design stage, this product should never have got to production, what were they thinking, Sony used to be such a trustworthy and reliable brand too.

LiveView is a great concept which works well when it works, however even after a firmware update it still has bluetooth loss-of-connection issues. There are now several add-in apps exclusively for LiveView in the android marketplace which extend it's functionality further, however a couple of those are not yet ready really.

I have mine connected to a Samsung Galaxy Tab. Everything installed fine, however I do not find the software on the host to be particularly intuitive. The pc software worked first time to update the firmware on a Win7 x64 platform. However it needs to be connected by a microusb cable to the pc, the cable is not supplied. Rather than supply a usb cable which plugs into the supplied charger the charger is of the fixed cord variety.
I see great future possibilities for the device IF development continues and I expect that to be subject to the number of sales achieved.

I like the product generally speaking and will be delighted when further firmware arrives to correct the current issues.

As an Android developer, I bought this device to develop a plugin for one of my apps. And from this perspective, I was impressed by the great potential and nice programming API.

As soon as I tried it as an user, however, I realised that I've bought nothing more than an unreliable toy. Although my Galaxy S is in the official list of supported phones, the Liveview simply refused to establish a connection with it while using the original firmware. After updating the firmware to the latest one, things got much better and I could connect, try the original plugins and install a bunch of others. However, I soon noticed that I was receiving almost no notifications during the day because the connection simply drops everytime, and the device is unable to reconnect automatically. Since the Liveview only displays notifications for events occurred while it is connected, I miss almost everything.

In addition to this, vibration seems not to be working in my unit, so even when I receive a notification, I can't notice it. Yes, the Liveview does have a notification led, but in its wisdom SE put it in the middle of one of the tiny buttons at the top of the device, so I can't see it when I'm using it as a watch.

Battery lasts two days for me, which I think is decent. However, as others have said, having to detach the unit to charge it is a pain. The included strap is awful, but luckily you can replace it with a new one.

My conclusion is that Sony Ericsson missed an excellent opportunity to build something that most Android users would enjoy. I've used cheap bluetooth watches with OpenWatch that were much more reliable than this. Perhaps it works better with SE phones, but if this is not your case I would advise you to save your money. The way it is now, the Liveview is nothing but a draft that has to be much improved to be of any use.