Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Sim Free Mobile Phone - Black

I have had my Xperia X10 for a day and a half and have already completely forgotten about the iPhone that I cherished for 18 months. Sony-Ericsson have created a piece of technology that has both style and substance, combining user-friendly functionality, an excellent camera, super-fast internet and a sleek case. There are myriad reasons why this phone is brilliant and if I were to list all of them you would be reading a thirty page review so I will restrict myself to listing just a few:

1) The internet on it is amazing! Super fast, very easy to use with an excellent zoom function. The standard browser that is already on the phone is more than adequate but you can also download others such as Ocean which is, supposedly, even faster and Dolphin with which one can download videos from Youtube.
2) The camera is better than my digital camera and, at very least, is the best that I have seen on a phone. The quality of both photos and video is breathtaking and knocks anything the iPhone has to offer into a cocked hat. I spit on your 3 mega-pixels!
3) The media centre is excellent and looks great. More importantly, it makes it ridiculously easy to put new music etc. onto the phone. It is just a matter of dragging and dropping items from your computer into the music folder on the phone. I'm a bit of a technophobe and even I found this easy and certainly a great deal more intuitive than the circuitous and laborious way it was done on the iPhone. Items can also be deleted or selected as ringtones on the actual phone and music can be listened to while other applications are in use.
4) The screen is a thing of beauty. It is absolutely massive, dwarfing the iPhone's, and is clear as crystal at all times.
5) There is an extensive list of 'Apps' to choose from, a lot of which are free, and they are growing in number every day.

Of course there are some miner niggles such as the absence of flashplayer (I understand that this is being rectified by an update in June) but these are all very small and will, no doubt, be sorted out by forthcoming updates.
In conclusion, throughout this review I have compared the X10 with the iPhone, the reason being that I previously owned one and, as they are both smartphones, there are obvious parallels. I loved the iPhone and thought it a great piece of technology but the X10 is just better in almost every way. The X10 has ironed out a number of the flaws that I found in it's rival and for that reason it gets 5 stars.

Having chosen this phone as an upgrade on my existing plan, before reading any of the reviews, my heart sank, when I did read them, particularly with regard to battery life. When I recieved this phone & charged it up, I carefully took the charger out with me, just in case. I have to say though, that battery life is as good as you can possibly expect from the smartphone - I've had the android 2.1 update & with that the phone will last 3 days between charges, switched off overnight for about 7 hours. That's with fairly heavy music player use, medium video & data transfer & light phone / messaging. It's certainly more than I was expecting & quite a relief.
As to the phone itself, I can understand the gripes with android 1.6, it really isn't up to the job, but 2.1 is great. But it wouldn't update for some reason when linked to my Windows XP computer, it had to be my Windows 7 for a successful update. Having said that I'd like the latest 2.2 version with flash - I'm sure the processor in the phone could cope with it.
The screen on the phone is excellent, clear, bright & responisve to touch.
Camera quality is great, but the "phone light" is dire - the only thing you're likely to get a picture of is someone squinting into the dazzle! A true flash would be MUCH better.
Quality of the sony headphones is excellent, though my son says there's too much bass! The built in speaker is OK, but rather tinny & cheap sounding.
The range of apps is amazing, & you can get plenty of really useful ones. I highly recommend Akdiko, weatherbug & arcmedia amongst others. I have the Kindle app. and it is good, but I can't figure out how to add books that I haven't bought directly from Amazon though (e.g. titles from the Black Library)
All in all I think it's great - the best phone I've ever owned!!!

I have tried both the HTC Desire and this Xperia X10. Both have good and bad points about them as do most phones. However, the X10 is by far the better phone. The call quality both ends is far better that the Desire, the ring volume is loud and the speaker is at the side of the phone rather then on the back. The in ear volume is louder than the Desire. The Timescape and Mediascape are excellent. I am not a avid user of Facebook etc but do use occasionaly, and I find that I am using this program more and more it is great. Meadiascape is just brilliant. The screen quality is fantastic for a LCD screen. The only down side for me with the X10 is the on screen keyboard. Sometimes, is does not register your press even though is has clicked and shown as being pressed. However, the more I use it the less of a problem I find it. Thios should be fixed with a simple update and I am sure it will be. Also later in the year this phone will be upgraded to Android 2.1, this should greatly inprove the phone even more. Ignore all the negatives of this only haveing Android 1.6, it is adequate and apart from things like live wallpapers there is not that much difference. Also the live wallpapers only eat up your batter life anyway. The battery life is a bit of an issue on all smartphones for obvious reasons. However, I get well over a day with moderate use and that is adequate for me. I would recommend giving this phone a try as I think it is a winner and a good general balance of all the Android Phones out there. Yes room for improvement but in all honesty what phone on the market is 100% perfect? Exactly, there is not one.