Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 Review

Xperia series of the phones launched by Sony Ericsson is one of the most ambitious lines of cell phone manufactured by the company. Xperia X1, Xperia X2, Xperia X10, Xperia X10 mini and mini pro are some of the phones rolled out by the company in this series, and the latest to join the bandwagon is Sony Ericsson Xperia X8.

The phone launched during Communic Asia 2010 in Singapore is a budgetary phone, and its economical price tag will find favors among buyers looking for Android experience at a cost effective price point.

At a reasonable price, the phone offers you features most Androids would do, but one of the greatest disadvantages of the phone is that it runs on an older version of Android, that is Android 1.6 (Donut). So if you are looking for fast browsing and downloading experience, then you can be slightly disappointed.

However, there are several other features offered by the phone which will assist it to survive intense competition in the Android Smartphone market. Read on to know what the phone has in store for you.

Sony Ericsson X8 Design, Feel and Display

When you first look at the phone you may confuse it with Xperia X10 Mini as it has rounded edges at the top and bottom. The phone measures 99 x 54 x 15 mm and is light on your pocket weighing just 104 grams. Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 comes with a 3″ capacitive LCD screen which can display nearly 16 million colors of maximum resolution measuring 320 x 480 pixels.

Because the phone comes with a TFT screen, viewing angles are good and outdoor visibility is also quite good if you keep brightness level to the maximum. Since the rear cover of the phone is made of plastic, you might feel the phone a bit cheap when you hold it in your hands.

The display is scratch resistant and is equipped with an accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate. It also features Timescape UI and proximity sensor for auto turn off. The phone resembles to the style of other Xperia Android phones as you can find the Menu, Home, and Back keys below the screen of the phone. Just like other phones in the Xperia series, there are no buttons on the left side of the phone, while you volume and camera buttons are fitted on its right side.

Processor, Available Colors & Storage

Xperia X8 is loaded with many features which you can find in most of the smartphones using the Android platform. The phone powered by Qualcomm MSM7227 600 MHz processor is available in several colors such as White, White Dark Blue, White Pink, White Aqua Blue etc.

One can store a large number of call records and photo-calls in the phone as it comes with a 2GB internal memory storage which can be increased up to 16 GB with the help of a micro SD. Read on to know more features of the phone.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 Multimedia

The phone comes with a stereo FM with RDS and the music player of the phone is almost same as that of X10 mini with very little additional features. You cannot find equalizer presets preinstalled and you have to seek the help of kinetic scrolling or artistic sorting to find a particular song as the phone lacks gradual typing to find out a specific song.

However, you can find three smart playlists which categorizes the most played, never played and newly added songs automatically. The player also comes with an Infinite button which allows quick browsing of a song in YouTube or PlayNow. The FM radio has simple interface and tunes into the frequency of any radio station if available). There is a 3.5 mm audio jack which lets you enhance the audio quality.

The gallery of the phone locates the images automatically where ever they are stored and supports finger scrolling which allows you to directly choose photos of your choice.

Xperia X8 Connectivity

Connectivity is an important parameter for any smartphone and understanding this fact, the manufacturers have packed the phone with robust connectivity network. Though there is no infrared port, but with the availability of BlueTooth 2.1 with A2DP profile, one can’t complain much about its absence.

Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g further enhances the connectivity of the phone and the phone supports both 2G (GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) and 3G (HSDPA 900 / 2100 and HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100) network. The phone is also compatible with Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps GPRS and Class 10, 236.8 kbps EDGE. One can browse HTML browser and use several applications of Google such as Google Search Maps, Gmail, GTalk, YouTube etc. Just like other Android OS phones, Xperia X8 comes with a Webkit based browser which supports text re-flow which means that as soon as you zoom, columns of the text fit themselves as per the width of the screen.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 Camera

The phone is equipped with a 3.15 mega-pixel camera which can click photos of 2048 x 1536 pixels (maximum). Compared to cameras other phones in the Xperia series, the camera of Xperia X8 is slightly disappointing and the image quality is not that good. The camera lacks auto focus facility. The camera is equipped with geo-tagging facilities and there is a camcorder which can record videos at 30 fps. Video output is reasonably good.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 Battery

The phone comes with a 1200 mAh standard Li-Po battery which offers a talk time of around 4 hours when operated on 2G and around 5 hours when operated on 3G. Standby time on 2G is around 400 hours and in 3G is around 450 hours.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 Price and Verdict

The price of the phone is approximately 200 Euros (US$ 256) and around Rs 10,000 in India, which makes it a budgetary phone for most of smart phone lovers.

If you are looking for a budgetary smartphone, then Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 will suit you. However, since it uses the old version of Android, buyers might slightly shell out few more bucks and buy phone equipped with the latest available version the Android OS. Limited storage of installing third-party application is another major drawback of the phone, but in spite this, excellent connectivity and social networking integration makes the phone not such a bad buy.

One Response to “Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8”

1. Grgy says:

   February 22, 2011 at 4:16 pm

   This is a very nice phone if you how to use it.
   First of all – almost all stock apps such as music player, gallery or camera software – SUCK!
   But, this is an Android so that can be easily fixed..

   I recommend you to install appplanet.net app. With this you are able to access almost all paid apps from real Market for free, with UI similiar to one on THE Market.
   I reccomend 3D Gallery – for gallery app, Player Pro or Power Amp – for music player, Camera 360 Ultimate instead of stock camera soft.

   Then install Launcher pro. This will replace original Homescreen and app drawer. The advantge is up to 7 homescreens (phone will look like HTC UI), more widgets per homescreen, and hiding useless apps on app drawer. There's also a dock, and lots of other customization options. Lite version of app is available on Market. It's very fast too

   Most important thing is to make a frimware update from 1.6 to 2.1.*.
   I recommend rooting the phone and installing link2sd (no app2sd) so you can put apps you SELECT on the memory card. With app2sd you move all of them which is not very good.

   Memory card for best performance should be class 6 or more, I'm not sure does X8 support class 10.
   Class 2, 4, 6… stands for perfromace of the card.

   Few tips to save battery life: -turn off 3G, WiFi, BT when not needed, reduce screen brightness to <50% (around 40%-45% is good enough). Charge it only when <10% for longer battery life. When you able to ofcourse. Baterry life normally is about 1 day with heavily usage, in fact you can go out on saturday night with 30% or even less and battery will not drain if you are not using your phone TOO much xD

   So this phone is cheap and touch maybe is not the bestest but it's good enough.
   Audio quality from 3.5mm jack is extremly good and very loud (depends on headset or speakers).
   Camera qualitiy is nothing special even using Camera360, but phone is not made for that purpose so get over it.

   So as we all know this phone is an Android so you can use it in a thousnd ways Enjoy best of it… use google instead of asking dumb questions answered 10000times before, search on xda or similiar forums for best infromations. Pull the best out of your phone!