Do I like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 ?
In a word, disappointing for me. Yes, it’s got a cool camera, and yes it has a big screen and yes it has MediaScape and TimeScape but alas, it’s not for me. I could run the gauntlet of everything I don’t like about it:
- I already mentioned how disappointing Android 1.6 was and well…I’m sticking to it.
- I can’t for the life of me figure out copy/paste from any of the applications.
- There is a separate application for Exchange Connectivity from Futuredial.com. Not sure what exactly this but interestingly enough, the links to read about the reviews of their product are linked to Touchdown.
- I absolutely HATE having to manage multiple icons on the device (multiple email/gmail/work email icons; multiple contacts; multiple calendars)
- Difficult to type on (had the same issue with the HTC Aria). Again, I don’t know what Sony was thinking or what kind of QA this went through, but portrait or landscape, the keyboard is a mess and missed letters ALL of the time.
- Where’s the multi-touch when browsing the internet? Everyone is doing that these days and again, it’s missing.
- The “Sony” skin is horrible. Maybe I just haven’t figured it out yet but on Motorola, HTC and Samsung Android phones, you can slide the front page left and right multiple pages to group/sort your icons. There is only one page right, and one page left for this phone, and you can’t even fill the pages with icons. They “snap” when moved losing valuable screen real estate. I can cram 16 icons on one page on other phones.
- I only made three phone calls and it was difficult to hear. I was hoping there was still a shipping plastic film covering the speaker because even turned all the way up it was difficult to hear.
- One of the great things about Android is the customization and the “one-click” to do things. Not sure what Sony was thinking with this but they made Android difficult and not customizable.
- Even though I’ve used bigger phones (HTC EVO 4G and HTC HD2), this phone feels bigger and heavier, even though it isn’t. I’m sure there was a reason to make this thing curved and wider that larger phones, but it shouldn’t feel this big.
Hopefully Sony will update this phone to Android 2.1 or 2.2 quickly, and fix a lot of the issues, particularly with the keyboard. You’re much better off with the Aria or Captivate if you’re looking for Android on AT&T. I’ll keep looking for my next phone.
My ranking of the Android phones on AT&T (In my opinion, Verizon and Sprint have better Android phones):
HTC Aria
Samsung Captivate
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
