Sony Ericsson Xperia X8

Available now
16th June 2010

Aimed at the sub-€200 smartphone market, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 is a cheaper and simpler alternative to the existing high-end Xperia X10.

This 104 gram Android device sports a 3" 320 x 480 pixel touchscreen display, it comes with GPS, WiFi and 3.5G support, plus an FM radio and a microSD slot (with a 2GB card included in the standard sales package). There is a 3.2 megapixel camera on the back which is capable of video recording. Inside is a competitive 600MHz processor with 128MB of RAM which should cope with almost anything you throw at it, although it's not as fast as the processors found in top-of-the-line Android handsets. There's a decently large battery too, powering the X8 for up to 5 hours 40 minutes talktime on 3G.

Early adopters of the X8 will have to make do with Android 1.6 as an operating system, but this will be upgradable very soon to Android 2.1. Later shipments will have Android 2.1 preinstalled.. if this kind of thing is important to you then check before ordering.

The software is highly expandable, as this is an Android handset and the Android Market is stuffed full of a very wide range of applications. In addition, Sony Ericsson have bundled the Xperia X8 with a trial version of their Wisepilot navigation system, although many users will prefer to use the new turn-by-turn navigation built into Google Maps.

Our experience with the bigger Xperia X10 is that it is a very nice Android device, but it falls down a lot on call quality. Hopefully, Sony Ericsson's second attempt at an Android phone will sort out some of those annoyances.

This is a nice looking device which is a lot more pocket-friendly than the X10, the price tag looks good too. Sony Ericsson say that the Xperia X8 should be available from Q3 onwards in White, Dark Blue/White, Aqua Blue/White, Pink/White and Silver/White colour combinations.