Sony Ericsson Xperia X8

Today we review the Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 which looks quite similar to the X10 mini. The advantage of the X8 would have to be its superior 3-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen that has a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. The viewing angles of this screen are pretty good while the support for up to 16 million colors is nice, but gradients are not as smooth as they should. You can still use the phone under bright sunlight but you will have to turn the brightness of the screen all the way up.

Sitting below this screen you’ll notice the menu, home and the back keys that adopt the familiar Xperia look as these are chrome-like and quite thin. On the right spine you will have access to the one-step camera shutter and the volume rocker while on top we notice the microUSB port, power/lock key and the 3.5mm jack.

The Sony Ericsson X8 offers support for GPS, two-band 3G and Wi-Fi. The 3.2 megapixel camera sitting at the back doesn’t have a flash and it also lacks autofocus. It is the same camera Sony Ericsson installed in the X10 mini and it offers four presets for the photos and two quality modes for videos. The photos taken with the camera lack a great amount of detail while the colors are a little bit on the dull side. Video recording is done at 29 fps but the problem is that the clips suffer from stuttering.

As far as the music player is concerned, the one in this smartphone is able to show album art and features generous playback controls so it is easy to use. The bad news is that it doesn’t come with some advanced features like effects or an equalizer. The X8’s loudspeaker manages to get quite loud and is able to provide some deeper sounding tones. Due to the reason that Xvid and DivX are not supported by this phone, you will have to convert them to the MPEG-4 format. These videos can be played at up to the maximum resolution of 800 x 480 pixels.

One of the phone’s most interesting app would have to be the Creatouch with which you are able to make your own wallpapers. Even though there aren’t many options to fiddle with, this still is a fun application to play with since you can make your very own panoramic wallpapers.

As a phone, the quality of the calls is above average as the voice quality is satisfying most of the times on both ends of the line and the volume is high enough. The 1,200 mAh lithium-ion battery in this Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 is rated to last for up to 4.75 hours of talk time while in standby mode you will probably get up to 18 days.

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