Review by R. Adams for Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 (Silver) SIM Free / Unlocked
Rating:
First off, let me start by saying I have been pining for this phone since it first came out. I thought the pictures and specs were so sleek and sexy. At the time, I owned an iPhone and was chained to my AT&T service, so I couldn’t reconcile tossing that phone to get this one. My contract eventually expired and I took a job overseas. While perusing Amazon, I happened across this baby again and decided I had to have it. It had everything I was looking for—quad band, expandable memory, slide out QWERTY keyboard, and on and on. When I received it and pulled it out of the box, I fell in love. Who could resist the look of this phone? It’s small, but not too small, not heavy but with a good solid weight to it, and little ambient lights that light up in the corners during charging is a very excellent touch. However, I started to fall out of love when I started using it. I don’t have to get into how the size of font and buttons are microscopic, but even with the stylus I was hitting the wrong keys. The auto-complete function when texting? Useless. I mean, it works, but try actually choosing a word it suggests. Unless you have Keebler Elf hands, it doesn’t respond. The keyboard, although lovely to look at, is also very difficult to use. I like to think I have smaller hands for a woman, and I find it hard. I trimmed my thumbnails down to the pink so that my fingernails wouldn’t hinder me in texting, and although that’s helped some, I know have raw thumb corners and I’m still not accurate all the time. My only saving grace about this purchase is that I purchased it with the idea that this would be my “overseas” phone; that I would use this whenever I’m out of the country. When I get back to the states, I’ll buy some other phone. Although the X1 is lovely to look at, you don’t want this to be an everyday phone.