Xperia x10 WARNING!! CONTAINS CRITICISM

[Xephrey]

Are people honestly happy with the x10? I would think that the energy and care needed to maintain that level of innocence in that many people would just not be worth it in the end.

This was more or less the attitude I had when I asked my friends over at XDA for help so that I may make the most out of my bad decision. I was very hard on the x10, as I think I should be. Products this bad need to warned against and called out for what they are.

Please don't misunderstand me; I love Android. I had so much fun customizing and tweaking my HTC Desire over the summer before I sold it to get an iPhone 4. I would very much love to get another Android phone after I see what's coming at CES. What I don't love is extremely poor optimization and... well, I guess I've already written enough on that topic. Here's my rant / ask for help.

I really can't help but stand in awe of the contempt Sony Ericsson has for consumers. That is putting it lightly. I feel as if I'm trapped in an inside joke that I can never hope to escape, much less understand. I'm not really sure where to start, so I'll just start.

Has anyone done a tear-down on the x10 to see whether or not the CPU in it is what they claim it is? From what I have experienced, I cannot see it being any more than a 500Mhz processor. The most basic functions are plagued with bugs and completely unacceptable lag! Try scrolling through any menu, opening the address book or just trying to tap on the right thing (though this last one doesn't have much to do with the CPU). It feels like I'm fooling the device into doing whatever it is that it was supposedly made for! The entire 'xperience' reminds me of when touchscreen functionality was first seriously being introduced to the market well over a decade ago. I feel the same way that consumers presumably felt at that time after having a go: "Well gee, this is kind of neat, but this interface is so damn unresponsive! It's a gimmick!"

I've seen people complain all over the place about it not have multi-touch functionality. While they are right to do so (any device of this nature lacking said functionality is downright irrelevant and might as well have "DOA" written on it with a thick, black marker upon release), they are missing the overwhelmingly stronger, more fundamental point worthy of complaint: the SINGLE touch experience.

Sure, this travesty was promised a 2.1 update from the beginning: a beacon of light for all of us having had the misfortune of making too much of an impulse purchase or impulse contract signing. I could and did take comfort in the hope that things will be up and running; responsive and fixed! The day of the update's release came and went. To my utter astonishment the folks at Sony Ericsson actually managed to make everything even worse. The overall responsiveness of the phone was worsened; enough to actually notice. Little convenient buttons shortcuts and buttons were removed or rearranged (like the ability to save a new contact after having punched in a number). The icing on this fail cake was the introduction of a new major problem on top of all the others! Now there are massive proximity sensor issues. Now my wife can't even use the unit to talk to her family without turning speaker phone on and off or mashing the keypad with her cheek, randomly (it can't be due to some 3rd party app, since it was like this from the beginning, freshly flashed with 2.1). I should have mentioned that this isn't even my phone, it's my wife's. All of this anger, sadness and disappointment is purely second-hand.

To any of you reading this thinking to themselves, "It's not so bad, he's clearly exaggerating." I suggest you go out and try using an iPhone for five minutes, it doesn't matter the model. Maybe you think I'm an Apple fanboy! Try an HTC Desire or a Galaxy S smartphone. Hell, try any touch screen smartphone currently on the market today. It's like night and day.

Does anyone have any tips as to how I can make this experience the slightest bit more bearable for my wife? I see custom builds all over the development section, but I'm not sure which one is the most put together or ready for every day use. I apologize if I've offended anyone or shattered any world views.

Thanks guys.

My thread was then given this reply by a mod and closed immediately:

Dont get it?

never mind. basically the OP thought posting a thread slamming the x10 in a forum full of x10 developers and users was a good idea

Also dude if you wan to know the best custom build, read the posts like the rest of us have to cause at the end of the day its your decision

I guess I should have taken more care to clarify that it is Sony Ericsson I was directing my wrath toward, not XDA devs or users of the x10. My thought process was: these guys are developers and generally people that know what they're doing. Therefore, they should understand my plight even more than the end user on your average mobile device site. Some individual will probably take me aside and sort of give me a comforting pat on the back and say, 'oh you poor naive soul, I once fell for an awful half-baked, rushed piece of gadgetry. Here's what I'd recommend...'

Again, I have no ill will toward the people at XDA! They are my number one resource and tend to be extremely helpful and very polite. I just thought it was sort of in bad taste to immediately close a thread just because it's criticisms might be a bit too spicy for some forum members that just might have developed a taste for genuinely bad products. Perhaps a move to the 'Off topic' section would have been better or somewhere where less innocent eyes were likely to come across it?

What do you guys think? Also, what tweaks / builds would you recommend?

Thanks

 

[Kelmar]

I'm not sure if this is a rant about the phone or XDA??? If the purpose is to complain about another forum, please refrain in the future.

If the purpose was to get help, feel free to create a thread asking for help in the X10 forum.


/thread