When my lg cookie broke a couple years back my step dad gave me his back up phone to use until I could afford to get a new one. This was an old brick style thing which was very basic. While it had a (bad quality) camera, good message memory, long battery life etc I'd always wanted a smart phone to replace it. Something a little less basic! Unfortunatly we've had pretty poor finances since then and i could barely afford an extra tenner let alone the amount to get a phone.
A month or so ago my boyfriends friend came over and was bragging about his new phone, I moaned about my ancient brick and he said that he no longer needed his old phone so I was welcome to it. I happily accepted.

I kept my old sim card which is virgin, with the phone originally being on vodafone this has meant I havent got to try out the apps so i cant comment on them but I doubt they would have been the saving grace for this phone...

APPEARANCE
My phone is the hot pink version. The top and bottom are hot pink. Then there is a black border around the touch scren with "Sony Ericsson" printed on the top. There are 3 silver buttons at the bottom to press. Theres also a button on top of the phone, zoom ones on the right side and two shortcut buttons to camera and media also on the right side. The rest of the phone functioning is done via touch screen.

WHATS RIGHT WITH IT
The inbox stores a lot of messages which is good because im terrible at deleting unimportant texts and saving important texts.
The internet is also a good feature- its nice to be able to access REAL facebook via my mobile. This is probably standard for most people but my old phone only accesed mobile facebook so this is a bonus to me!
There are a lot of apps if thats your kind of thing.
The battery and sim card are pretty easy to get to all you need to do is click off the back and you can access them immediatly.

WHATS WRONG WITH IT
Where do I start.... The main problem for this with me is the charger doesnt connect properly (this apparantly happened within a couple of months of getting it) and comes loose very easily. I once put it on charge, left it overnight only to find in the morning it hadnt charged at all. This wouldnt bother me so much if the battery life wasn't so poor.

Sometimes the touchscreen forgets to respond so Ill be texting and suddenly the vibration reaction will stop for about 2 minutes then suddenly return with an angry long buzz during which i cant do anything except wait for it to stop.

Unlocking the screen just requires a tap of a button then a touch on the phone meaning the phone can quite easily unlock in your bag or pocket which isnt convinient if you end up calling somebody and using up a ton of credit.

The start up takes ages. Much longer than any other phone I've used. Made even more frustrating by the fact its frozen on the start up screen twice before leaving me staring at the screen for 5 minutes and realising nothings happening.

Its not very clear about when you do or not have signal. Half of my flat I dont get a mobile signal (possibly because Im in a basement flat, Im not sure). Other than occasionally saying "emergency calls only" its not very clear about when i do and do not have a signal. For instance right now i have a red flat line in place of where my signal should be however im still sending and recieving texts. It can be a bit of a nightmare waiting for a text or call only to realise I dont have any signal and my phone hadnt told me!

Its not great for phonecalls. The speaker doesnt go particuarly loud so if your in a phonecall whilsts walking alongside a main road it can be a slight struggle to hear them. It also heats up within 10 minutes of the phonecall leaving you with a very hot, sweaty ear!



Overall I really dislike this phone and wouldnt reccomend it at all! While i was thankful to my friend for giving me a more modern phone I still will be begging my parents for an upgrade for Christmas!