I purchased my X8 a year ago now, i originally wanted the X10 but that wasn't available on my contract (orange), i wanted a Sony due to having one previously which i had been very happy with so the guy in the shop suggested the X8.

I was happy to begin with, the look and feel are good, small, lightweight and quite pretty with the slightly sparkly back cover...however within minutes of fiddling around with it i discovered you can't change the theme from blue! NOOOOO!!! Now i'm a very girly girl so i wanted pink naturally, after about 30 minutes of googling i found you CAN change the theme BUT it would involve hacking into your phone and invalidating the warranty so decided that wasn't the best idea! Blue it would have to be, BOOOOO! :(

The text messages are easy to use, keyboard is quite sensitive but if you have predictive text switched on it generally understands what you are trying to type if you tap the wrong letter, although it is worth re reading, predictive text and auto correct aren't always your friend! It is wise to delete texts every few days though has it does slow the phone down greatly if you have too many stored.

The camera....well, its not great to be honest, 3mp, no zoom and no flash. You can zoom into the pivture after taking it but there is no crop option so i have had to do editing once pictures are loaded onto my computer, which incidently you do by attaching your phones charging cable (it is plugged into the mains charger via USB, clever idea, saves having wires everywhere for different functions).

Music player is great, sound quality is very good for a phone, volume can be controlled even when keypad is locked by using the volume control buttons on the side of the phone, the only problem with it is it kills your battery!

Browser is good, you do have to zoom in on all web pages but once you have got used to that its good, my internet is pretty quick on my phone although i do tend to connect via wifi a lot, 3G connection is slower but still its not awfully slow. Only problem is again it kills your battery.

Phone calls...hmmm, my phone is VERY quiet even with speaker volume on full, people must think i'm deaf when they ring me!, its also annoying when trying to hang up, i always end up trying to add contact or get into phonebook when i'm trying to end a call, even a year on from getting the phone!

Apparently you can assign a tone to each contact, i am yet to find this feature and believe me i have tried! Same goes for having a picture for a contact, unless they are in my facebook friends (it automatically syncs contacts to include thei profile pictures (this is optional)) i just cannot find how to do it!

The phone comes with some apps already installed, i haven't used the majority of them and they cannot be deleted which is annoying considering there isn't much memory on the phone. The app market is great but beware how many apps you download, its slows your phone down drastically, i have angry birds and have got used to it now but you cannot zoom out on it so you just have to shoot and hope for the best as you cannot see the full screen, it also lags quite badly. I downloaded an ebook reader app which is great, its like owning a mini kindle.

A couple of annoying things that happen with my phone...it switches itself off quite often, it changes my ringtones randomly so i never know its my phone ringing!, it switches on delivery report in the text settings quite often which uses up my credit. These could be fixable problems though, i have had it a year so maybe its to do with a software update or something...

Finally the biggest problem is battery life, its TERRIBLE! i have to charge my phone every single day despite not using it all that often, i always have to ensure my background data is off, 3G is off when not being used, screen brightness is at the lowest setting, and i have to use a task killer several times a day. It is still dead by the time i hit the sack!

All in all it serves its purpose for me, i can text, check my facebook and read my ebooks with ease, however if you want a phone to act as an mp3 player,camera or for browsing the internet all day everyday its probably not your best choice mainly due to battery life problems.

I do love my X8, i just wish its menus weren't blue!!! :P

Thanks for reading :)