The Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 on 3

The 3 Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 is an Android smartphone for everyone. Despite being one of the cheapest Android phones on the market, the X8 looks and feels great in the hand, and follows the attractive design success of the X10 and X10 mini. With a fantastic range of features and a great user interface that rivals many other much more expensive Android phones, the little brother of the Xperia family from Sony Ericsson is a fantastic phone for its price.

The X8 has a 3" capacitive touchscreen with a scratch-resistant surface coating that means it will retain its factory condition responsiveness. The large screen has a high resolution which gives crisp, clear images and responds beautifully to the slightest of touches. Useful shortcut icons in the corners of the screen allow for rapid navigation to your favourite tools and features, and you can furnish your homescreens (as many of them as you want!) with widgets that are easy to arrange and view.

Like the other Xperias, the X8 sports Timescape which aggregates all your contacts and communications on one single screen and arranges them in a 3D "spine" that you can flick through with a swipe of your finger. Not only does this interface look fantastic and respond really well, it's also incredibly useful for keeping on top of your social life. The Android marketplace is growing larger every day; with hundreds of thousands of apps and a huge selection of music and videos available at Mediascape you'll be pleased that you can expand the X8's memory to 16GB with a microSD card. Some other standard pre-installed apps included are Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube.

Overall Three's Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 is well worth the low price tag. A suitably powerful and advanced touchscreen phone with a nice display, great features, reliable performance and, most importantly, all the joy of smartphone social networking and super-connectivity at a very affordable price.