Finally I have a proper phone!!! After years of having one that could only call and text, and perhaps take a couple of blurry photos, my hubby bought me this one as a surprise anniversary/Eid present! =D (thank you husband!!)
I've had it for a few weeks now so I thought I'd review it to help others decide if they want to buy it or not....
One of my fave things has got to be the keyboard, since most other smart phones don't have one. I'm sure people get used to the touch screen but i really like having a proper keyboard, I find it much easier, mainly because I make far less mistakes than with the touch screen.
The phone comes installed with Gingerbread but says on the box 'upgradable to ICS'. So a few days after I got it I decided, why not, and duly downloaded the update, which btw is irreversible. That's ok, I thought, because ICS is surely better than GB. However, to my dismay I discovered the keyboard no longer functioned as a qwerty, it had changed to azerty, i.e. some of the keys (specifically w, z, q and a) were the wrong way round! Argh!
After a little research on Google I discovered that I was by no means the only person to experience this problem, it seemed to be a universal fault that could not be fixed (unless you're some type of tech genius). I even spoke to Sony about it and the only option seemed to be to send it off for 'repair' so it could be downgraded back to GB - but then why did it say upgradable on the box??
Anyway, I decided I didn't want to send my phone off to Sony for 2 weeks when I'd only just got it, especially after spending hours customising it (twice I may add, once before and once after the ICS update). So I thought, I'll just live with it, and I got used to typing q instead of a and z instead of w...
Fortunately to my delight a few days ago a notification came up on my phone saying 'system update available' so I downloaded it and lo and behold my keyboard was fixed! woohoo!
So, the point of that whole story was that the phone has just lost a major negative in my opinion. In fact, instead of me rambling on perhaps it would be more helpful for me to provide a summary of things I like and things I don't, so here goes:
Things I like about the Xperia Pro
- The keyboard!!
- Great value (my husband got it new off ebay for £166)
- Video apps, ie. youtube and iplayer work really well (on both wifi and 3G), have had very few probs streaming videos even when I've been on the hovercraft in the middle of the sea!
- Battery life is great so far, lasts all day with me playing music and watching videos
- 8MP camera and video, I've taken some good shots so far
- expandable memory (mine came with an 8GB memory card)
Things I'm not so keen on
- Not many cases available (however, I purchased this one along with some screen protectors, which is again, great value in my opinion, and looks a lot nicer than I thought it would: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecell-BLACK-PERFORATED-ERICSSON-XPERIA/dp/B0086LU3I4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1347028049&sr=8-4)
- Internal memory is tiny (less than 1GB), annoying to have to keep transferring everything to the SD card
- The buttons on the phone (not the keyboard) are quite small and fiddly, annoying if you want to take a screen shot for example
- The internet can be slow (weird since the video is so great!) but maybe I just need to try out a new app, I'm using google chrome at the moment. sometimes works great but sometimes just can't seem to load the page...
Summary
I love it! It's the first 'proper' phone I've had as I said, so maybe people who are used to something a bit higher range it might not like it so much, I guess I've had nothing to compare it to. However, it does all the stuff I want it to do - calls, texts, emails, internet, sat nav, watching videos, takes pictures and records videos, calendar, alarms etc, all for only £166, so why would I pay £500 for an iphone or Samsung Galaxy S3? Plus they don't have keyboards! Ok it might not have a huge range of pretty cases available and the buttons are a little fiddly, but I can live with that if I have £350 left for a holiday! Or, to pay my household bills... not quite as exciting but still a good thing!
Oh also, I decided to go with GiffGaff for my network provider, after having been with Orange for 3 years being tied into a 12 month and then a 25 month contract during which I paid them a ridiculous amount of money including when I was on holiday for 6 weeks and not even using my phone (argh!). I discovered that getting a pay as you go phone plus GiffGaff's £10 a month deal is actually cheaper than having a contract (for this phone at least, plus many others) and I get to have unlimited texts and internet, and I can cancel/pause it any time I like cos it's only a 1 month contract - it's great!
If anyone wants to try GiffGaff I can send you a free sim card with £5 credit on it so just let me know!
Hope you found this review helpful!
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