[XPERIA X8 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Deji666:
Hello xda. I've been a big selfish user of the stuff provided here for a while, as have many. I own an XPERIA X8 and it's the best phone I've ever owned (ehem.. perhaps because it's the first smartphone I've ever owned). I just wish it was a little better. I enjoyed the stock stuff for a while until my internal storage filled up too much, then I rooted and upgraded it to an easy to install Froyo ROM as it was my first time doing such things (as good as I am with programming PC's, I thought I would surely screw that up). It was great and had kept me happy for over a year, but I didn't realise how old Froyo was until I heard about Jellybean and 'Project Butter' and how it even outperforms old versions of Android. I've been limited in Froyo to relatively basic stuff anyway so I thought since I'd basically installed an android version only one step up from the stock Eclair, there'd be a lot of better versions out there.

This is where my nightmare begun. Since I already had xRecovery, I thought the process would be as simple as "download rom, install in xRecovery". A bit too ambitious, I ended up "soft bricking" my phone and having to fix it by going back to Eclair. Then, somehow, I could not even root the damn thing under the guidance of any tutorial. It's like it suddenly caught an immunity. After ages of meddling I managed to do so and get to the next step. Then the problem occurred that Superuser wasn't kicking in and allowing anything root access. I also had problems getting a new kernel on the phone and ended up only managing to install some random kernels I wasn't even sure supported the rom I was trying to install. I had some more problems trying to install CWM and it was around then I noticed another occurring problem. Apparently for installation of Jellybean, I needed to unlock bootloader, which apparently can't be done on devices with a certain version of motherboard. Mine is 11W41. I heard that this sometimes doesn't matter depending on the specific version, but after all the problems and reading up how hard it would be to recover from a problem if it occurred. So after a long time not finding alternate solutions, I decided to go for something lower.

Ice Cream Sandwich apparently had a similar problem, but I didn't spend long looking (by that time it was really late at night and I just wanted to at least get rid of Eclair again). Eventually I installed Gingerbread, which managed to work well... the second time I tried. The first time I mucked something up and ended up going back to Eclair yet again. Well, now I at least have the GingerXperia Revolution V3 rom installed, but I'm still wondering if this is the best I can do according to the X8. So yeah, that's the rant of my nightmarish story, but this is, ehem, a Q&A... so my question is, before I get too settled with my current phone set-up, is there any better option for my phone? Have I misunderstood some things and I actually do have a way of updating my kernel in order to install a better rom? From a rom, I obviously just want a well-packed version of android (Froyo was way to simplistic, having very few options to improve the experience), which is fast and suitable for every day use. As a bonus I would like it to be swappable so I can increase the RAM with SD memory and increase internal storage size (even with the ability to move apps to the SD, the phone fills up way too fast). I'd be very surprised if I've managed to pick the best way to upgrade my phone.

I know this heavily depends on opinion, so I just want to hear it. If there is better things I can do to it, I could do with a point in the right direction!