[XPERIA X1 General] sir.chunk:
Day 1

Dear Diary,

I was so excited to receive my very first WinMo phone yesterday from Vodafone UK. I have been using Symbian OS phones before, and where they did the job, I found myself needing more from a device to fiddle with, and also to help with my new business I have set up.

I gave explicit instructions to my girlfriend to plug it into the mains so it’s all charged up ready from work.

5:30pm came and a rush back home to start playing with my new toy!

Well, firstly what an amazing looking phone. The feel of the phone it one of the best I have had, and I fell in love with it as soon as I picked it.

When I first started to use it though, I found myself over whelmed with the functionality and knew then I would have to change my mind set in more ways than 1.

I got straight onto xda to download all the neat extras that the people of this forum and others have contributed. I added the Manila cab file, TF3D panel installer, facebook panel and the SPB mobile shell.

At first I had to get my head round the panels idea. Once I did, what a really good feature. But I then noticed funny things going on. Contacts that I added were not being shown, I had to added them manually again, using the list of contacts within WinMo. I really thought that the contacts in Manila and SPB would of mirrored what was in the WinMo contact registry.

Being a noob with WinMo I started to panic trying to do the simple tasked that I took for granted with all my other previous phones.

Trying to send a txt was making me feel as if I have made a bad mistake. The whole process is so long winded. Too many menus and options to go through to finally type a text message in.

I then started to notice the reception. What reception! I thought something might have gone wrong, but after a couple of seconds waving it in the air, I finally got reception – 2 bars. 2 BARS! What the heck, my N95 gave me full reception. What’s going on here I thought. I also found it very temperamental, fluctuating greatly for no reason at all.

When I decided to retire to bed (at 1:30am!) I came across my final niggle. Setting the alarm! What a nightmare. Once again I had to go through the maze of options to be presented with a menu to setup an alarm. This was fiddly to say the least. The interface is so small I had to use the stylus to create an alarm which in my eye is even more an inconvenience.

I do like the phone, and I am hoping it is just me having to change my mindset. Doing the everyday tasks is a real pain in the bum, but then I am sure there will be easier ways of doing the things I want, as I have noticed that there is more than 1 way of doing things.

My only concern is the reception, and I will be keeping a close eye on this, and I feel this might be the reason I will have to send it back – No point in having an all singing all dancing phone with no reception!

Day 2

Dear Diary

Well, after some persistence the phones way of working is really starting to grow on me. I have spent more time adding contacts in to WinMo, which i can say is a pain, but once the information is there the phone really starts to shine.

I worked out that reason why TF3D and SPB don't sync with WinMo's contact is that what they actually offer is technically speed dials (Should of realised that when it says favorites - Doh!). All i do it select my most used contacts from WinMo, and with the addons (especially TF3D) it shows the contact in its full glory. And if i need a number not in there i just go straight to WinMo contact with a single click!

I updated the dialer to the Touch HD one, and WOW, so much better than the standard one. All i need now is more people to ring me so i can get to use all the features on offer :)

I also added the Touch HD keyboard, not a must because of the hard keyboard, but still better than the WinMo keyboard.

I am still getting used to the setup, but judging by how i am progressing so far with the phone, i feel it will only be a matter of time before i get totally used to it.

The reception is still worrying me tho. So i decided to do some tests. I drove home last night from work (16 miles) constantly checking the signal, and what i noticed surprised me a bit. I had signal all the way home, where with my N95 there were a few placed that i didn't.

This meant 2 things to me, either the phone didn't update the signal icon as much as the X1 over the N95, or the signal bars that show the strength were deceptive.

Ummmm food for thought. I just need to go to a place i know i defiantly do not get signal and do some tests there.

So, over all, it starting to be a good experience and i am starting to get to the nitty gritty of the device. Some one on here did say something that has stuck in my mind. "Phones are trying to be like PDA's and PDA's are trying to be phones". Having this angle getting an X1, going from the N95, has made me realise that i should stop trying to use it like a normal phone.

Tomorrow, i am going to try and sync it with outlook and others - I'm hoping that's when the confusion stops, and the fun begins!

Day 3/4

Well over the weekend I didn't have time to sync it to outlook (yet!), but I have managed to work out text messaging. It’s so easy to do now. Where i was going wrong was I was not used to the style. It's pretty much like MSN chat client where it always displays the history of message sent. What I was doing was replying manually and had to add the recipient etc. All I had to do was reply straight on the screen showing the message. Told you I was a total noob to all this!

I am noticing my attitude to the phone. Every time i am holding it I am being so careful. Careful not to scratch it, careful not to drop it, careful not to slide the keyboard out to hard, careful not press to hard on the screen - you get the idea. Every time I put it in my pocket making sure I don't have anything else in my pocket. So I am going to have to buy some sort of protection, lucky there's a nice section on xda to guide me on what’s best :)