[XPERIA X1 General] digital_elysium:
There are probably quite a few people on here that have had the same experience with the X1 that I have had.

After buying the phone, the emotions went from excitement, to frustration to deep disappointment. I bought it because I wanted a customisable, powerful phone with plenty of convergence opportunities. However, out-of-the-box the phone is sluggish, the "panels" implementation is a waste of time, battery life is abysmal and worst of all it is woefully unfriendly on the finger.

I visited this forum regularly; passively reading the threads and looking at the different applications on offer. Some of them did improve the situation; iContact was a favourite... very finger friendly PIM app. However, these apps struggled to mask the inadequacies of the phone.

A lot of the posts on here related to ROMs, and initially I resisted. I read the posts in which people had dramatically improved the phone by "flashing" the operating system with something entirely new, and I was cautiously tempted. But I also read the posts from those for whom the flashing process went wrong. Knowing that if something could go wrong, it WOULD go wrong with me... I didn't want to take the risk of having a very expensive brick in my possession. I also felt a bit cheated... you shouldn't NEED to go through the fairly drastic process of flashing your phone in order to get it work satisfactorily.

I persevered for 5 months and eventually got to the point of making a tough decision. I wasn't happy with the phone... and was willing to write it off as a mistake and buy a new one. As I normally only buy phones on upgrade, to do it mid-contract it would work out very expensive for me. However, it did give me an opportunity.... flash the ROM; if it failed, I go and buy a new phone (as I was resigned to do anyway), if it was successful, I can have a fresh start with the X1.

I read through hundreds of posts on this forum and took lots of notes. I started by downloading HardSPL as was recommended by most in order to prime the phone to accept flashing with non-standard ROMs. I docked my phone to the PC via ActiveSync, and ran the program (making sure to turn off the "advanced networking" option in ActiveSync). It ran through OK (took 5 minutes), the phone rebooted, and everything seemed OK. Part 1 successful.

I then chose a ROM. This was actually a hard choice, as I had no frame of reference. The ROM "Chefs" in the other forum do their best to explain things to N00bs, but in the end, words like "Titanium" and "Rhodium" and "Manilla" crop up so often that the posters can't be expected to explain it each time. A good idea for a forum regular might be to put a sticky at the top of the forum with a very simple glossary explaining each of these terms.

Also frustratingly, most of the ROM chefs also claims theirs to be "super fast". In the end, there is no real way to judge the great chefs from the bad... other than to taste the food!

I settled for mobilevu's [V-LITE 3.5 Final Titanium]. I wanted to make sure I went for Windows Mobile 6.5 implementation, as I was hoping most of the annoyances I had with the phone were due to Windows Mobile 6.1.

I backed up all my contacts online using the nice and simple Google Sync, formatted my micro SD card, copied the ROM to the card, and then turned off the phone. I restarted by holding down the volume and power buttons at the same time, which loaded the BootLoader screen. Took a deep breath... then started the process. It took about 45 minutes in total to flash the phone, setup Windows and then install all of the customisations.

In the end? I'm fairly happy. WM6.5 is a finger-friendly improvement, and the Titanium interface is quite intuitive. It feels like a different phone, and for now, it feels less sluggish. It's still not perfect, and I have traded old annoyances for new ones, e.g. I now don't have an easy way to see my battery status, and closing applications always returns you to the Home screen rather than the last menu you were browsing. Little niggles that I will have to iron out to be totally happy. However, the key thing is that I have given the phone a "clean slate" and I am confident about doing it again should the need arise. It is an involved process and not something I plan to do every week, but it's not as stressful as I first imagined... and it's cheaper than buying a new one!