Man fights with android

My remit here was to replace my internet phone cheaply, I have a pay as you go mobile with the T-mobile £20 for six months internet add on, and I needed a replacement phone for about £100.

My minimum requirements were:

A reasonable camera.

Being able to publish to my blog easily from it, including publishing images.

Being able to watch the BBC news live on it.

Being able to watch youtube clips on it.

Receiving my emails and getting a sound notification when they arrive.

Obviously the ordinary internet access and mobile phone facilities go without saying.

I am not sure if my replacement internet phone is winning or I am, it is a close run thing believe me.

I bought a secondhand Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 for £117 and I am now learning to use it.

Here are the pictures I took today using its camera http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop1011/id4.htm

In the past I have only used cameras with an optical viewfinder, these images have been reduced in size for internet publishing this one however is a crop from an average full sized one http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop1011/id5.htm

I was extremely unkind to this little camera, using it in low light in a moving vehicle, pointing it into the sun and so on and I am very happy with the way it performed.

I am used to a very old Windows phone with some archaic version of MS word for phones that operated a fairly normal spell check, so far I can’t find a way to make the Android system do this.

Spelling is handled by the keyboard and initially I found this impossible to use, being Mr Sausage Fingers, I have to use the larger, sideways version of the on screen keyboard, the idea being that it suggests words as you type and when right word pops up you touch it an hey presto it is there. The trouble was that in the sideways version nothing much happened until I had pressed it numerous times, the solution to this was to download the Gingerbread keyboard app.  

Blogging, the blogger app is pretty good and I have been using it to produce some posts on this blog.

Most importantly it allows you insert images easily, the options being either to inset one that you have already taken or take one with the phones camera at the time.

The pre installed Facebook app was draining the battery, I overcame this by updating it.   

The main bookselling app is the Amazon one, this allows the phones camera to read the barcodes on books and looks them up on Amazon. 


Have added Androidsx spellchecker best yet and I probably buy the adds free version.

I will add to this post if I get time.