Sony Xperia X1

Reluctantly (obviously) I decided to upgrade my venerable Nokia Communicator because 1. it's falling apart and 2. it's a free upgrade.

Having got used to having a keyboard I went for the Sony Xperia.

Apart from the dubious battery life it's not too bad. Internet access (which is a big must) is good, Wireless essentially doesn't work (it connects but won't use the connection), GPS and Google Maps is pretty neat and saves me having to buy a sat nav. Remote Desktop (which isn't there as standard but can be downloaded) is excellent.

But for a phone it's bloody annoying.

In normal use you're going to leave the phone locked.

So you get an incoming call, Screen lights up and you can answer the call. So far so good.

But let's say you want to put the caller on hold or use the touch tone key pad?

By now the screen back light has gone out (it only stays on a few seconds and there seems to be no obvious way of changing this for the phone) and the phone is still locked.

So you need to press the power button to illuminate the screen, then 2 buttons to unlock the phone, then you can finally use the key pad.

A masterpiece of design.

Footnote : I have since found a download that lets you modify this setting and others at http://www.cliffords.nu/ . I'll let you know if it works..