10 months ago I was given a Samsung Galaxy S Android phone [1] to replace my Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. I also installed Cyanogenmod on it (here is a more detailed comparison of the phones with a focus on liberty [2]). But now I’m using the Xperia X10 again.
Hardware Reliability
Some time ago a friend told me that he bought a Sony phone in preference to a Samsung phone because he didn’t think that Samsung phones were reliable enough. I assured him that Samsung phones would be fine if you used a gel-case, but now I’m not so sure. My mother in law has a Samsung Galaxy S which now has a single crack across the face, it doesn’t appear that her phone was dropped, maybe it just bent a bit – it’s a fairly thin phone. My Galaxy S started crashing over the last few months and now many applications will crash any time I use 3G networking. Currently my Galaxy S is working well as a small Wifi tablet and hasn’t crashed since I replaced the SIM with one that has expired.
I wish that phone designers would make mode solid products with bigger batteries. The fact that the Xperia X10 weighs maybe 20g more than the Galaxy S (according to Wikipedia) isn’t a problem for me. Even with the Mugen Power 1800mah battery [4] to replace the original 1500mah battery it’s still nowhere near the limit of the phone mass that I’m prepared to carry.
Sony Upgrades
Some time ago Sony released an Android 2.3.3 image for the Xperia X10. There is no Cyanogenmod image for the Xperia X10 because it has been locked down which greatly limits what can be done. Also Sony has a proprietary backup program on their Android 2.1 image which isn’t supported on Android 2.3.3 – this inspired my post about 5 principles of backup software [3]. Due to this pain I didn’t even try to upgrade the Xperia X10 phones for me and my wife until recently.
Before upgrading the Xperia X10 phones I was unable to use my wife’s phone. The phone didn’t seem to like recognising my touch so long touch actions (such as unlocking the phone) were almost impossible for me. I think that this is due to the fact that I have fairly dry skin which presumably gives me a higher capacitance. After the upgrade both phones are usable for me, so presumably either Sony or Google upgraded the algorithms for recognising touch to work better with varying screen quality.
Comparing the Galaxy S and the Xperia X10
When I first started running Cyanogenmod on the Galaxy S I noticed that it was a lot faster than the Xperia X10 but I didn’t know why. It was documented that there had been performance improvements in Android 2.2. Now that I’m running Android 2.3.3 on the Xperia X10 I know that the performance difference is not due to the Android version. It could be due to Cyanogenmod optimisations or Sony stupidity, but it’s most likely due to hardware differences.
The Galaxy S has more RAM and storage which allows installing and running more applications. Now that I’m using the Xperia X10 for the bare minimum applications (phone calls, SMS, camera, email, ssh, and web browsing) it works quite well. I still play games on the Galaxy S and use it for more serious web browsing via Wifi. I think that the value I’m getting from the Galaxy S as a tiny wifi tablet is greater than the money I might get from selling a partially broken phone that’s been obsoleted by two significantly better models.
Conclusion
The camera on the Xperia X10 is significantly better than the one on the Galaxy S, so going back to a phone that has a great camera is a real benefit. But being slow and locked down is a real drag. I was tempted to buy a Samsung Galaxy Note or Galaxy S3, but it seemed like a bad idea to buy a phone given that my contract comes up for renewal in about 6 months which means I’ll be offered a “free” phone which while not really free is still going to be cheaper than buying a phone outright.
Also in future given the low opinion I’m now getting of smart phone reliability I’ll try and keep a small stock of spare Android phones to cover the case of broken phones.
