Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray review

Android 2.3 is installed, but as usual Sony Ericsson has added its Timescape user interface on top. This consists of a number of tweaks to the design of the interface, plus the Timescape app: a social aggregator that pulls feeds from Twitter, Facebook and your email and text messages. It can be expanded through plugins, but we found these limited in variety and in functionality. It’s also not as clever as HTC’s Sense, in that it doesn’t suggest duplicate contacts, but you can still manually “join” contacts if you long-press on an entry.

Thankfully, Sony Ericsson has left Android’s Clock app relatively unscathed, and the Gallery works as intended, but the Music app has changed, with no obvious way to repeat tracks. There’s also a Data Monitor for tracking call charges, a barcode reader, an office file viewer, a games store and a music recognition app. The Video app is a misnomer as it turned out to be Sony’s Qriocity, a film and TV show rental service. Of course, these are all installed as system apps so can’t be removed.

On paper, the Ray comes across as a powerful, capable phone with a great camera and an amazing screen. Unfortunately, the screen’s size means the on-screen keyboard is quite cramped, and in portrait mode we found it far less accurate than keyboards on larger-screened phones.

You can use the keyboard in landscape mode and rely on word prediction to catch any errors, but it’s something to bear in mind if you use your phone for heavy text input. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro might be a better choice for such users, otherwise the Ray is a fantastic piece of kit available for only £20 per month, so it wins our Budget Buy award.