I love the X10 Mini Pro. I’ve had it for a few weeks now and am still marvelling at how light and compact it is and that I once again have an FM radio with me at all times.  However I am struggling to adjust to the customisations that Sony Ericsson have made to to Android.  For example:

• Right now, as I type, there’s an annoying blue bar occupying the bottom sixth of my screen. On the left-hand side it tells me, in no more than three letters, what language I’m currently set to.  On the right-hand side it tells me what mode the keyboard is in (letters vs. numbers, upper, lower or title case) and provides an option to hide the bar.  It’s information I’d rather do without, in return for a larger usable screen area. So I hide it, only to discover that it reappears with the very next key press…  I’ve had a rummage through the phone’s settings and haven’t yet found an option that enables me to hide it for good.  If you know of one, please let me know.
• The default calendar widget has less functionality than the default one on my G1 – and that was just enough to make it useful!
• The default email client assumes that my email account name is the same as my email address (which it isn’t).
• Although I’ve disabled the on-screen keyboard (it has a hardware one) it still pops up if when the cursor is placed in a form field and I haven’t yet opened the keyboard. I understand that some people might want this sometimes but, personally, I’d like “off” to mean “off”.  This could be solved using  finer grained preference settings.

However, every cloud has a silver lining:

• Luckily there’s a fantastic email app called K-9 Mail that does everything I need and more, so that’s my email problem solved.
• And as I’ve yet to find a decent calendar widget so I’m thinking of taking a stab at creating one myself.

Bites is very simple recipe manager, in interface and functionality; beautifully quick and easy to use. What makes it special, though, for me, is its integration with OI Shopping List: at the press of a button in Bites, I can add all of the ingredients I need to my shopping list.

If I already have an ingredient, I can tick it off before I copy it across and only the ingredients I really need will be added. If, like me, you have more than one list set up in OI Shopping List, the process allows you to specify which one, exactly, the ingredients should be added to. Also, to help you remember why it’s essential that you buy black treacle this week, the name of the recipe it’s required for (fruit cake) is appended to each ingredient name in the Shopping List.

The only feature that I miss, from both apps, is the option to specify the name of an ingredient/item and the quantity required separately. I’ve requested this from both app makers and have my fingers crossed that it’ll be added in the New Year.

Christmas planning is going so much more smoothly with the help of these two apps (and RTM), though. Only a zillion things left to do..!

There are some apps that I could delete but I’m reluctant to do so because I like them and might forget what they’re called should I acquire a more powerful android device and wish to reinstall them.  There are others that I rarely use but do exactly what I need them to do on those rare occasions that I do need them.  Until now, I’ve been managing to hang on to the aforementioned apps by deleting apps that I’ve installed either because they looked as though they’d do what I needed but didn’t or simply because they looked shiny in the store but quickly dulled with use.  However, with Christmas looming, last night I thought I’d try installing the RTM android app – and it’s a whopper (~3.75MB).  I’m determined to give it a proper trial but this means that finally I’m going to have to get ruthless with the other apps.

As I shall probably wish/need to reinstall some of them at a later date, if not on this phone then another, here’s a rollcall of the victims of this cull:

The RTM app had better be good…