Sony Xperia TX review

The contacts app on the Xperia is blander than a stirred martini. You can either sync your contacts over PC or use your Google account to manage your connections.

Like other phones like the HTC One X and Nokia Lumia 920, the Xperia TX also pulls in contact details from Facebook and Twitter contacts as well.

Unfortunately, there's no automatic reconciliation of contacts, merging the different streams into one manageable list.

You can manually start the process by choosing the option from the settings menu, but the phone has a tendency to try and link people together just because they have the same first name or the same office phone number.

Naturally, once combining contacts into a mega account has been done, you can customise them with extra information, individual ringtones and photos.

One nice addition that comes via the social media connection is the ability to add a person's interests to their contact card, pulled directly from their Likes on Facebook. It's similar to the social integration found in the upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system, but limited to Facebook friends.

Calling

The dialler app initially resides on the bottom right corner of every home page, although thanks to the Xperia's customisability, you can easily move it to a more convenient location.

The keypad is evenly spaced and fits in nicely with the Timescape theme. It's also a relatively smart keypad, automatically narrowing down your contacts as you enter in numbers until the right person appears on the screen.

If you don't know the contact's number off the top of your head, you can use the T9-like letters to spell out the contact's name, and the phone will recognise who you are looking for in real time.

Each time you enter a number from the dialler, you can opt to send the contact a text message as well as call them. It's a slightly more convoluted way of doing things, but at least it's an option.

The dialler also lets you add contacts directly, either by adding a number to an existing contact, or creating a new contact altogether.

Across the top of the dialer are four menu options: Contacts, Keypad, Starred and Groups. The latter of these link in nicely with your Google contacts, allowing you to quickly send emails or text messages to more than one person at a time.

Call quality is as good as you'd expect on a modern day smartphone. Honestly, it's good enough, but nothing to get excited about. If anything, it could probably be a little bit louder for times when you're talking in a noisy environment.