The Sony Ericsson LiveView ought to be the ultimate Android accessory – on paper at least. It’s a clip on remote that slurps all the essential info from your phone over Bluetooth, like calls, messages and social networking babble, and it’s tiny. Does it work in practice though? Read on and find out in our full Sony Ericsson LiveView review.
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We’ve weren’t all that kind on Sony Ericsson’s initial Android ventures, but between the Sony Ericsson LiveView and the slick, upcoming Xperia Arc, we’d say the company’s back on track. The Sony Ericsson LiveView is delightful little peripheral that, with a few hiccups, genuinely adds to experience of a select few Android phones.
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The LiveView is minuscule - more so than press photography makes out
Press pictures can be misleading, but sometimes they’re not flattering either. That’s the case here, as the Sony Ericsson LiveView is much smaller than we expected, measuring up at just 25x35x11mm. That’s still enough to house a 1.3-inch OLED display. At 128×128, it’s not particularly sharp, but that’s not the point: it’s readable, and readily accessible.
Sony Ericsson LiveView hub: Everything you need to know
While the Sony Ericsson LiveView doesn’t have a full on touchscreen per se, navigation through the device is fairly intuitive, using gestures on the sides of the front face, similar to gestures on Palm webOS phones on a smaller scale. There are physical select and power buttons on the top (long pressing select brings up the music controls), and left and right swipes let you thumb through apps. Our only gripe is that we found upward swipe gestures were less responsive than those from side to side, which can make reading longer Tweets tricky.
So how do you wear it?
Realistically, we found that you do have to wear the Sony Ericsson LiveView as a watch. While the clip does let you hook it onto clothing, where are you going to put it? If it’s in your pocket, it’s no more accessible than your phone, and unless you’re a substantially different shape to most humans, we can’t fathom where you could hook it that has the screen facing you easily.
The strap is velcro, granted, but noone will notice you wearing it
Luckily, the Sony Ericsson LiveView makes a much more respectable watch than you might think. It’s certainly a much classier affair than an iPod nano in a Griffin watch strap, even if it does use a velcro strap. We found nobody noticed us wearing it until we started prodding it. More of an issue is the battery life, which is good for one day, but not two, so you’ll need to charge every night. It’s also worth noting that the LiveView gets its time from your phone when paired, so it’s not a very helpful item away from your phone.
What does it actually do?
Plenty. You can control your music without looking at your phone (Which iPhone converts will love, since only a select few Android music apps even allow for track controls with the phone’s volume rocker), check incoming and messages and other services like Twitter.
Check out tweets from your wrist.
The Find Phone action meanwhile is supremely helpful, letting you instantly set your phone off beeping so you can pull it out from the catacombs of your sofa. There are also plugins you can download from the Android Market, and they’re quite broad in use. There are handy ones including a Gmail plugin, and more obscure ones which can even push messages from apps like Tasker to the Sony Ericsson LiveView. Of course, your mileage will vary with third party plugins so don’t be too upset if they don’t work. Not everyone we tried did, but it’s reassuring to see there is a community crafting these plugins.
Check out our ultimate Sony Ericsson LiveView hub now
Does it work all the time?
Aside from calls and texts, it’s worth noting that most web services and plugins only shove info to the Sony Ericsson LiveView at set intervals. We never found that an issue, but the Sony Ericsson LiveView isn’t entirely glitch free. A couple of times a day, we found it froze, then ran through all the buttons you’d pressed 30 seconds previously in frustration, which can lead to all sorts of accidents. The music controls also activate the native Android music player, which may come as a surprise to Sony Ericsson owners used to the Mediascape player, as Sony Ericsson had kept it hidden.
Track controls are very handy, but trigger surprise results on Xperia phones
The good news is that, contrary to what some sites had originally reported, the Sony Ericsson LiveView can be updated (presumably through its micro USB charging port on the bottom), and one update fixing connection issues is due imminently. Hopefully it’ll herald plenty more too, and we’d love to see Sony Ericsson crank out some solid first party plugins too.
While we didn’t suffer any random Bluetooth disconnects while testing with a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, save for when we walked out of our house without our phone, it’s also worth noting that support for the Sony Ericsson LiveView is by no means comprehensive. Your Sony Ericsson Xperia phone needs to have been updated to Android 2.1, and the list of other supported phones amounts to a few Samsung, HTC and Motorola models so be sure to check first. Our Android 2.3 Google Nexus S was having none of it when we tried to connect it.
Verdict
With third party plug-ins, the LiveView can only get better
The Sony Ericsson LiveView works a treat, and will only get better over time. It’s just a shame that inevitably with Android, you’ll need the right Android phone for it to work, and realistically, you’ll have to be willing to wear it in place of a watch, something you might not want to do if you own anything pricier than a cheap Casio already.
If you ditched a wrist timepiece long ago however, the Sony Ericsson LiveView is worth it even just to change tracks without fiddling in your pocket.
