Sony Ericsson, never known to be the fastest at pushing XPERIA products out the door, is finally shipping the XPERIA X8, which the company is dubbing its most affordable Android handset ever. Sitting between the X10 and X10 mini in terms of features, the X8 packs in a 3-inch HVGA display, 600MHz processor, and a 3.1-megapixel camera. Oddly that’s a lower resolution than even the five-megapixel X10 mini with its QVGA screen, but we suppose they needed to cut some corners in order to bring this model in at under $300.

Also on board are Bluetooth, three-flavor WiFi, and the same UI as the company’s mini range; unfortunately, it also comes preloaded with the same dated Android 1.6 as many of its line mates, and from what we hear, Android 2.1 Eclair is about as far as most of these models will get upgraded. Exact launch regions were not specified, but you can be pretty sure that this hasn’t been picked up by a US carrier yet.

(via: GSMArena and Sony Ericsson)