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Review: Sony Xperia S

Review: Sony Xperia S

Xperia S, the first smartphone from the rebranded Sony Mobile, tries to offer everything from looks to smart functionality. But does it succeed?

Nidhi Singal
Nidhi Singal
Print Edition: 01 Jun, 2012
Xperia S, the first smartphone from the rebranded Sony Mobile, tries to offer everything from looks to smart functionality. But does it succeed?

SONY XPERIA S
Price: Rs 32,500
Specs: 4.3 inch display; 1.5 GHz dualcore processor; 32GB onboard storage; Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth; 12.1MP camera; 144 gm; 1750mAh battery.

REINVENTING DESIGN
The initial reactions to the phone were mixed. While some liked the new design with straight lines and a transparent band towards the lower end, many preferred the design of its predecessor, the Arc S. The transparent band is unique with back, home and menu icons-the actual keys are placed between the display and the band-but it does not respond half of the time. The display is bright and supports HD playback, which looked good over the Sony Bravia Engine.

12.1 SHOOTER
Sony has always scored high marks in its imaging department and the Xperia S packs a hefty 12.1 MP. The camera has plenty of controls, including focus, ISO, metering mode, exposure value, etc, along with multiple scenes. There is also a shortcut camera key that instantly captures the image even from a locked screen. It also captured good videos at Full HD resolution. However, the low-light still images were not so impressive. While most of the pictures looked good on the phone's display, some results were disappointing when viewed on a bigger screen.

DUAL SPEED?
On paper the Xperia S is a powerful smartphone with a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor and 1GB RAM. But we could see only a slight improvement in performance over previous generation Xperia phones.

STILL GINGERBREAD
Also, don't expect the Xperia S to run on Android ICS out of the box. The device still operates on Android Gingerbread. An upgrade will be coming soon.

BAG IT OR JUNK IT? Decent hardware but you have better options in the market.

WHY ANDROID V4.0 OVER ANDROID V2.3?
Android v4.0, or IceCream Sandwich, is the new buzzword among mobile geeks. Even when we review phones, anything less than ICS seems so yesterday now. Unlike Apple, which offers OS upgrade to all users across the world in one go, Android users have a long wait. Google announced ICS last October, but till date we only have a handful of phones running the latest OS. While HTC One X and One V come with ICS onboard, many new phones such as Sony Xperia S, Samsung Galaxy Advance still run on the older Android v2.3. But thankfully, companies are now looking at upgrading the phones. Sony recently made ICS available for its Xperia lineup launched in 2011.

So what does ICS bring to the table? Until the launch of the Ice-Cream Sandwich, there was a different version of the operating system for smartphones and tablets. But ICS brings together the best of both worlds and will run on both. The ICS interface looks similar to the Honeycomb (Android v3.0) OS for tablets. Google focused on doing away with the touch buttons for home, back and menu and replaced them with onscreen keys while showing the OS on the Galaxy Nexus. But this doesn't seem like a compulsion as these keys are present on the HTC One X.

However, the biggest delight is the enhanced multi-tasking as you can now launch a running app with a touch or shut it with a single swipe. There is also an option to resize widgets and access camera without unlocking the phone. As Android phones hog a lot of data, users can now track the data usage from the settings itself. Android 4.0 is focused on improving camera performance and comes with a redesigned gallery and a powerful photo editor. An enhanced browsing experience, improved email with auto-completion, Wi-Fi Direct for connecting to nearby peer devices and face unlock are some of the other highlights of the new version. Overall, ICS offers a better user interface while also enhancing the overall performance of an Android smartphone.


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