Since Sony has launched an "NXT" type of smartphone, headed by Xperia S. The new devices has got some extra furnished typical Sony style software with unique design, a crisp HD Display and a resolution bumping 12MP camera.The Xperia S is the first phone from the now single Sony ever since it is acquired Ericsson stake in the company.But specification detail won't able to tell you real story, so i'm going to make you aware by real phone.
First of all what will encompass in the box
Sony Xperia S ((LT 26i)
Micro USB Charger Cable
Wall Charger
Earphone with Mic
2 NFC Tags
Documents/Manuals
Sony Xperia S Specifications
- 2G Network: GSM 850/900/1900
- 3G Network: HSDPA 14.4 Mbps 850/900/1900/2100: HSUPA 5.8 Mbps
- Dimensions: 128x64x10.6 mm
- Weight: 144gm
- Display: LED Backlit LCD, 720x1280Pixels, 4.3 inches (= 342 ppi pixel density)
- Accelerometer Sensor
- Bravia Mobile Engine
- Multi touch Input Method
- Proximity Sensor
- Touch sensitive control
- 3.5 mm Jack( Audio)
- Memory: 32 GB ROM, 1 GB RAM
- Micro SD: Upto 32 GB, 4 GB included
- Wi-fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-fi Direct , Wi-fi Hotspot
- Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP , EDR
- USB v2.0 Micro USB
- Camera : 12MP, 4000x3000 Pixels, Auto focus LED Flash
- 1080p@30fps, continuous autofocus, video light, video stablizer
- Secondary 1.3 MP Camera, 720p@30fps front facing camera
- OS: Android OS 2.3v (Ginger Bread), Upgradable to v 4.0
- CPU: Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon dual-core 1.5 GHz with Adreno 220
- Digital Compass
- Battey: Standard battery, Li-ion 1750 mAH
The top of the device is where the power button sits , alongside a 3.5mm headphone jack.The design is pretty slab like, with perfectly rectangular shape and flat side, it's just back which has got gentle curve. The front has a large glass sheet spanning almost the entire surface.
The curvy backside of the phone features the 12 MP camera very close to the top edge, a small LED flash close below, the speaker, and the secondary noise cancelling mic all in the neat line. nearer to the bottom you will find a logo of Sony Ericsson a subtly engraved Xperia LOGO.
Below the display is one of the most interesting design element, not just on this phone but upcoming and after most SONY's phone we have ever seen. It’s a thin strip of see-through glass that separates majority of the phone from a thin plastic chin at the bottom. Floating within the glass you can see icons for the three main function keys – Back, Home and Menu – but you don’t actually press the icons to actuate them. The actual pressure points are placed above the glass strip and below the display and indicated by three tiny dots.
The front is where you'll obviously find the expansive 4.3" display, completely hidden when turned off by the black glass surround. Above, you'll find the speaker grill, front facing VGA camera, and the familiar Sony logo. Below the display are three dots - these are the touch sensitive Android buttons for back, home and menu.
The following are some of the sample images from the Xperia S (left) and the N8 (right). The main image above in each case has been captured by the Xperia S.
Also, the keys are far too close to the display. Often when you are trying to press something at the bottom of the display, like the space key or the notification drawer when it is pulled down, you end up pressing the Home key. This can be quite infuriating, especially while playing games.
It’s extremely odd how Sony could have let such terrible arrangement through their testing phase and makes us wonder if anyone actually used the phone before they started shipping it.
Moving on, turning the phone around reveals an HDMI port below a flap, volume control buttons and camera shutter key on the right. On the left is another flap with the USB port underneath. We wish Sony had just gone with open ports placed on the side. Not only do the flaps spoil the design of the phone with large text and icons printed on it, they also make it a pain every time you have to connect a cable
On the bottom of the phone is a hole for attaching a lanyard (no one really does that these days but they have provided one anyway) along with a microphone. On top is the power button with the 3.5mm jack right next to it. The jack is so close to the power button that when you plug in an L-shaped connector to the jack, such as the one that comes with the phone, suddenly the power button becomes terribly difficult to use. This is just another one of the things that shows the poor attention to details by the designers.
On the back of the phone we find a tiny Sony Ericsson logo near the bottom. This does not come as a surprise because underneath this is a Sony Ericsson LT26i and many of the manuals that come with the phone refer to it as such. The phone was obviously in development long before the two companies decided to part ways and thus Ericsson would have had a lot to do with this phone, and the logo on the back signifies that.
BATTERY :-
The stamina of the Xperia S is actually pretty decent. It comes packing a 1750mAh battery which, fortunately, is on the large side given the fast dual-core processor and that screen. Despite some pretty power-hungry internals, the battery should give virtually all users at least one day of battery life. Even under some quite heavy use, it took me from 7am to around 7pm before giving in. Not surprisingly, internet browsing over 3G seemed to suck down the most power. More frugal users should see closer to two days, though everyone's mileage will vary of course. In the Android battery performance landscape, I'd say that the Xperia S is placed somewhere in the top 25%. The battery is sealed and non-replaceable. I don't really buy the excuse that there just isn't enough space - the Samsung Galaxy SII is considerably thinner and still manages a replaceable battery. You may also notice the lack of a micro SD card slot too, so the 16 or 32GB of built in memory is all you're going to get. While I can't think of any positive effect of these design choices, maybe it ain't so bad - Apple's iPhones also feature non-expandable memory and non-replaceable batteries yet they still fly off shelves like there's no tomorrow.
CAMERA :-
The Xperia S has a 12 megapixel camera with LED flash and 1080p video recording. It’s been quite a while since someone made a 12 megapixel camera. The N8, it seems, was the last of its kind and Nokia did such a great job with the camera on that phone that everybody else sort of just gave up and started concentrating on 8 megapixel cameras.
The camera is perhaps the headline feature of the Sony Xperia S, and may be the major reason why you'd be considering this device over other high performing smartphones. The Xperia S comes packing a 12MP camera, making it one of the few 12MP cameras available right now. However, megapixel count is not always an indicator of a good or bad camera - there are all sorts of other contributing factors that can make a poor camera usable or a great camera disappointing.
Fortunately, the camera (mostly) gets it right. As is the 'thing' right now, the Xperia S is super quick to start up the camera and be ready to snap. Holding the camera button will launch you straight into the camera even when the phone is in sleep mode, a la Windows Phone; it can even be configured to launch and take a shot as soon as its ready. This means that when you find yourself staring at a true one-off Kodak moment, all you need to do is take your phone out of your pocket, raise it and hold the camera key.
There are three different kinds of panorama modes on the Xperia S. First is the standard sweep panorama, in which you simply move the camera from left to right. Second is 3D sweep panorama, where the do the same action and then the camera takes the images and combines them in a 3D image that can only be viewed on a 3D TV by connecting the HDMI cable. Lastly, there is the sweep multi angle, where you move the camera the way you do in panorama, the phone captures multiple images and then shows you the 3D image result which consists of multiple images. You have to tilt the phone side to side and as you tilt you see the subject from side to side, which is supposed to create the illusion of depth. In practice, all of this is gimmick and of no real value to anyone.
PERFORMANCE:-
Despite being decidedly last year, the hardware performs very well. The dual-core CPU is pretty powerful and even the Adreno 220 GPU manages to keep up with today’s 3D games at 720p resolution, which is no small feat. It might not be as powerful as the Tegra 3 on the One X but is definitely faster than the TI OMAP 4430 on the Galaxy Nexus, as we found out through benchmark scores.
Unfortunately, the spoil sport here is Gingerbread. Sony has done some optimizations to make the UI feel smooth but you can still see it stutter due to a lack of hardware acceleration introduced in Android 4.0 for smartphones.
Powering up the device presents you with a pretty average lock screen, which features a clock and a pretty standard slide to unlock. There is also another slider, from right to left, to toggle sound profiles. Since Apple have recently been granted a patent (and are currently suing Samsung) on that "slide an object along a predefined path" method to unlock, it wouldn't be surprising if the Ice Cream Sandwich update changes that.
Above are the five home screens which can be customised just like any other Android phone with application shortcuts and widgets. The look is quite close to stock Android, as is the rest of the skin - Sony's is very much a light change to the vanilla Android look, unlike HTC's Sense. The default setup of the screen includes quite a few widgets which are easy to rearrange or remove should you want to. On the bottom row, there are five icons. The menu button to bring up the full list of apps sits in the middle, with four customisable shortcuts next to it. These can also be changed, and even be folders. It's simple to create a folder either on a home screen or in the dock which expands to show the apps within.
INTERNET AND EMAIL:-
One of the major selling points of Android is the browser, which is really very good. Apple's iOS used to be the clear leader when it came to mobile browsing, but it's not so clear cut any more. The Xperia S has a dual core 1.5GHz processor paired with 1GB of RAM. While the chipset isn't entirely new (we saw it on the HTC Sensation XE for example) it has no problem at all browsing the web. The differences between browsing speed and the quality of rendering between mid to high end devices are so small nowadays that the experience will largely be the same whether you choose an iPhone, Android, Windows Phone etc.
SOCIAL :-
Mobile phones are pretty much the primary go-to device for social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Android's application store, the newly rebranded Google Play Store, has an app (or ten) for every social network you can think of, but Sony have included some extra apps to supplement.
The main one is Timescape - this was introduced a while ago on Sony Ericsson phones, and is now an application. In short, it's a list of your social 'news' in one place. Tapping one takes you to the relevant app where you can reply etc. You can also post a status from Timescape that will be posted on all of your linked accounts.
Where Timescape has been improved since I last used it is its new extensions. This means that the list can be populated with more than just the preinstalled Facebook or Twitter. Virtually any social networking tool is available so, if you choose to use Timescape you won't find yourself yearning for more extensions.
Sony have also integrated Facebook into the interface. As far as I know, it is not something that other manufacturers have done, at least not to the extent that Sony have here. Under settings, you can enter your Facebook account details and various Facebook features will start to appear on the phone. In the gallery app for example, all of your Facebook albums and tagged photos, embarrassing or not, will be there along with a neat built in bar to see likes and comments on the photo, and reply without ever opening the Facebook for Android app.
MUSIC AND VIDEO:-
As mentioned before, Sony has changed the music player on the Xperia S, which is much better than the stock Gingerbread player. There is some confusion initially in terms of navigation as the Now Playing screen is in a different tab from the library, so pressing back in Now Playing screen makes you exit the player instead of going back to the track list but otherwise it’s a fine player.
The Now playing screen shows you the album art and generates a colored background for it that matches the color of the album art. There are also a five band custom equalizer with Sony’s Mega Bass feature, presets and surround effects (tacky, best avoided). There is also an xLOUD feature for boosting the loudspeaker volume, another “feature” for something that should be available by default. What’s the point of restricting the audio volume and then claiming to “boost” it using a setting.
The audio quality through the headphones is excellent. Sony continues to provide the best in-class headset with their phones, a tradition Sony Ericsson started all those years ago with Walkman phones. These simple black earphones sound several times better than the overhyped garbage that HTC ships under the Beats Audio badge. The loudspeaker on the phone also sounds good.
The phone does not have a dedicated video player, which is a shame. You have to play videos through the Gallery app and that’s not exactly a great experience. We tested the phone using the DicePlayer app and it handled every video we threw at it, including 1080p ones. This coupled with the good quality display and the great headset means watching videos, movies or TV shows is an absolute joy. Too bad Xperia S, like all Android phones, does not support files over 4GB.
SONY APPS:-
I've already talked about a few Sony added apps before, yet there are more. This definitely isn't a stock experience as you can see from the menu screenshots - there is already over three pages of preloaded apps. Usually, addition apps like this go unused and there are always apps which do a similar thing so some are questionable. There are some nice ones on the Xperia S though - let's start with those.
LiveWare manager is probably my favourite - what it does is something that echoes the 'smart' in smartphone. Using magic, it knows what you plug into your phone, and you can assign an action to trigger once you plug it in. Take headphones for example - plug in your headphones, and you can launch the music player automatically. Or a memory stick (with a micro USB to USB host adapter) - plug it in to launch ASTRO, the preinstalled file manager. While there is a popular alternative on the Play Store, Tasker, that is a much more complicated (yet also more powerful) app which many don't need. LiveWare will satisfy the majority of users, and best of all, it's available on the Play Store for non-Sony devices too.
An option that you won't see in LiveWare on other devices is SmartTags. These are basically an implementation of NFC (Near Field Communication) which is supposed to be shaking up the industry. While it is still being slowly implemented in other phones and credit cards and whatnot, Sony have come up with this neat SmartTag function. Included in the box are two plastic tags which you can just glance the back of the phone over after assigning functions to a particular one. It is best explained with a scenario; I took the red one and just left it by the front door. After setting it to turn WiFi on, Bluetooth and GPS off, I simply press the phone over it, and all my presets for Home are activated. The same is for the Car tag which I kept on the dash - I can set functions such as turning on GPS or using text to speech to read messages while driving. There a plethora of actions to add, and of course you can buy more tags - this is probably the most useful implementation of NFC there is, at least until contactless NFC payments become mainstream.
CONCLUSION :-
The Sony Xperia S is a strange one to qualify. It is launched as Sony's flagship device, yet it doesn't have the hardware credentials inside to play with the giants such as HTC's One X or the Galaxy Nexus. However, the Xperia S shows very well that throwing the latest hardware together isn't the way to produce a successful device. Yes, it boasts a 12 megapixel camera, but will choosing the iPhone 4S or HTC One S with their 8 megapixels make you worse off? Not at all. The Xperia S might get beat in a spec war but in my opinion that's fine; it is a very well rounded device with no major flaws, both software and hardware. Sony's Android skin is light, the display is super crisp, and the design looks modern without conforming to the utilitarian black-slab look.
