We all have been waiting for the first true ‘Sony’ smartphone ever since Sony took over Ericsson. The wait is finally over. The first outcome of the ‘Sony’ brand is the Xperia S. The Xperia S is the first smartphone from Sony. Let’s see what the Xperia S has in store for us.
Introduction:
The Xperia S has very high specifications to support it and some of those are a super-fast 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and an impressive 1GB of RAM. But mere specifications don’t make the phone the best in the world. It is the real life performance which does. What we are interested in is how a device performs every task in real life and that’s pretty much all that matters. So without further ado, let’s see whether the Xperia S offers some brilliant real life performance or not.Check Xperia S Specifications
Design:
The Xperia S is unlike any phone we have ever seen before from Sony a.k.a. Sony Ericsson. With a clean slab like design and rounded edges, this phone looks great and feels great in hands thanks to the human curvature design on the back. This design allows your palm and fingers to fit perfectly to the phone back so that you can hold the phone with a firm gripping. Below the big 4.3 inch screen, you can see the transparent strip which goes 360 degree around the phone and believe us, it’s really transparent. The capacitive home, back and menu buttons are places just above the transparent strip and are marked by 3 illuminating white dots.
All in all, we loved the Xperia S design and build quality and are pleased to say it easily stand apart from the rest of the crowd due to its transparent strip and bold looks. The only minor problem we had with the Xperia S are the capacitive keys which took a little time getting used to because the position of the icons and the actual position where the keys are located are different! OH, and the back cover of the Xperia S has an anti-stain coating due to which any dust, dirt, liquids that fall on it can be removed easily with a single swipe of your hand! Permanent markers can also be erased by using an eraser.
Display:
The Xperia S has a LED-backlit LCD display powered by Sony's mobile Bravia Engine. The display has an amazingly high resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. This makes the display unlike anything we have ever seen before. The display is absolutely gorgeous. As soon you turn on the phone, the screen is all that you will love! The Xperia S has the highest pixel density ever found on a mobile phone. The PPI (pixel per inch) ratio of Xperia S is 342 which is even higher than the iPhone 4S. Higher PPI generally means a display of better quality. The viewing angles and the sunlight legibility of the Xperia S are very good.
The display of the Xperia S has a very high contrast, amazing level of sharpness and natural color reproduction. Watching movies and viewing pictures on the Xperia S is an unmatched experience. We absolutely love the display and so will you. Just watch this video comparing the Xperia S display with the one on the iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and see for yourself why the Xperia S has the best display in the world as of now.
Xperia S vs. iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus Display Comparison
User Interface & Performance:
Sony has developed its own custom user interface over Android 2.3 Gingerbread. And we have to admit, the User Interface (UI) on the Xperia S is one of the best available in the market. The new interface is sleek, sexy and a joy to use. It’s also as smooth as silk thanks to the blazing fast 1.5GHz dual core processor and 1GB of RAM. There are plenty of functional and good looking widgets included by Sony. The phone comes with 32GB of inbuilt memory which should be enough for any user. Sony’s User Interface adds some cool and very useful functionality while spicing it up with some cool looking animations and sexy live wallpaper. Games on the Xperia S run super smooth and there is absolutely no problem running anything on the Xperia S. While some might argue that the new quad-core armies of phones are faster than the Xperia S, it is important to note the real life performance of the phone. And real life performance says that the Xperia S will never make you unhappy. The battery life of the Xperia S is good for a phone with such high specs. Also, when compared to its competitors, the battery lasts longer.
Apps, Browser and Connectivity:
The Xperia S comes with a whole bunch of pre-installed apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Google apps like Gmail, Google maps, etc. Sony has also included Timescape, a social feed aggregator which collects feeds from your favorite social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. The phonebook in the Xperia S has a very deep social networking integration and excels at integrating Facebook contacts information in the contact view. All other basics apps are also present of course and have good amount of features. The virtual keyboard on the Xperia S is a joy to use. Sony also gives 50GB of free online Box storage to all Xperia S users. The Office Suite app is also included for viewing document files. Call quality on the Xperia S was good with the secondary microphone working very well in cancelling out external noises. The loudspeaker is equally sound.
Browsing on the Xperia S was as fast as you can imagine and the browser UI was minimal and functional at best. All sites opened swiftly and navigating around was fun. Flash websites were also handled with ease and the Xperia S never depressed us. Xperia S comes with almost all types of connectivity options like 3G, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, DLNA wireless media streaming to HD TVs. NFC support is also included in the Xperia S. Due to this, two NFC enabled phones can share images, videos, links, etc. with each other by just a touch and data is shared at speeds more than 10 times faster than Bluetooth. Sony has included 2 NFS tags in the box which enhance the functionality of the Xperia S by allowing users to customize it. See how NFC tags work.
All in all, the Xperia S offers one the best experiences to users. The few problems with the Xperia S are as follow: It runs on an older version on Android i.e.Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) update is on its way so that shouldn’t really be a problem. The battery is non-removable which might not satisfy some users. The battery life of the Xperia S is good but it isn’t better than the iPhone 4S.
Check out a video of the User Interface (UI) on the Xperia S and don’t forget to turn on 720p mode for better viewing.
Sony Xperia S User Interface
Camera:
The Xperia S has a whopping 12MP with LED flash and has various functions like auto-focus, geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection. The camera has an Exmor R sensor from Sony due to which the Xperia S can shoot and capture very well even in low light where practically almost all the camera phones in the world fail. The Xperia S also has panorama, 3D panorama, sweep multi angle mode for capturing different types of images. The Xperia S also has a Quick Launch mode in which lets you start your camera and capture an image even when the device is locked! And all this in just 1.5 seconds! Fast! The Xperia S has fast capture technology which enables it to capture shots with practically no lag in the shutter press and the shot pic! Videos can be captured at Full HD resolution i.e. at 1080p at 30 frames per second (fps). The UI of the camera is excellent.
The quality of images captured by the Xperia S was amazing. Very high level of detail, good contrast and rich looking natural colors, low noise levels. Everything looks perfect on the Xperia S. Videos also share the same cool qualities of high detail and are very smooth and the frame rate never drops below 30fps thus leading to better videos. Videos shot in low light also come out very good. The only minor problem we has with the camera was that the panorama mode didn’t work properly sometimes and kept o showing error messages. Hopefully, Sony fixes this with an update. Overall, we are convinced that the Xperia S camera is one of the best camera’s in the world. If you’re not convinced have a look at the links below where Xperia S camera and video samples are given. Also, the Xperia S has been compared with other potential camera phones on the market like the HTC One X and the iPhone 4S.
- Sony Xperia S vs. Htc One X Camera Shootout
- Sony Xperia S vs. Nokia N8 vs. Samsung Galaxy S2 vs. Htc Sensation XL vs. Fujifilm Finepix T200 in Camera shootout
- Sony Xperia S vs. iPhone 4S in Video shooting under low lighting conditions
- Sony Xperia S vs. Nokia N8 Video Shooting
- Sony Xperia S vs. iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S2 vs. Nokia N8 Fast Capture Test
- Sony Xperia S Camera samples and 1080p Video Sample
- Sony Xperia S 1080p (Full HD) video sample
So we guess, it’s easy to conclude that the Xperia S can easily be crowned as the best camera phone on the earth.
Multimedia:
The music player on the Xperia S looks very cool and has decent amount of eye-candy included with features like 3D Cover-Flow. The UI of the Music Player is very good with tabbed interface and plenty of sorting options, SensMe channels, Qriocity music unlimited service etc. There are plenty of sound enhancement options like Preset EQs, Custom EQ, Clear Bass technology from Sony Walkman, Headset Surround, etc. the Xperia S also has Sony’s xLOUD technology which enhances speaker volume without losing quality.
The Xperia S also has a good FM Radio app. TrackID is also included. Track ID is a ‘Shazam’ like service from Sony which listens to the song being played or sung by anyone and within seconds gives you the artist name and info and also gives an option to download the songs from an official online store. Neat! The default gallery app has cool 3D animations and also has Facebook and Picasa photo albums integration. The app is capable of playing 1080p i.e. Full HD videos flawlessly. A video editor is also present. There is a cool looking 3D photo and video widget with sexy looking animation available to place it on your home screen for fast access.
The audio quality of the Xperia S is very good and loud. Clean crisp voice, deep and punchy bass, good amount of treble and excellent noise suppression make the Xperia S one of the best music phones in the market with excellent audio quality on both the speaker and through the headset as well.
The only 2 problems we found with the Xperia S was that the video player does not support subtitles. You can download a good video player from the market though. The gallery app on the Xperia S is not as functional as the one in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). This isn’t a big problem as Android 4.0 ICS update is coming to the Xperia S.
Conclusion:
The Xperia S is an absolutely awesome smartphone to have. It is a phone representing a high level of personality with power and performance. There are a very few alternatives in the market to the Xperia S like the HTC One X and the iPhone 4S. The Xperia S is one of the best smartphone available right now. The screen is drop dead gorgeous and so is the camera and pretty much everything. Only suffering by the lack of Android 4.0 ICS, the Xperia S has everything it takes to become the king of the hill. Also, a price tag lower that the rest of the competition simply leaves no doubt that the Xperia is the smartphone to buy. Go ahead and grab a Xperia S now. It won’t underestimate you.
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