I recently got my hands on a Sony Xperia S to review, but when it came time to pop in a SIM card to see how well it worked on the cellular network I found that it required a Micro SIM, which I didn’t have. Last Updated: 21-Apr-2012 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
That left me with only 3 options:
A) hack my SIM down to the size of a Micro SIM and use an adapter to use it on
my Galaxy S II LTE from now on; B) go to an Apple store and convince them I had
a new iPad and I needed a Micro LTE SIM, then either get an adapter or get them
to swap me back to a full-sized SIM; or C) write this review based only on the
functionality available without a SIM.
At first option C seemed out-of-the-question, because traditionally my reviews
have focused heavily upon the phone-as-a-phone aspect of a device. However, my
own usage patterns, as well as those of countless other smartphone owners, have
shifted away from using the device for telephone calls and more toward
data-centric communications (which may include voice, but in the form of VoIP or
push-to-talk services, both of which use a data connection). That doesn’t mean
that certain aspects of performance, such as RF sensitivity, aren’t still
important, but they seem to fade into the background compared to everything else
we do with the devices.
After much consideration I decided to go ahead with option C, though I don’t
plan to make a habit of this. So, for the first time in a phone review on this
web page I will NOT focus on the phone-as-a-phone aspect, and instead
concentrate solely upon the Xperia’s suitability as a data device.
Audio
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, an how to interpret it.
When not considering the phone
aspect at all, audio performance on a smartphone comes down to two things: how
good the built-in speaker is at reproducing multimedia audio; and how good
multimedia audio sounds on an external sound system or headset. I compared the
Xperia S directly with my Galaxy S II LTE, which as noted in its review has
audio properties virtually the same as its non-LTE cousin the Galaxy S II.
In terms of built-in speaker volume, the Xperia and the S II LTE seem to be
about equal. Sony provides a user-selectable feature called xLOUD, which
according to the description under the option, “enhances the loudness of the
speaker”. I turned this option on and off while listening to music and it does
indeed have some effect, but the amount of loudness increase is barely
detectable. What I suspect it might do is compress the dynamic range of the
sound so as to make quieter audio seem louder while not changing the volume of
louder audio.
As for tonal balance, the Xperia and the S II LTE come out almost equal again.
Both however are a little tinny compared to other phones I’ve tested in the
past, such as the Nokia N95. You can certainly listen to music through the
built-in speaker, but it’s hardly high-fidelity. It is however more than
adequate for most multimedia applications other than music. The volume and
overall tonal quality are great for watching YouTube videos and the speaker can
generate reasonable volume and quality for alerts and ringtones. When used with
Zello (a push-to-talk voice app) the volume and clarity were great.
When plugged into a sound system or headset, and operated without any
equalization applied, the two phones sound remarkable similar. However, this is
to be expected if they have any hope of making the grade as a music-playing
device.
Unlike a number of recent Samsung devices, the Xperia does not suffer from a
malady in which ticks and pops are heard through the speakers of your sound
system when the phone isn’t presently playing something. While these
disturbances are relatively minor on the Samsung devices, and they only occur
when you are doing something on the screen, they are still an annoyance that
thankfully the Xperia does not suffer from.
Display
The display on the Xperia is a gorgeous-looking LCD type with a resolution of
1280 x 720 that spans 4.3 inches diagonally. The LCD has reasonably good
contrast ratio (in that black ALMOST looks black, but not quite as much as so as
a Super AMOLED screen). At full brightness the Xperia outshines the S II LTE’s
AMOLED display and as such is much easier to see in bright outdoor conditions.
Unfortunately the display has a shortcoming that might eventually put you off of
it. It doesn’t do particularly well with low-contrast images such as you
typically see with Google Maps. To make matters worse, when viewed at
approximately 45 degrees (which isn’t all that unusual an angle to look at your
phone) the details on low-contrast images disappear. When I looked a Google Maps
image at 45 degrees the yellow roads and the green parks were TOTALLY INVISIBLE,
though I could still make out the road names (which were in black). Even viewed
straight on, it’s much more difficult to discern the subtle color shades used by
Google (which look great on a Super AMOLED screen at any angle).
However, the contrast issue and the viewing angle problems are not as big a
concern when watching videos, and this is one area where the Xperia really
shines. It’s super-bright display and well-saturated colors are just perfect for
watching movies or videos. Even if you do miss out on some of the subtle
shading, you aren’t likely to notice under these circumstances.
The 1280 x 720 resolution means that text looks (to steal a line from an iPad
commercial) pin-sharp. This is of course true of all 720p displays, which is
rapidly becoming the standard for high-end phones. Pictures and videos don’t
look especially better, but if you can examine the screen closely you’ll see
less ramping in sharply-angle lines.
Gingerbread (which the phone presently ships with) seems to handle this screen
resolution well, but generally stuff just looks smaller, which isn’t necessarily
a good thing if you have trouble focusing on the screen to begin with. It’s
great for people like me with the ability to remove our glasses and focus easily
on the screen at distances as close as 15 to 20 cm. For many others the smaller
sizes of many fonts might be a problem. Unlike my S II LTE, the Xperia doesn’t
appear to have settings for changing the native font size.
Some apps, perhaps due to bad programming practices, don’t display quite right
on the Xperia. For example, the dialogs for Audio FX seem to have their
checkboxes right on top of the text (which is supposed to appear next to them).
This was the only example of that I found during my testing, but it wouldn’t be
a stretch to assume that there are other examples out there, some perhaps more
annoying. It will probably go away with Ice Cream Sandwich anyway.
The Xperia does not include auto screen brightness. This isn’t a huge issue,
especially since auto-brightness is loosing some of its creditability with users
owing to how annoying it can sometimes be. However, if you still like the idea
of a screen that changes brightness to suit the conditions (and sometimes it
really is handy) then the lack of this feature is a concern.
The specs say that the Xperia supports 16 millions colors (in other words, it
supports 24-bit color). I proved that it really does by creating a 1280 x 720
image using Photoshop that had a slight gradient from corner to opposite corner.
I then displayed this image on the Xperia using the Gallery app, the QuickPic
app, and I set it as wallpaper. In all cases the gradient looked smooth and
consistent. If the phone were to have displayed this in 16-bit color the
gradient would have looked stepped, as there wouldn’t be enough colors to show
each the subtle changes from pixel to pixel.
However, and here’s where it gets weird, when I launched Slacker Radio I was
surprised to see very strong evidence of 16-bit color (or even 8-bit color).
Slacker uses a gradient image in the background of the app to look like a faint
spotlight shone on the lower portion of the screen. Without trying to explain it
you, just have a look for yourself (note, the Xperia screen capture is the
larger one). Also note that I’ve brought up the shadows in these screen captures
using Photoshop so that you can more clearly see what I’m talking about. Not all
computer screens will have the necessary contrast ratio (or are setup correctly)
to see this:
As you can see, the screen capture from the S II LTE (the smaller image, since
that phone is 800 x 480) shows the gradient correctly and it looks like the
spotlight it is supposed to be. However, on the Xperia the gradient looks
stepped and the colors are all over the map. It looks ugly to say the least. I
don’t know why 24-bit color isn’t employed in an app background, but for
whatever reason it isn’t and it can render some rather oddball effects,
depending upon the app.
Physical Keys
The Xperia comes with 3 “physical keys” (though in reality they are simply
touch-sensitive areas of the phone immediately below the screen). As an “artsy”
touch the area immediately below these is a see-through block of plastic with
little icons “floating” in it to designate the purpose of the touch buttons
above, which on the face of the phone are marked only with tiny silver dots. The
problem with this design is that no matter how long I used the phone I always
wanted to press the icon, which is a waste of time, because that area of the
phone is not touch-sensitive.
This wouldn’t be a huge problem if the touch sensitive-buttons were actually a
bit more touch-sensitive. As it stands they are a pest to use because they only
work if you touch in just the right way. They are also too close to the screen
and I often times ended up touching the lower portion of the screen when I
reached for the function button below it. Maybe I’m just spoiled by the S II
LTE, which has very sensitive buttons that are immediately below the icons and
are far enough from the screen not to cause an issue. It isn’t like Sony didn’t
have the necessary real estate to put these buttons further away from the
screen, but to implement their “artsy” design they were forced to do it. This is
a shameful example of form-before-function.
Now if all of the above wasn’t bad enough, they then decided to REVERSE the
positions of the menu and back buttons from what you find on the vast majority
of other Android phones (which I’m told is normal for Sony phones). If you’re
new to smartphones (and in particular you are new to Android) the placement of
the buttons is moot, because you’d find them unfamiliar either way. For seasoned
Android users however, this reversal is a pain-in-the-neck.
Processor and
Chipset
The Xperia is remarkably similar to my Galaxy S II LTE in a couple of keys ways.
They both use the Qualcomm MSM8x60 dual-core process clocked at 1.5 GHz, and
they both use the Adreno 220 GPU. Specially, the S II LTE uses the 8660 in order
to support LTE (as well as HSPA+), while the Xperia uses the 8260, which is
essentially the same chip, but it only supports HSPA+. These processors are
based on the based on the Cortex A8.
Not surprisingly many of the synthetic benchmarks are very similar in both
phones, with the exception of graphics performance. It doesn’t take a genius to
figure out why this is the case. Both phones run the same processor/GPU at the
same speed, but the Xperia has to display 2.4 times more pixels than the S II
LTE and this really hurts the results. For example, using GLBenchmark 2.1 Egypt
(Standard) the S II LTE can pull off 51 frames per second, while the Xperia can
only manage 31 frames per second. Using GLBenchmark 2.1 Egypt (High) the S II
LTE drops to 35 frames per second, but the Xperia can barely pull off 18 frames
per second.
While the above is mostly concerned with playing video games, some of what these
numbers tell us can be applied to the overall performance of the graphics in
day-to-day use. However, I didn’t find the Xperia that much slower or sluggish
than the S II LTE, though I did notice a difference when scrolling around
pictures using QuickPic (my favorite replacement for the Gallery app). When I
swiped on zoomed-in pictures the experience was more fluid on the S II LTE than
it was on the Xperia, no doubt a result of the larger number of pixels the
Xperia has to render.
Both phones have 1 GB RAM, which I have come to see as the optimal amount of RAM
for Android. 512 MB simply isn’t enough, because the O/S uses so much of it that
there isn’t really enough to keep enough apps in memory (especially if you run a
lot of background apps). While a phone with 512 MB of RAM has about 160 to 200
MB of RAM available for your apps (under Gingerbread), a phone with 1 GB of RAM
has 700 to 750 MB free, which is substantially more.
The Xperia comes with 32 GB of internal memory, while the S II LTE has only 16
MB. However, the Xperia does not have a MicroSD slot, which means that you can’t
add to that. The S II LTE does have a MicroSD slot, in which I have a 32 GB
class 10 chip, giving my phone 48 GB of total memory. In most cases 32 GB should
be enough, but if you find that limitation hard to accept there is nothing you
can do about it in the Xperia.
WiFi Performance
To test the overall quality of the WiFi chip (and/or its antenna) I took both
phones downstairs to my basement where the signal from my router was much
weaker. As a WiFi signal get weaker the overall data speeds drop, though
normally the ping times remain the same. I ran tests on both phones using
Speedtest.net and the Toronto server. Give or take, they were both approximately
the same, thus demonstrating their WiFi radios were at least the equal of one
another.
Data Speeds
The Xperia only supports HSPA+ to 14.4 Mbps. However, I’ve said this before and
I’ll say it again, to get the best speeds on HSPA+ you need to be fairly close
to a site, otherwise phones fall back to HSPA 7.2 and transfer rates rarely
exceed 6 Mbps (if you’re lucky). I wasn’t able to run any real-world tests of
the data rate due my lack of a suitable SIM card, but I’ve tested more than
enough HSPA+ phones (both 14.4 and 21 Mbps varieties) to know that this
particular aspect isn’t going to make much difference in day to day use.
GPS
When I first played around with the Xperia I noticed that it positioned me
extremely well while I was inside of my house. I therefore assumed that it had a
kick-ass GPS chip. To put it to the test I installed SportsTracker Pro and I
used the Xperia to track a couple of bike rides (which normally I track with my
S II LTE using that same app). I had high hopes, but in the end the tracks were
actually the WORST I’d ever seen. Even my old Galaxy Captivate could render far
more accurate tracks, and neither of my Samsung phones is as badly affected by
obstructions such as tall buildings or overpasses.
I still needed to find out why the GPS seemed to be more accurate indoors, and
so I installed the GPS Status app on the Xperia (I already had it on my S II
LTE) and I headed down into my basement. Not surprisingly the GPS signals were
rather weak down there, but both phones could eventually lock onto 6 or 7
satellites and provide at least 10 meter accuracy. The Xperia clearly had a more
sensitive GPS receiver and it was capable of finding more satellites sooner than
the Samsung. Once I was back on the main floor of my house however, both phones
performed about equally when it came to finding and locking into satellites.
So, the Xperia has the potential of working with much weaker GPS signals, but it
doesn’t yield better overall performance when the GPS signals are strong. In
fact, it produces markedly worse overall accuracy when used outdoors, so I find
it difficult to reconcile the excellent low-signal performance with the
questionable good-signal performance. Bottom line is, in day-to-day GPS use, the
Xperia simply can’t provide as accurate a position as can the S II LTE.
Camera
The Xperia comes with a lot of promise in the camera department. Not only does
it sport a 12 megapixel shooter, but it also comes from a company with plenty of
camera experience. The first thing that hits you however is just how crude and
unsophisticated the native camera app is on the Xperia. I don’t know what passes
for a camera app on stock Gingerbread (since Samsung always provides a much more
sophisticated camera app of their own), but it certainly can’t be any worse than
this. Unless you are purely a casual point-and-shoot type, you’ll definitely
want to install a 3rd-party camera app in your Xperia.
But what about image quality? Is it as good as a 12 megapixel camera would seem
to promise? I didn’t have another 12 megapixel camera phone to compare it to
(such as the Nokia N8), but I did have my 8 megapixel S II LTE. I took numerous
photographs using these phones in both low light and bright conditions. Overall,
the pictures from the Xperia look good with excellent color accuracy, but sadly
the sensor suffers from a lot of color noise (which seems to be most prominently
in the red range). It’s especially pronounced in low light, but surprisingly it
still shows up quite noticeably in brilliant sunshine as well. Any gains you
make with the high pixel count are complete lost (and then some) by the
noisiness of the photographs.
The real point to having high-resolution pictures is to be able to print or
display them in large size. However, you can’t really do that with the pictures
from the Xperia without also exposing the serious noise problem.
Look at the following two photographs. Both have been cropped so that we can
view them at full size, and so the Xperia picture is larger since it is a
higher-resolution picture (12 vs 8 megapixels):
Note the grass immediately beyond
the gazebo, which in the Xperia photo looks both green and red. Also look at the
trees in the background. In the Xperia shot it looked like I took the photograph
in the fall while the trees (especially those on the right) were covered in
orange leaves. Look at the darker areas of the gazebo roof and you’ll see that
on the Xperia there is a large amount of red noise, despite the fact that was
taken in broad daylight. Finally look at the details in the roof lines of the
gazebo. The Xperia shot isn’t as smooth-looking due to the presence of noise.
To see how they looked if they were scaled down to a smaller picture (such as
for posting on a social media site) I reduced both pictures to 1024 x 768. You
can see here that the Xperia photo still suffers from red issues. Not only does
the picture have an overall red tint, but the tress still look like I took the
photo in the fall.
Xperia:
SII LTE:
The bottom line here is that you shouldn’t be fooled by the 12 megapixel camera.
More is not necessarily better, and in this case it definitely isn’t.
Oddball Niggles
Beyond the above, there are also a number of things about the phone that just
bother me.
1) The back is curved, so if you put the phone down on a table (or other flat
surface) the phone wants to rock from side to side. This is more than annoying,
because it makes if difficult to touch the screen without causing the phone to
move.
2) The side-mounted USB port has a rubber cover that is a royal pain to use.
Even if you just threw up your hands in disgust and ripped the thing off
permanently, a side-mount connector is just wrong-minded and tough to keep out
of the way when you try to use the phone while it is connected to a charger.
3) The phone feels very sharp-edged and had a rather unfriendly feel in my hand.
4) The battery is non-removable, but Sony doesn’t seem to provide a guaranteed
way to simulate a battery pull as you can with the iPhone. This is critical if
the phone locks up.
Conclusions
The Xperia S is a step up from the Android phones that Sony released last year
and they’re certainly headed in the right direction. However, when it comes to
keeping up with the competition the Xperia still has a ways to go.