Just got myself a Sony Xperia SP when signing up a new corporate plan in Singapore... anyway, the reason I got this is just because it is dirt cheap. Anyway, for those who may or may not know, I started my smart phone journey with first device from Asus, which is running Froyo... follow by Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray (from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich), follow by iPhone 5 running iOS 6. In between, I have got myself with Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7" which runs Ice Cream Sandwich initially and then get an upgrade to Jellybean, which was the worst gadget purchase I have ever made in my life... and now ended up with iPad Mini running iOS 6. So I'm reviewing this Xperia SP from the point of view of a person who used and lived with different OS and brands before this... so let's see what this device has up it's sleeves...
I won't talk so much on the technical spec sheet, for me, user experience is always more important than the spec sheet alone. You may have the fastest processor and the best spec out there, but if people don't feel comfortable using your device, there's no point at all... yes, Samsung, I'm pointing this towards you. So let's begin with the outlook of the phone, this will usually be the first thing which attracts you anyway. From the outside, Xperia SP comes with Aluminium frame, glass front and plastic back. The glass front will be more or less standard for all smartphone nowadays, the Aluminium frame is a nice touch. It feels solid in hand, giving it a "premium" feel. The plastic back is matted, and feels a tiny little bit of rubberised, which again is very nice and comfortable to hold, touch & grab. The other noticeable difference, or perhaps the signature of this device would be the transparent band at the bottom. This band basically flashes different LED light which serves as notification purpose. An iconic identity for the Xperia SP. In terms of physical buttons & port, you'll get your USB port on the left, earphone jack on the top, volume rocker + power button + camera shutter on the right, nothing at the bottom, 8MP shooter + LED flash + speaker on the back. All in all, buttons and ports placement are ok and accessible, although I do prefer the headphone jack to be at the bottom, a more sensible location for me, but it's nothing major here. Speaker on the upper part also prevents your hand from blocking the sound. This device is not to say slim in profile, but all in all it feels solid in hand. Only complain would be the width of the device is a little too much to my liking... sometime it feels uncomfortable to navigate the touch screen with only one hand. If Sony can reduce the width, or maybe the thickness, by a little, the ergonomics should feel much better.
After mentioning the outlook, let's look into operation wise. As I prefer single hand operation, the 4.6" screen is a little too large for that purpose. If the screen size is something like 4.3" to 4.5", I think it would be the best size for single hand operation smart phone (Apple, this is for you to take note). Talking about the screen, it's 720p, so it's crystal clear for sure, but he viewing angle is really poor and the screen do appear washout as compared to other competitors. Anyway, touch gesture is responsive enough to register, so overall it is acceptable. The speaker delivers loud and clear sound thanks to xLoud from Sony. The camera is the major downside of this device though. Picture quality is moderate, most of the time you will get noisy shots, and the camera app is a little slow and sluggish at times. Although you do get tons of settings customization, but all in all it is surely not the camera that you can rely on as a replacement for point & shoot camera. Well, for this price point, I would say it is acceptable, but still it can be better as the competition is fierce in this segment. The transparent LED notification band is nice to use to stay alert with updates, but if omitting this band can reduce the size and weight of the device, I'm more than happy to let go of it. Anyway, it is still pretty cool to have the LED flashing and blinking while you are listening to musics & browsing pictures. The back cover can be removed to insert micro Sim and micro SD card, while battery is non-removable (with power bank getting cheaper, I don't see the need to really have removable battery, it's pointless).
Now, let's move on to the software part: the Jellybean. The Sony's version of Jellybean skin is by far the "lightest" skin I have seen. HTC's are ok, with a home screen dedicated for blink feed, while Samsung is the most heavily customized skin. It's not to say it is not good to have a heavily customized skin, but the problem is if the customization ends up with a phone that constantly lags and having glitches here and there... what's the point of doing so? Anyway, people who knows me knew that I dislike Samsung, well, it's not because I like Apple and therefore dislike Samsung, it's more like the company is pissing me off with their product and services... Alright, back to the topic. You will standard Android Jellybean stuffs here... I particularly like the "tasks" button which opens up recently used apps plus a few short cuts for those gadget we will use from time to time such as notepad, timer, voice recording and etc. This really improves the smoothness of operation and getting into those apps. Other than that, Sony also throw in some nice Apps addition like Walkman, Album, Movies and etc, which user may or may not even use it. Other than that, lock screen shortcut, widget, notification center with shortcuts all are standard Android features that will be more or less the same on all other Android running devices.
So, let's wrap up. All in all, I would say this is by far the best mid range Android phone I have tested in shops and used up to date. With the mid range price point, you are getting dual core processor, reasonable camera, NFC, LTE, Jellybean... what else to expect for the bang of the bucks? The Jellybean here is running acceptably smooth (at least for now), with some glitches and lag once in a while (which is acceptable and not to the point of annoying), pretty much thanks to the lightly skinned Jellybean software. Samsung's version, although there are some features like split viewing of multiple windows at once and etc, which might be useful (the keyword is "might"), but in the end makes a device to be running slow, lag and sluggish resulting in inferior user experience, which is something I can't tolerate or compromise on. I'm not completely stating they are bad, but in the end it is up to you to decide what compromise you want to make, based on your preference. For me, I need smooth, stable, almost zero lag and one hand operable device over functionality and features, that's why I ended up with iPhone 5 before this. And Samsung really needs to start copying Sony on the choice of material used, they are really good at it. Since the days of Xperia Ray, the material & build quality of Sony's phone has been pretty satisfying. For now, I must say I miss the build quality of iPhone 5, with iOS 7 coming soon to address some of the shortage in terms of software side, I believe the next iPhone will be even better and greater to be beaten, in terms of my own preference of course. But I think I might start to miss the slightly larger screen on this Xperia SP when I jump back to iPhone. As often Android device will become slower and slower as time goes by, my personal preference might change with time & technologies may advanced faster than we can imagine, so we'll see what is going to happen in the near future. If I get myself the new iPhone, I'll share with you my experience as well.
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