Sony Xperia S

Sony Xperia S. PHOTO COURTESY SONY

The Sony Xperia S is born to entertain

This Android phone is a entertainment portal on the go

by June Yang 

 

04:45 AM May 09, 2012

 

The Xperia S is Sony's latest offering in the pedigreed Xperia line of smartphones.

It comes with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1GB RAM, and 32GB internal storage. The phone ships with Android's Gingerbread platform, but can be upgraded to the latest Ice Cream Sandwich platform.

A 12-megapixel, rear-facing camera with a Sony EXMOR R sensor shoots full HD (1080p) video, panoramas and 3D stills/video. The front-facing camera is a 1.3 megapixel 720p unit. The 4.3-inch, 720p display is large enough for viewing pleasure, but not so its cumbersome. The display is crisp and made viewing media and browsing websites a joy, thanks in part to the mobile BRAVIA engine. The HDMI port means you can hook it up to your TV for the big screen experience. Gamers take note: It's also Playstation-certified.

At 128mm by 64mm by 10.6 mm and weighing 144g, the Xperia S is a slim, light phone that fits nicely in the hand. I have an iPhone that slips from my grasp a lot, and I find the larger Android phones too unwieldy to use with one hand, but this phone strikes a nice balance between them.

There are a few cons, however.

I found the message notifications too subtle; while you can't miss them when you're using the phone, it's easy to overlook them if the phone is in screen lock mode, particularly when it's silent. I ended up missing a couple of urgent text messages that way.

I also found the camera flawed. There's no tap-to-focus function, which I found to be a huge shortcoming. Photos are taken in a strange dimension to fit the phone's screen, which resulted in the strangest cropping ratio on Instagram.

Overall, it is a good phone. None of the flaws really eclipse the overall experience of using it. Unfortunately, being an Android phone means it has to compete with all the other Android phones on the market.

The Xperia S has no one feature that lets it stand out amongst all the excellent top-of-the-line Android phones that are already out there, or on the way. Sadly, it seems that just being good overall is not enough these days. The Xperia S suffers not from being bad, but from being unexceptional.

The Sony Xperia S retails for S$898 without contract.

Source: www.todayonline.com