TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentral TechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      Saboteurs threaten South Africa’s power supply

      20 May 2022

      Prosus to sell Russia’s Avito

      20 May 2022

      Curro pilots artificial intelligence for learning in its schools

      20 May 2022

      Dark weekend lies ahead thanks to you know who

      20 May 2022

      CSIR develops app to help kids learn to read

      20 May 2022
    • World

      Chip giant ASML places big bets on a tiny future

      20 May 2022

      Musk moves to soothe investor fears over Tesla

      20 May 2022

      Apple is almost ready to show off its mixed-reality headset

      20 May 2022

      TikTok plans big push into gaming

      19 May 2022

      Musk says he will vote Republican, calls ESG a ‘scam’

      19 May 2022
    • In-depth

      Elon Musk is becoming like Henry Ford – and that’s not a good thing

      17 May 2022

      Stablecoins wend wobbly way into the unknown

      17 May 2022

      The standard model of particle physics may be broken

      11 May 2022

      Meet Jared Birchall, Elon Musk’s personal ‘fixer’

      6 May 2022

      Twitter takeover was brash and fast, with Musk calling the shots

      26 April 2022
    • Podcasts

      Dean Broadley on why product design at Yoco is an evolving art

      18 May 2022

      Everything PC S01E02 – ‘AMD: Ryzen from the dead – part 2’

      17 May 2022

      Everything PC S01E01 – ‘AMD: Ryzen from the dead – part 1’

      10 May 2022

      Llew Claasen on how exchange controls are harming SA tech start-ups

      2 May 2022

      The inside scoop on OVEX’s big expansion plans

      20 April 2022
    • Opinion

      A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

      19 May 2022

      From spectrum to roads, why fixing SA’s problems is an uphill battle

      19 April 2022

      How AI is being deployed in the fight against cybercriminals

      8 April 2022

      Cash is still king … but not for much longer

      31 March 2022

      Icasa on the role of TV white spaces and dynamic spectrum access

      31 March 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»Gadgets & Reviews»Xperia S review: Sony still playing catch-up

    Xperia S review: Sony still playing catch-up

    Gadgets & Reviews By Craig Wilson11 June 2012
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email

    Having shed its partnership with Ericsson, Japan’s Sony is still trying to find its feet in the Android handset market. Despite marketing capabilities to rival Samsung’s, Sony hasn’t managed to cement itself a place in the smartphone war. The Xperia S looks unlikely to change that.

    The top-end Xperia is a valiant attempt by Sony at regaining smartphone turf, but despite only a few months on the market — and thanks to its competitors’ recent offerings — it already feels dated.

    Its hardware is right up there with its nearest rivals. Although it lacks the quad-core processors found on Samsung and HTC’s latest top-end offerings, it nevertheless offers a speedy dual-core, 1,5GHz Scorpion processor alongside 1GB of RAM and a Qualcomm Adreno 220 graphics processing unit.

    The screen is no slouch, either. The LED-backlit LCD is a 4,3-inch, 1280×720-pixel capacitive multi-touch screen that offers a pixel density of roughly 342ppi — that’s higher than the iPhone 4S, HTC One X or Samsung Galaxy S3.

    Thanks to its heritage in making Cyber-shot compact cameras, Sony has plenty of experience making camera optics — and the Xperia S benefits from this. Its 12-megapixel shooter includes an LED flash, records 1080p video at 30 frames per second and has a couple of nifty auto-panorama shooting modes and a two-step — focus and capture — dedicated camera button on the right-hand side of the handset.

    Aside from its enormous resolution, the camera offers a great deal of control over settings, support for geo-tagging, touch focus, smile and face detection — with the former working some of the time — as well as image stabilisation in both stills and video mode. The flash can also be used as a video light.

    Even the Xperia S’s front-facing camera is more respectable than many competitors’ offerings — it’s a 1,3-megapixel affair that also shoots 720p video at 30fps. If you’re the sort who bases their phone purchases on the quality of the camera, the Xperia S offers one of the best on the market — it’s a pity, then, that Sony got so much else about the handset wrong.

    For starters, there’s the curious design decision regarding the back, home and options button beneath the screen. The logos for the three buttons are encased in translucent perspex that looks like it should be capacitive itself. It isn’t.

    Instead, the buttons it refers to are actually three white dots beneath the display and it takes some time before one gets used to not pressing the perspex. After extended use, muscle memory kicks in and it becomes a design curiosity, but that doesn’t help overcome the software shortcomings.

    The latest version of the Android operating system, called Ice Cream Sandwich, first appeared on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in December. Why, then, is the Xperia S still running the older Gingerbread? The answer, no doubt, is because Sony has to update its Android overlay — which it calls Timescape — to accommodate the changes between versions of the operating system.

    We’ve never cared much for Timescape — it’s more cumbersome and intrusive than Samsung’s TouchWiz and far less elegantly styled than HTC’s Sense — so we’d just as well do without it if we could have a later version of Android instead.

    Supposedly, the Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Xperia S is coming this month or next, but with a slew of new devices hitting the market with the new software out of the box, having to wait for an update makes the Sony a far less compelling prospect.

    Then there’s the issue of the battery. Though it’s rated for 1 750mAh, like most smartphones you’ll be lucky to get a full working day’s life out of it. But that’s not our gripe — the gripe is that it’s built in. Sure, unibody phones are increasingly common, but so too is putting a Sim-card slot on the side of the device in such instances. Instead, Sony has opted for a plastic rear cover that does nothing other than allow access to the Sim-card holder and increase the likelihood of the cover getting destroyed if the phone were, say, to be accidentally hurled across an office. [Reading this makes me nervous – Ed.]

    Despite the removable rear cover, there’s no option for expanding the onboard memory via microSD cards. Granted, there’s 32GB of onboard flash memory, but it’s always nice to have the option and it’s something many Android users have come to expect from handsets.

    For a company that can afford some of the best industrial designers in the world, the Xperia S is by no means the best designed mobile phone on the market. It’s not even the best-designed phone in the TechCentral office.

    The Xperia S does, however, redeem itself somewhat when it comes to the price. At R5 299, it’s one of the cheapest high-end handsets we’ve seen this year. Moreover, it’s cheaper than its nearest competitors.

    From a functionality perspective, once the Ice Cream Sandwich update is available, the Xperia S will be a capable and cost-saving competitor to the best and brightest the smartphone world has to offer. The problem is that by the time that happens most people will have already bought one of the best and brightest from one of Sony’s rivals.  — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media

    Apple Google HTC Samsung Sony Sony Xperia S Xperia S
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleCape Town start-ups offer loans on Facebook
    Next Article Telkom share price crashes to fresh lows

    Related Posts

    Chip giant ASML places big bets on a tiny future

    20 May 2022

    Apple is almost ready to show off its mixed-reality headset

    20 May 2022

    Russia seizes Google’s bank account, forcing bankruptcy

    18 May 2022
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    Fast-rising fintech Bankingly closes $11m investment round

    20 May 2022

    Creating an effective employer value proposition for the new era of work

    20 May 2022

    Why fibre is the new utility – and what it means for South Africa

    19 May 2022
    Opinion

    A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

    19 May 2022

    From spectrum to roads, why fixing SA’s problems is an uphill battle

    19 April 2022

    How AI is being deployed in the fight against cybercriminals

    8 April 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.