Sony Xperia S

Editor's Review of the Xperia S

After several years of fairly successful glory-sharing, Sony have finally decided to dump the Ericsson label on their phones. It's certainly easier only the tongue, and 'Sony Xperia S' is a fittingly slick term for this new sharply-designed handsets. But does its functionality match the ultra-cool branding?

Design & Build

The simple, angular design on the phone is a refreshing change from the dominant tendency to be all curvy and chromey. The slightly softened plastic finish on the top, sides and bottom is a bit of a fingerprint trap though, so you might want to keep a glasses wipe handy with you at all times.

The phone's most interesting external feature is the transparent band under screen, inside which you can see part of the phone's antenna system. Best of all, it has a gentle white glow. While this is visually pleasing, the bar doesn't function as a button. Instead, the labels on the bar correlate to three pin-prick capacitive buttons above it that are unresponsive and too close to the screen.

The highlight of the phone is its beautiful 4.3" HD LED-backlit screen, which squeezes in an impressive 342 ppi or pixels per inch (for the record, the iPhone 4S only has 326 ppi). This means that the image never loses clarity, whether fully zoomed out or in. It may not have the kind of viewing angles we've seen on Super AMOLED phones such as the HTC One X, but this is still one of the best screens out there.

The Xperia S boasts a monstrous 12MP camera, which can easily be accessed from the lock screen. It uses an Exmor R image sensor which balances out the image depending on whether you're in high- or low-light conditions. It also records videos in 1080P quality and has a 1.3MP front-facing camera (the quality of which looks like that of a disposable camera next to its 12MP counterpart).

OS & Interface

The flop feature on this phone has to be the fact that it comes pre-installed with the dated Android 2.3 Gingerbread. While we can expect an update to Ice Cream Sandwich hopefully in the not-too-distant future, it's a wonder why it's not an in-built feature here considering how long the ICS update has been about.

Sony have quite a few neat functionality tricks up their sleeve, such as a main menu with plenty of auto-arrange functions, a lockscreen from which you can quickly access messages and missed calls, and a keyboard that makes good use of the large screen space.

The Xperia S makes a decent case for the fact that Dual-Core processors can easily handle whatever loads you throw at them. Even stacking up several apps simultaneously doesn't cause any slowdown, and you can flick between your 5 home-screens seamlessly.

Multimedia & Storage

Most of Sony's pre-installed apps are a waste of both screen and memory space. Why do we need Sony to provide us with an 'App recommender?' Or worse, why does the useless PlayNow service still exist? Worst of all, they can't be uninstalled. A little less useless are Video Unlimited and Music Unlimited, though we don't understand why they couldn't have been integrated into a single app.

You can get the Xperia S in either 16GB or 32GB models, but more hardcore users will balk at the lack of expandable memory. Maybe the onboard-only memory wouldn't matter so much if Sony hadn't cluttered up the phone with their junk apps. However, bearing in mind the clutter, you in effect only have 25GB to play around with.

Battery life, Connectivity, And the Rest

The battery life on the Xperia S is decent, if unspectacular, and medium users should get a day's use out of it. Sony's own specs say that you can get 7.5 hours of GSM talk time out of it, 420 hours standby, and 6.5 hours of video playback. Tech geeks will once again be unhappy at the lack of removable battery.

This phone features some mixed connectivity options. While 'tech-of-the-future' NFC is included, the Xperia S only has lowly Bluetooth 2.1 on it. All the expected connectivity options are included (GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSPDA), but some may be disappointed that the phone's not functional with HSPA+ wireless networks, ready for when they come to the UK.

Conclusion

The Sony Xperia S is definitely one of the more stylish phones out on the market, with its angular body hosting a beautiful LED screen. However, it falls short on the OS, which is outdated and encumbered with unnecessary software.

Its lack of removable battery and expandable memory may deter some, but for those who want a handset without the extra hardware 'bits', this could be a good choice. Not quite the revolution Sony would've hoped for though.