Sony Xperia S
The basics
The good
There’s only so much that can be done with touchscreen phone design these days, but it looks like Sony has nailed it. The Sony Xperia S is a striking phone made distinctive by its clean angular lines and illuminating bar running below the display, which also houses the antenna. It’s a real looker. The display too is very good, delivering some neat viewing angles, lots of detail and some wonderful colours. On occasion you may have to tinker with the brightness when viewing in sunlight, or a movie in bed, but on the whole the Sony Xperia S always looks great turned on. Videos especially look fabulous.
And it’s pleasing to report that there are no performance issues here. The Sony Xperia S’ fast 1.5GHz processor makes nippy work of anything you can throw at it, be it games, apps, documents or web browsing. The Sony Xperia S will breeze through almost anything: making the Android phone a delight to use.
Sony once again proves it takes entertainment seriously be giving the Sony Xperia S the ability to stream video from the device from and to your connected DLNA set-up. So if you have a home server you can either stream videos from it, or send movies from your phone to it. The 12-megapixel camera also offers a lot of features: autofocus, face detection, flash settings and an LED flash to name a bunch. With 32GB of internal storage on board the Sony Xperia S has more than enough room for a handful of movies and photos.
The bad
Unfortunately with its good design, there are flaws. The Sony Xperia S severely lacks in grip. Its plastic body can easily slip out of the hands in a hurry: however the hand eventually gets used to the awkward grip. And it has to be said that the Sony Xperia S is hardly compact. Some buttons even require a little stretching to operate in one-handed use.
Camera quality too, for what it offers could have a little more sparkle, detail in longer distance shots, and in some cases better exposure. That said, the camera is still more than half-decent, but there are better camera phones out there.
Getting files onto the Sony Xperia S can be fiddly owing to the lack of a microSD card slot. There also appears to be little support for Apple Mac users, since Sony offers up its own Windows PC software to sync files from PC to phone.
The bottom line
What the Sony Xperia S does, it does very well. Performance is fast, the screen is great and the camera more than adequate. Owners however will have to wait a bit longer to get the most from the Sony Xperia S, when the Android 4.0 update drops. It’s a wait that for some will be too long. A capable phone the Sony Xperia S may be, but it might be worth checking out the competition first.
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User comments (19)
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Anonymous24 April 2012
im looking at getting it on pay and go because i really need a new phone because sadly my acer m900 tempo died completely so this looks even better because i had the acer upgraded :L
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Mark Hetherington21 June 2012
Sorry Sony, as a Sony fan I really wanted to like this but the lack of a card slot could be a deal breaker for me - it's still the easiest way to transfer files quickly, especially from an unconnected device such as another camera. Not happy about the built-in battery either, a spare battery has to be a must if you're going to use any of the major features regularly. As it is I feel I would have to carry my separate camera for trips, which then negates the need to buy a smartphone with a 12MP camera. But for those two glaring omissions (card slot and swappable battery) it would be top of my list. I prefer Sony to Samsung but if the Galaxy S III has those features it may well tempt me over.
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Tom 15 November 2012
I have had the phone for 3 weeks now and it is a great phone i would never worry telling my mates about how good the phone is and it does everything i wont it to do in a weekly basis.
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Nickelconian19 December 2012
Got one a few months ago as replacement for HTC one S as far as smartphones go its ok doe's everything quite well . Prefer the HTC to this but it kept doing screen switching thing. Overal does everything you ask it to well and most importantly reliable handset running ICS android
Report as inappropriateNini19 January 2013
I just got my experia s about 3days and I can't get my browser to work can someone tell me what can be the cause of this problem I upgraded the solfware and I still can't get it to work need help!!!!!
Report as inappropriatedave groom02 April 2013
have had my experia for about 6 months, but of late, the phone freezes and you end up taking out the battery and starting again, some times up to 3 times a day, especially with most apps/games,
Report as inappropriateLouis 08 May 2013
I've had my Xperia for a few months now, and I absolutely hate it. Don't even consider getting one. The build quality is terrible, the performance is just awful. The stock firmware is full of bugs and just generally runs slow. The phone lags just by swiping from side to side on the menu screen. It is a complete farce to do anything which involves connecting it to the computer. Overall it's just a horrible phone. After 3 factory resets the phone is still no better. It's not even rooted. Seriously, stay away from Sony phones, they're awful, especially the Xperia S.
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