Sony Xperia sola review
Sony are busy extending their Xperia line, after the Japanese behemoth bought out their Ericsson counterpart, and the Xperia sola lies squarely in the middle of the pack. The flagship Xperia S has set the ceiling and the Xperia U will set the floor of what to expect from the company's Android offerings. The Xperia sola, for its part, must be keen to bolster the impression that Sony is in pretty good shape since going solo.
Sony Xperia S official photos
Although technically not a part of the NXT series, the Xperia sola shares some of the design choices of its 2012 Xperia siblings. It offers a few notable features to make up for its lack of Ice Cream Sandwich (the Android 4.0 update is scheduled for summer 2012). These include a super-crisp Reality display with Floating Touch and a powerful dual-core processor, which promises tp run Gingerbread perfectly smooth. It also has NFC, and the retail package comes with a couple of NFC tags to play around with.
Here's the lowdown on the pros and cons of the Sony Xperia sola:
Key features
- Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
- 3.7" 16M-color capacitive touchscreen of Full WVGA resolution (854 x 480 pixels) with Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine; Floating touch display
- Android OS v2.3.7 Gingerbread, planned Android 4.0 ICS update
- Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, 512 MB RAM, NovaThor U8500 chipset
- 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geo-tagging, Multi Angle shot
- 720p video recording @ 30fps with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
- Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
- GPS with A-GPS
- 8 GB built-in storage (5 GB user-accessible)
- microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- Voice dialing
- Adobe Flash 11 support
- Deep Facebook integration
- Accelerometer and proximity sensor
- NFC connectivity and included NFC tags
Main disadvantages
- No front-facing camera
- No Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of box
- Display has poor viewing angles
- Stiff and unresponsive shutter key
- Non user-replaceable battery
The Sony Xperia sola strives to give you a feature-rich experience to set itself apart from the crowd of midrange droids. The Smart tags are definitely a step in the right direction, with NFC continuing to pick up steam. Overall, the Xperia sola has a competitive set of features for its price range and the Floating Touch technology adds a measure of exclusivity. The display can react to not only taps but hovering fingers.
Sony Xperia sola live pictures
Social phonebook
The visually customized phonebook of the Xperia sola can store extensive information about all your contacts. A tabbed interface presents contact details, recent calls and info from social networking services.
The phonebook • The quick contacts can save you a click or two • The available options
The contact list can be sorted by either first or last name. There are two contact search options - a dedicated search field on top of the contact list, and an alphabet scroll to jump to names starting with a specific letter.
You can sync with multiple accounts, including Exchange and Facebook, and you can selectively show or hide contacts from some accounts (you can fine-sift specific groups from an account), or set the phonebook to display only contacts with phone numbers.
If a contact has accounts in multiple services, you can "join" their details to keep everything in one place. Their Facebook photos and interests (part of the Facebook integration) will show as extra tabs.
Quick contacts are enabled - a tap on the contact's photo brings up shortcuts for calling, texting or emailing the contact.
Each contact can have a variety of fields (and repeat fields of the same type), the + and x buttons let you add and remove fields as needed. The fields cover anything from names (including a field to write the name down phonetically) to addresses, nicknames and notes.
There is an option to redirect calls directly to voicemail. Custom ringtones are enabled too.
Editing a contact
You can "star" a contact, which puts it in the Favorites tab. Also, in each Gmail account there's a special group called "Starred in Android" where these contacts go automatically.
Smart telephony
We had no problems calling and receiving calls on the Xperia sola. The built-in secondary microphone is used for active noise-cancellation so calls are loud and clear even in noisy environments.
The Xperia sola offers smart dialing. It searches for matches in both the contacts' phones and names. There's voice dialing too (the quickest way to activate it is the dedicated homescreen widget).
Smart dialing is available
Thanks to the proximity sensor, the Sony Xperia sola automatically disables the touchscreen when you hold it up to your ear during a call.
The call log is integrated in the dialer - it shows a list of recently dialed, received and missed calls in the top half of the screen and the keypad on the bottom half. Once you start typing, the call log is replaced by the smart dial list.
There's a Favorite tab that displays starred contacts, but you can add other contacts to the list too. The tab displays a grid of contact photos with their first name underneath.
We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on the Sony Xperia sola. Scoring a Below Average result, the Xperia sola is among the quietest phones out there. . More info on our loudspeaker test as well as other results can be found here.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overal score | |
| Sony Xperia sola | 60.9 | 59.0 | 61.7 | Below Average |
| 66.9 | 65.3 | 67.7 | ||
| Apple iPhone 4S | 65.8 | 64.5 | 74.6 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note N7000 | 64.9 | 64.6 | 72.2 | |
| Sony Xperia S | 72.7 | 61.8 | 69.6 | |
| HTC One S | 65.1 | 64.6 | 76.7 | |
| HTC Sensation XE | 65.8 | 65.4 | 76.9 | |
| Motorola RAZR XT910 | 74.7 | 66.6 | 82.1 | Very Good |
| 76.6 | 75.7 | 84.6 | Excellent |
Messaging
All texts and MMS are organized into threads. Each thread is laid out as an IM chat session, the latest message at the bottom. You can manage individual messages (forward, copy, delete) and even lock them against deletion.
Search is enabled to locate a specific message in all conversations and you can also activate delivery reports.
The messaging app • Starring a message • All starred messages • Adding multimedia to the message
Individual messages can be starred and you can find all of them in the Starred folder available in the context menu. This is a nice way to mark important messages that you'll need to find quickly later on.
Adding multimedia (photos, videos, sounds, etc.) will convert the message to an MMS.
Creating an MMS
Moving on to email, the Gmail app supports batch operations, which allow multiple emails to be archived, labeled or deleted. The app supports multiple Gmail accounts, but there's no unified inbox for other email services.
Gmail app supports batch operations and multiple (Gmail) accounts
The generic email app can do that however. It can handle multiple POP or IMAP accounts and you have access to the messages in the original folders that are created online.
A preview pane splits the screen in half - one side lists the emails, while the other shows the currently selected email.
This works both in portrait and landscape and you can easily drag the separator between the two areas to make one bigger.
Google Talk handles Instant Messaging. The GTalk network is compatible with a variety of popular clients like Pidgin, Kopete, iChat and Ovi Contacts.
As for text input, the Xperia sola offers a customized on-screen full QWERTY keyboard. Typing on the portrait keyboard isn't very comfortable - keys are tall and thin, making for a lot of typos. They're just not as well spaced as on the bigger Xperia S display.
Both of Xperia sola keyboards are pretty comfy
Standard gallery
The Xperia sola uses the traditional droid Gallery, which hasn't really seen much change in Gingerbread. It has good functionality, cool 3D looks and nice transition effects, and this time shows full resolution images.
The different albums and folders appear as piles of photos, which fall in neat grids once selected. If you have online albums over at Picasa those show up as separate stacks as well.
You should have noticed the two switches at the top by now. The first opens a different gallery section that stores your 3D panorama shots, while the second opens the Sweep Multi Angle shots section.
The standard gallery
To view the 3D panoramas in 3D, you need to connect your phone to a compatible 3DTV. Multi Angle shots are harder to view outside the device as you need something with an accelerometer and the proper app - you best bet is another Xperia.
3D Panorama and Multi Angle shooting modes are available
Facebook and Picasa albums are distinguished by the small logo of the corresponding service. Facebook pictures can be "liked" with the thumbs up button in the upper right corner.
Liking photos is enabled for Facebook albums
Photos can be sorted by date with the help of a button in the top right corner, which switches between grid and timeline view.
You can use pinch zoom or the old-fashioned +/- buttons. If you pan past the edge of a photo, the gallery will load up the next (or previous) image.
Images can be cropped or rotated directly in the gallery. Quick sharing via Picasa, Email apps, Facebook, Bluetooth or MMS is also enabled.
The BRAVIA engine enhances contrast and colors by sharpening the image and reducing noise. These steps would normally lead to artifacts, but you'll have to look from really up close to notice. You can switch BRAVIA off, but we recommend keeping it on - it really improves the image quality.
Video player
There is no dedicated video player app on the Xperia sola as in most of the droids out there. DivX and XviD videos are supported but the Xperia sola has a rather selective filtering and not all videos got through.
Unlike the Xperia S, the sola didn't play any of our 1080p videos we threw at it, but 720p videos worked fine.
You can of course download a video player off the Android Market, but we didn't get much better luck with most of those, so the issues might be related to processing power. Some of the excellent free players out there will address other deficiencies of the Xperia sola video player though, like lack of subtitles.
Excellent music player
The Xperia sola has the music player of the Xperia S. You're welcomed to a Cover Flow-like interface and you can swipe left and right to skip tracks (complete with a smooth 3D effect).
This is the Playing tab, the second tab available is called My Music and it's where your music library is organized. Tracks are sorted by album, artist, playlist, all tracks, SensMe channel, favorites. There's also a link to Sony's Music Unlimited service.
In the Now playing interface, there's the familiar Infinite button - it gives you quick options to find the music or karaoke videos on YouTube for the current song, look for more tracks on PlayNow, search Wikipedia for info on the artist or look for lyrics on Google. New features can be added to this menu with extensions available in the Play Store.
The revamped music player • Music library • The Infinite button
SensMe should be familiar from those old Sony Ericsson Walkman phones. In case you've missed it, SensMe filters songs by mood. By default, there are nine "channels" - daytime, energetic, relax, upbeat, mellow, lounge, emotional, dance and extreme.
You need to download SensMe data before you can use this feature. Luckily, you no longer have to use a PC Suite to tag songs - you just need an Internet connection, the phone will handle the rest.
Audiophiles will appreciate the rich selection of equalizer presets. There's a custom preset too - it lets you adjust five frequency bands and there's a Clear Bass slider too.
The More tab offers a Headphone surround option, which can be set to Studio, Club or Concert hall. If you're not using the headphones, you can turn the xLOUD feature on, which optimizes the sound for the Xperia Sola loudspeaker.
The equalizer
A new feature is the track info and playback controls available on the lockscreen, which let you control the player without having to unlock the phone. The music controls replace the clock, which might be annoying if you just want to check the time. Still, the clock slides out of view, so you have about a second to see what time it is (or just look at the small clock in the upper right corner).
Music player controls on the lockscreen and notification area
FM radio with RDS, there is TrackID too
The Sony Xperia sola is equipped with an FM radio, which has a really neat and simple interface. It automatically scans the area for the available stations and places "notches" on the frequency dial for easier scrolling to the next station. There's a Force mono option to use in case of poor reception.
The FM radio app • TrackID • Licking a radio track on facebook
The TrackID service is also available and works within the radio app. You can even like a song on Facebook.
Decent audio output
The Sony Xperia sola didn't disappoint in the first part of our traditional audio quality test. The smartphone did great (save for the only average distortion levels) and had above average loudness, which adds up to a very good performance.
There's some degradation when you plug in a pair of headphones, but things certainly aren't too bad. The stereo crosstalk rises noticeably and some more distortion creeps in. Volume levels also dropped a bit, so the overall performance is about what you'd expect in this class.
5MP camera with a 3D twist
The Xperia sola boasts a 5 megapixel camera, complete with a single LED light. It's capable of producing images of 2592Ñ…1944 resolution.
The camera controls on the Xperia sola are available on two taskbars on either side of the viewfinder. On the left you get four shortcuts to various settings, while the still camera/camcorder toggle, the virtual shutter key and a thumbnail of the last photo taken are on the right.
The menu key brings up two pages of extra settings - scenes, resolution, smile detection, geotagging, image stabilization and focus mode among others. You can customize three of the shortcuts on the left (the shooting mode shortcut is fixed).
The Xperia S camera interface
There're five capture modes to choose from: Normal, Scene recognition, Sweep Panorama, Sweep Multi Angle and 3D Sweep Panorama. In Normal, you pick the Scene settings manually or you can enable Scene recognition and let the Xperia S take a guess (it's fairly good at it).
The 3D Sweep Panorama is business as usual - you press the shutter key and pan the phone across the scene. The resulting panoramic photo can be viewed in both 2D and 3D (on a compatible TV).
The Sweep Multi Angle is much more impressive - you take a photo in the exact same way, but the result is very different. It produces something like a lenticular card.
Tilting the phone lets you look at the object from different sides. A shot of a moving object looks like an animated GIF or creates interesting distortions, which can be pretty funny too.
There are some distortions visible even in a static scene, but it's still one of the coolest camera features we've seen in a while. Photos taken in Sweep Multi Angle mode are handled by a separate app called 3D album, and not listed in the regular gallery. And just to be clear, the Xperia sola doesn't have a 3D screen. It cleverly relies on its sensors to detect the handset movement and it changes the on-screen image accordingly.
The Xperia sola features a Quick launch option, which lets you customize the phone's behavior upon a press of the camera key when the phone is locked. The default option is Launch and capture - it unlocks the phone, starts the camera and instantly snaps a photo - a rather uncomfortable option because it's nearly impossible to correctly frame a picture before the screen is on. This resulted in a couple of images with motion blur. The other option is to just unlock the phone and start the camera, or you can disable the feature completely.
We didn't like the Xperia sola's shutter key. The half press for focusing works fine but once you attempt to push the shutter all the way down you run the risk of shaking the phone, the button just feels too tight towards the end.
The Xperia sola isn't a standard-setting cameraphone by any stretch but that doesn't mean that Sony has underestimated the importance of good imaging on the smartphone.
The image quality is good. The in-camera processing involves aggressive noise reduction and give some parts of the images a distinct watercolor look. There's a tendency towards overexposing resulting in overblown highlights. You're welcome to check out the results below.
Sony Xperia sola samples
Otherwise the quality is there - colors are accurate and there's still enough detail left after the noise suppression. In good lighting the Xperia sola can produce sharp images which are pretty nice to look at.
Sony Xperia sola samples
There is no dedicated macro mode but the autofocus still had no trouble at distances of 2-3 cm and above. Overall it managed decent macro samples.
Sony Xperia sola macro samples
720p video recording
Even though the Sony Xperia sola pack a dual-core CPU, it only does 720p video at 30 fps. The camcorder has similar settings to the still camera, including focus mode, metering, exposure value, image stabilization and so on. The layout of the shortcuts can be customized here too.
The Xperia sola camcorder features continuous autofocus. It may take a few seconds to refocus after you re-frame but that's better than repeating attempts to lock focus that may ruin a video. In fast-paced videos the continuous focusing could get a little hectic and focus every second or two, but you can turn the setting off.
Switching to camcorder mode
Videos were nicely smooth and there was a reasonable amount of detail in them. The actual recorded frames per second hovered around the 29 fps mark while the bitrate was the pretty decent 6 to 7Mbps.
solid connectivity
The Sony Xperia sola has quad-band 2G and 3G. Mobile data speeds are boosted by 14.4Mbps HSDPA and 5.76Mbps HSUPA.
Local connectivity is covered by Wi-Fi b/g/n with DLNA, so you can easily play media (photos, videos, music) from DLNA-enabled storage devices or push content from your phone to a DLNA TV or music player.
The Connected Devices app handles the DLNA functionality
A dedicated app, Media Remote, will serve as a remote control for DLNA-capable BRAVIA TVs and Sony DVD/Blu-ray players too. It has a few versions of the interface ranging from simply changing the channels to mouse input and viewing disc history.
The Media Remote app is available for free download at the Play Store so other droids can use it too.
Stereo Bluetooth is version 2.1.
With NFC support you can read NFC tags but also make the phone act as a tag itself. You can create multiple tags and choose which one you want to share. A tag can be anything from contact info (usually yours so you can send it as a sort of wireless business card), a URL or just plain text.
The Xperia sola saves NFC tags you've scanned with it and you can even star some of them for easier access later.
The Tags app lets you scan and create your own NFC tags
You can also use the Sony Smart Tag accessories, which can be set to trigger different actions - there's a long list of options available and multiple actions can be triggered at once by one tag. To streamline the process, you can use the Smart Tags widget.
Smart Tags widget helps you set actions for NFC tags
You can give names to tags to help you remember where you placed each one (the tags in the box are Home and Bedroom by default). Here are some of the actions available: control Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth, GPS, sound mode, you can have the phone open a URL, play a track, send a text, enable text to speech, change the wallpaper or launch an app.
Here's an example of what you can do with a Smart Tag - a tag in your car can switch on Bluetooth so the phone pairs up with the car audio, enable GPS and launch the SatNav app and enable text to speech, which will read incoming texts out loud.
Browsing with Floating Touch
The user interface of the browser is simple, with almost no visible chrome by default. Once the page loads, all you see is the URL bar and the bookmark button at the top of the screen. Once you zoom in and pan around though even that disappears (scroll to the top or press menu to bring it back).
Xperia S web browser
The browser supports double tap and pinch zooming, along with the dedicated virtual zoom buttons. There's text reflow, which reformats text so that it best fits on the screen.
The browsing performance is excellent - panning, zooming and the text reflow are very fluid.
The minimalist UI is still very capable - hit the menu key and six keys pop up. You can open a new tab, switch tabs, refresh the page, go forward, and open bookmarks. The last button reveals even more options (text copying, find on page, etc.).
One of the important features in the web browser is the full Flash 11 support. YouTube videos played smoothly all the way up to 720p - no dropped frames, audio lag or video artifacts. Flash games played trouble free too.
Flash games work great • Playing YouTube videos in the browser
The Floating Touch display of the Xperia sola can detect fingers hovering over it and the only app that actually uses this feature is the browser. All it can do is highlight links on webpages, adding an extra level of precision, which makes sense on a relatively small 3.7" screen.
Great organizing skills
The Sony Ericsson Xperia sola comes with a solid set of organizing options, including a document viewer.
The app in question is OfficeSuite and it has support for viewing document files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF, including the Office 2007 versions). For editing, you will need to get the paid app.
The OfficeSuite reader
Reading documents is quite comfortable and panning is blazing fast. There's built-in file browser and cloud storage integration (Google, Dropbox, Box).
Built-in file browser • Cloud integration
The calendar has three different types of view - daily, weekly and monthly. The lower section of the screen is reserved for a list of upcoming events. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.
The organizer centerpiece • the calendar
The Calendar also pulls info on upcoming events from your Facebook account. Facebook events appear just like regular calendar entries but you can't edit them on the phone, they are read-only.
There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized - the buttons are really big and easy to hit. You can expand advanced functions (trigonometry, logarithms) by turning the phone landscape.
Regular Calculator • Scientific Calculator
The alarm clock app supports multiple alarms, each with its own start and repeat time. The Alarms app can also work as a desk clock - you have a big toggle for the brightness, as well as weather info and shortcuts to gallery slideshow and the music player.
The Clock • Creating alarm
The app has also grown a World clock along with stopwatch and timer functionality, which were missing in previous Xperia phones.
World clock • Stopwatch • Timer
The Power Saver app helps you extend your battery life by toggling things like Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth screen brightness, auto sync and background data on and off automatically when the battery charge falls below a certain user-defined threshold.
The Power Saver app
Google Maps and Wisepilot navigation
The Sony Ericsson Xperia sola comes with a GPS receiver, which took less than a minute to get satellite lock upon a cold start. You can use the A-GPS functionality to get near instantaneous locks. Alternatively, network positioning will do if you only need a rough idea of your location.
Google Maps is a standard part of the Android package and we've covered it many times before. It offers voice-guided navigation in certain countries and falls back to a list of instructions elsewhere.
3D buildings are shown for some of the bigger cities and you can use two-finger camera tilt and rotate to get a better view of the area.
Google Maps
The latest version uses vector maps, which are very data efficient and easy to cache. The app will reroute you if you get off course, even without a data connection.
You can plan routes, search for nearby POI and go into the always cool Street View.
Google Street View
Our Xperia sola came with a Wisepilot trial with 30 days' worth of full navigation license. The app offers info on weather, traffic, speed cameras and alerts.
Wisepilot uses online maps by default, so you'll need a data connection - but it works even in countries where Google Maps Drive doesn't. You can purchase offline maps if you like - a 2-year license for the whole of Europe is 5 Euro and North America is 5 Dollars.
If you decide to go with the online-only version, the Abroad mode makes sense. It will reduce roaming data usage and maps are cached (so, you if you start off at home or your hotel with the phone hooked up to a Wi-Fi network, you'll save even more).
Wisepilot navigation
We just can't promise you that your Xperia sola will also come with the same Wisepilot license, it may be a market-dependent feature.
Play Store
The Android Market is now called the Play Store, but other than the name, it's the same old app store.
It's organized in a few scrollable tabs - categories, featured, top paid, top free, top grossing, top new paid, top new free and trending. The in-app section is untouched though and it's very informative - a description, latest changes, number of downloads and comments with rating. There is usually a demo video and several screenshots for most apps too.
The Android Market
There are all kinds of apps in the Android market and the most important ones are covered (file managers, navigation apps, document readers etc.
Final words
The Sony Xperia sola is a routine exercise in midrange smartphone making but Sony won't do without those if they're to quickly get where they want to be. This isn't about HD screens, quad-core CPUs and umpteen megapixel cameras - the Xperia sola goes by the 80-20 rule. That is, it tries to deliver 80% of the functionality for 20% of the price (okay, it's more like 50% here, but that's how technology works).
One of the corners Sony had to cut was Ice Cream Sandwich, which is expected sometime in the second quarter of 2012. On a second thought, ICS-powered devices are still hard to come by in this price range, so this probably isn't a major liability.
Competition is hot right now and even some in-house battles will be unavoidable. If you can live without the microSD card slot and keep within the 8GB of internal storage, the Xperia U is almost an exact match. The U comes with the cool NXT design scheme to make up for the 0.2" smaller screen and costs less than the Xperia sola, which could be a decider.
Sony Xperia U
HTC has a runner here too. The One V lacks the dual-core processing but has ICS right out of the box, so the perceivable performance is not too bad. It has an edge in looks too, thanks to the aluminum unibody, but the nearly obsolete chipset is bound to have a damaging effect on the overall experience, ICS or not.
HTC One V
Samsung like to have their bases covered in every segment of the market. The Galaxy Ace 2 is built around the same chipset as the Xperia sola and matches its 5 megapixel camera, but doesn't look quite as good. It does have a slightly lower price tag to show for it, though.
If you are willing to reach just a little bit deeper in your pocket you can also try the Samsung Galaxy S Advance . The few extra bucks get you a larger AMOLED screen, but you'll still have to wait a few months for the ICS update.
Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 I8160 • Samsung I9070 Galaxy S Advance
LG has a strong candidate here - the Optimus 2X might be a bit dated now, but it is still superior to the Xperia sola in many ways. The first smartphone to come with a dual-core processor offers 1080p video capture, a larger 4.0" display and an 8 MP camera. It doesn't cost anything extra either, but its age shows in the rather chubby figure.
LG Optimus 2X
Even in the face of capable competition, the Xperia sola comes across as a solid effort. Its Floating Touch screen might not be the game changer Sony makes it out to be and it lacks the sophistication of its NXT brothers, but the boxy handset isn't without charms of its own. We liked the look and feel of the phone, and the solid build is a point in favor too.
Solid connectivity, good screen and a very decent chipset should be well on the shortlist of anyone wanting to get the most bang for their buck. It's now up to Sony to deliver the ICS update in timely manner and keep the Xperia sola ahead of the pack.
No comments:
Post a Comment