ET review: Sony Xperia S

NEW DELHI: After Sony and Ericsson parted ways, the Xperia S is the first smartphone that carries the ‘Sony Mobile’ tag. It's obvious that Sony has made considerable effort in the overall look & feel as well as the hardware and software to make this phone stand up to the existing competition.

The Xperia S is a gorgeous device – an all-matte black finish with a transparent band running around the body makes the phone stand out from the usual smartphone crop. The pin-sharp 4.3-inch HD display offers excellent brightness and clarity.

However, the phone has a silly design flaw with regards to the touch sensitive buttons (home, back and menu). The icons for the buttons are on the transparent band at the bottom while the actual touch-sensitive are is above the band, marked only by tiny dots — we found it hard to get used to this. Inside is a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor with 1GB RAM and onboard 32GB storage (no expansion slot), making it one of the most powerful dual-core phones today.

It runs Android 2.3 with Sony’s Timescape UI. There is no visible sluggishness, but Sony needs to work a lot on TimeScape to bring it up to Samsung's TouchWiz or HTC's Sense standards. One of the most impressive factors is the 12MP camera. Not only does it take amazing pictures in daylight, but also records full HD videos in top-notch quality. Even low light images were good when the flash was not used.

However, with the flash the images tended to get overexposed. The phone comes with every possible wireless connectivity feature – Wi-Fi , Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth and NFC. Battery life of the phone came out to be just about a day — disappointing , especially since it has a 1750 mAh battery (which is not user replaceable).

As a premium smartphone, Sony has managed to put in all the essential ingredients in the Xperia S. Even the price ( 32,000) seems fine considering the reigning dual-core champion — the Samsung Galaxy SII, which is now priced under 29,000. The Xperia S outperforms the SII on display sharpness, camera performance and build quality.