Sony Xperia SP

Overview

Powerful Mid-budget Smartphone

Camera

Design

Misc

Shades

Sony Xperia SP packs some powerful features of high-end smart phone in a mid-budget smart phone.

Sony Xperia SP Design and Build Quality

Xperia SP is a very beautiful looking phone. There is an illuminated antenna at the bottom gives the phone a very stylish edge and it also makes handling the touch screen easier. The antenna flashes different colours for missed calls, and other alerts. The back cover is plastic and does not feel very strong but is still very good. The batter of the phone will last you for 6 to 7 hours comfortably with regular use. We wish that the battery of the phone had a long life since Sony is known for great music.

User Interface and Comfort to Use Sony Xperia SP

The UI of the phone is a take of Sony on the Android Jellybean. The individual touch on the phone is very comfortable to use. There are seven home screens, which you can customize according to your interests. The phone has a 4.6-inch screen with 1280 x 720-pixel resolution. There is a powerful 1.7GHz dual core Snapdragon processor with a 1GB of RAM in the phone. The speed of the phone is very good. We liked the screen design of the home screen.

Telephony and Phonebook

The call quality when using the phone was good throughout. The phonebook has all the usual features that you desire. You can use the options like photo calling, search, favourites, voice dialling etc. to make calling easier. Social contacts and emails can be added to the phonebook for easy access.

Messaging and Emails

Messages are displayed as a running conversation, which is a very popular format today. You can add many attachments to the messages. There are a number of attachments like photo, video, notes, doodle, and documents that you can attach to the messages. Email and IM works very well on the phone.

Gallery, Photo Viewer and Video Player

Gallery of the phone is very simple and lists the photos, videos, and documents in a neat thumbnail order. It is fast and responds well to commands. Video player supports most of the codecs available. The sound and display modes can be easily accessed and changed. There are a number of features you can use such as switch the Mobile Bravia Engine 2 on or off, DLNA wireless compatibility to Sony devices, and Google Play movies.

Sony Xperia SP Music Player and FM Radio

Music on the phone is once again a very strong point of Sony. You can change the layout, display and album artwork of the music easily. Sony's ClearAudio+ technology makes the voice super clear. The phone also comes with Sony Unlimited Music membership, which lets you have all your favourite music easily.

Sony Xperia SP Camera and Image Quality

The phone has an 8MP camera that can take photos of 3264x2448 pixels resolution. The photos turn out to be very good. The features include scene selection mode, sweep panorama and the ability to add on-the-fly picture effects. The front camera is good for video calls and Skype calls.

Video Camera and Video Quality

Video camera on the phone can record up to 1080p HD videos. Video recording on the phone is good but the colours do feel a little over saturated sometimes.

Sony Xperia SP Connectivity Options

Connectivity options on the phone include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPRS and Edge. DLNA wireless streaming works very well. NFC feature on the phone is very futuristic.

Organiser and Other Utility Tools

Sony has put all the basic organiser features on the phone. You can get many other apps and tools from the store.

Sony Xperia SP Web Browser and Applications

The android web browser is good but the display pulls down the quality of web browsing experience. All the basic applications like Facebook and Google are included on the phone. Large games on the phone take up a lot of space and there it pulls down the performance of the phone.

Google Maps and GPS

The maps on the phone are Google maps. You can all the Google features such as turn-by-turn driving and voice search.

Value for Money

The phone is priced at INR 25000 (approx., may vary) in the Indian Market. The phone does not have much storage space and the processor is tad slow, which brings down the good features such as excellent camera and the screen.

Verdict

We would rate the phone a 4 out of 5 stars.