Sony Xperia Sola

SONY XPERIA SOLA REVIEW

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 has gone for a 3.7-inch display for Xperia sola with 854x480p resolution. The display size is perfect for basic web-browsing, playing casual games and other daily chores, but multimedia junkies and heavy gamers might find it a little small for their taste. Xperia sola comes with a decent PPI count, thus you will hardly notice any individual pixels. The colour reproduction is fine, but white and black colours are a little dull. The smartphone also offers decent viewing angles and visibility under sunlight. As we've come to expect from Sony smartphones, the Xperia sola's 5MP camera performs quite well. Thanks to the dedicated camera button, you don't even have to unlock the device to click an image. The smartphone camera supports up to 720p video recording and the results were fairly decent. The smartphone camera supports up to 720p video recording and the results were fairly decent. The camera app on the smartphone isn't very comprehensive but gives decent number of options to play around. You can choose scene, white balance, exposure value, ISO, Metering or the focus mode. Sony is shipping Xperia sola with Gingerbread on-board, which isn't surprising because company is yet to release an Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) smartphone. Company has also included its custom interface on top of the Android 2.3, similar to other 2012 Sony launches; it is minimal and does not hog much processing power. The interface is beautiful with subtle animations and effects. The smartphone also comes with ability to create folders and take screenshots, both of which were introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich release, giving you some respite before the actual update reaches the smartphone. Xperia sola is the first smartphone to come with Sony's all new Floating Touch technology, which allows you to browse the web by hovering your finger above the screen so it acts like a moving curser, without actually having to touch the display. Floating Touch works as advertised but there is hardly any actual usability of the feature right now. However, the company plans release its API to developers and we can anticipate some cool uses of Floating Touch after that. In the world of smartphones filled with Qualcomm and NVIDIA chips, Sony Xperia sola runs on ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500 dual-core processor. Don't worry, it performs quite well, and we did not experience any hiccups during our time with the smartphone. The dual-core processor ensures smooth functioning of the phone and there is no lag in switching homescreens, multitasking or even playing casual games. Games like Temple Run, BackStab, Deer Hunter Pro ran without any problems. On the connectivity front, Xperia sola includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, and DLNA. Both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work as expected, but NFC isn't much use right now apart from when you try Smart Tags from the company. The NFC functionality should be improved after the ICS update. The call quality is decent and so is the network reception. In terms of the multimedia usage, the smartphone played 720p videos flawlessly, however stock player wasn't so great with 1080p videos. It also includes a fancy music player on-board, which worked quite nicely and when clubbed with the xLoud feature gave decent audio output. After the pricing, battery life is increasingly becoming a key deciding factor in smartphone purchases, and traditionally Androids are not the champions in the category. Xperia sola includes a 1,320mAh battery, which is non-user-removable. The battery backup is just ok and we would have surely liked a bigger battery. Moderate users will able to get through the day without charging, but heavy users won't be so lucky.

SPECIFICATION & FEATURES

SONY XPERIA SOLA PRICE

Price in USA $306

Price in UK £254

Price in EURO €300

Price in PAK Rs.22,000

Price in INDIA Rs.13,800