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Sony Xperia SP
Announced last month, the Sony Xperia SP will make its way to Singapore on April 26, and if you want LTE without the costs associated with an high-end handset, this could be it--that is, if you can put up with some of its quirks. But more on that later.
Design
Sony has been improving its phone design (especially in the Xperia Z), and the Xperia SP is a looker despite its midrange origins. The design of the front display and large power button designs are borrowed from the Xperia Z whole, the matte plastic rear delivers a good grip.However, we do note that there's quite a bit of a flex in the rear cover, which means the smartphone doesn't give a very solid feeling in hand.
Located on the left side of the phone is the aforementioned power button, as well as the volume controls and the dedicated camera button. We did find the volume controls a bit too small, which made it hard to press at times.
Like the Xperia S and P, the smartphone has a transparent band, though the SP's is found right at the bottom. This transparent element can be configured to light up with the colors of your choice when you get incoming notifications, and you are also able to set specific colors for your friends from the address book. When in the music app, the LED lights will also pulse rhythmically to your track.
On that note, we do wish that we could have an option to disable the lights at night--this can be annoying when you're trying to sleep in a darkened room.
While you can remove the rear cover, you'll find that the Xperia SP features an embedded 2,370mAh battery. The only reason to remove the cover is to access the microSD and microSIM card slot. With only 8GB of storage, you'll be glad to have the microSD card slot.
Features
Like the Xperia Z and ZL handsets, the SP runs a skin on top of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). This UI is nameless--Sony has done away with the Timescape branding from last year's devices, and it is very easy to use. There's not much to talk about, but we did notice that the SP comes with support for the PlayStation Dual Shock 3 controllers--something that the Z and ZL lack for now.If you had high hopes for the 8-megapixel camera, well, you'll likely be in for a disappointment. The images captured were noisy, and low-light performance is simply terrible. If you were hoping that the lower megapixel count of the SP would be better for picture taking, you're out of luck.
Performance
Running on a 1.7GHz dual-core processor from Qualcomm, the SP felt snappy in our hands. Apps loaded quickly and the smartphone was responsive even when playing games. The SP comes with 1GB of RAM, which should be more than sufficient.The Xperia SP was able to last us a full day with moderate use on a single battery charge with our standard test settings. Wi-Fi was turned off, and we had two email accounts, Twitter and Facebook set on push. It's a pretty average showing, but not as bad as we would have thought.
While we did notice dropped calls during our time with it--it's likely due to the network congestion where we were at than a problem with the phone itself. Speaker volume is pretty loud--you won't miss any calls or alerts.
Conclusion
The Xperia SP could have been a great smartphone with its solid build and great design. However, the poor display and camera performance lets the phone down. Retailing at S$598 in Singapore, the handset seems aggressively priced, especially against the HTC One SV (which has a street price of around S$500 but lower specs). The smartphone will also make its way to other parts of Asia, though Sony has yet to release further information.
Indoor test shot with flash (click to enlarge).
Ref: cnet
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