Sony Xperia S has a Dual-core processor with HD screen and is launch when other flagship phones are launch with quad-core processor like Galaxy S3 and HTC One X. The Xperia S is priced below those flagships devices however, and in its range it's quite the fighter.
The Sony Xperia S aims for camera excellence with 12MP still photography and 1080p video recording. It sports an HD screen and a micro HDMI port, not to mention a dedicated TV Launcher that lets you control the phone with your TV remote.
The Xperia S is a high-performance phone with dual-core 1.5GHz processor and Adreno 220 GPU showing good results in benchmarks.
Sony Xperia S specification:
- 2G Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
- 3G Network: HSDPA 14.4 Mbps 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100; HSUPA 5.8 Mbps
- Dimensions: 128 x 64 x 10.6 mm
- Weight: 144 g
- Display: LED-backlit LCD, 720 x 1280 pixels, 4.3 inches (~342 ppi pixel density)
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
- Bravia Mobile engine
- Multi-touch input method
- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
- Touch sensitive controls
- 3.5mm jack
- Memory: 32GB ROM, 1GB RAM
- MicroSD: up to 32GB, 4GB included
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
- Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, EDR
- USB v2.0 microUSB
- Camera: 12 MP, 4000x3000 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
- 1080p@30fps, continuous autofocus, video light, video stabilizer
- Secondary 1.3 MP, 720p@30fps front facing camera
- OS: Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread), planned upgrade to v4.0
- CPU: Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon dual-core 1.5 GHz with Adreno 220
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- GPS: Yes, with A-GPS support and GLONASS
- Digital compass
- Battery: Standard battery, Li-Ion 1750 mAh
Sony Xperia S specification:
Display
The screen on the Xperia S is a 4.3" BRAVIA LCD of 720p resolution with 342 ppi is the sharpest screens in any smartphone.This makes text incredibly crisp, and with the Mobile Bravia display tweaks, pictures and videos really pop, despite it only being an 'ordinary' TFT LCD screen, without any Super-this-that-and-the-other branding.The clean design .and the transparent strip is a unique accent and subtle enough to show the Xperia pureness.
Sony Xperia S live pictures
User interface - Android Gingerbread.
The Sony Xperia S has a slightly revamped custom skin, but it's still Gingerbread underneath (2.3.7).with ICS 4.0 update in next quarter.
As usual the Xperia S has a five-pane home screen (you can't add or delete panes), with four docked shortcuts (two on either side of the launcher shortcut). Those are visible on all five home screen panes and are user configurable: they can be either single icons or folders with multiple items in them.
The Sony Xperia S UI
The home screen does a neat trick called Overview mode. Pinch to zoom out on any of the 5 home screen panes and a new screen opens up with a cool transition. All active widgets gather there for easy viewing and selection.
The Overview mode helps you find the widget you are looking for.
The Xperia S has some custom-made Sony widgets in addition to the standard set. Those include the Timescape widget (there's a dedicated app too) and a Mediascape like widget for photos and videos (the actual app isn't there anymore, the standard gallery is back).
The lock screen shows notifications for Facebook events too. A cool new addition to the lock screen, unseen before in the Xperia line, is the music player widget, which lets you control music playback without unlocking the phone.
The standard notification area and task switcher are of course present and accounted for - no custom touches to them.
The Lockscreen notifications The standard notification area and task switcher
The Xperia S may not run Ice Cream Sandwich, but Sony managed to sneak in an ICS feature as a consolation prize - a Data monitor. You can set up alarms for data sent, data received and total data. You can set the start date of you data plan (the day of the month your carrier resets your data counter).
The new Data monitor app
In CPU-intensive benchmarks, the two 1.5GHz Scorpion cores behave admirably, with results close to the Galaxy S II and ahead of a good deal of the competition, including an HTC Sensation XE on the same chipset.
The Adreno 220 isn't exactly the most powerful GPU around, but Sony have managed to get the best out of it - 37.5fps in NenaMark 2 is a playable framerate, despite the high resolution (the 720p Xperia S screen has 140% more pixels than the WVGA screen of the Galaxy S II, for example).
Player is a bit limited, but capable of 1080p
There is no dedicated video player app on the Xperia S as in most of the droids out there. Unlike previous Xperia phones, the video player of the Xperia S supports AVI and MKV videos in addition to the usual 3GP and MP4 videos. There are some limitations though - some audio codecs were causing trouble. According to one of our readers, its the videos with surround sound that Xperia S users should avoid.
To its credit, the Xperia S did play a 1080p videos and the 4.3" Reality display offers excellent image quality (the BRAVIA engine comes into play here too), plus you can watch 720p videos at 100%.
Revamped music player is great
The music player on the Xperia S has been rebuilt from the ground up. 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).
SensMe organizes 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 frquency 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 S loudspeaker.
12MP camera with 3D
The Xperia S boasts a 12 megapixel camera, complete with a single LED light uses a backlit Exmor R sensor for improved low-light performance.
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 boasts a 12 megapixel camera, complete with a single LED light uses a backlit Exmor R sensor for improved low-light performance.
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 are 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).
Several shooting modes, including two 3D ones • Shooting a Multi Angle image
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.
Tilting the phone left and right rotates the camera slightly in the opposite direction
There are some distortions visible even in a static scenes, 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 make it clear again - the Xperia S 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 S 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.
With a 12MP camera, image quality is obviously a priority with the Xperia S and Sony have created a very capable shooter. It also manages to develop the shadows much better. Colors are slightly over saturated, but white balance is pretty accurate overall (just a tad on the yellow side).
Sony Xperia S camera samples
Image quality comparison
The Sony Xperia S is one of the few 12MP shooters in our Photo Quality Comparison database. It does fairly well in the simple black and white ISO chart, though we expected it to be a bit better. The second chart shows that the noise reduction takes away some fine detail. Colors look pretty good though, even under artificial lighting (third chart).
Sony Xperia S in our Photo Compare Tool
The Xperia line joins the Full HD race
The Sony Xperia S captures 1080p video at 30 fps and does a very good job of it. 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 S 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.
Switching to camcorder mode
Videos are stored in MP4 format (14Mbps bitrate) and the frame rate nails the 30fps mark. The Xperia S videos come with stereo sound recorded at 128Kbps bitrate and 48kHz sampling.
A 1080p shooter is nothing new, but the Sony Xperia S is among the best. Videos have a lot of detail, practically no noise and pleasing (oversaturated) colors. The framerate is buttery smooth too.
Check out the 1080p and 720p samples that we captured with the Xperia S:
If you want to look closer at the video quality, you can download this untouched sample 1080p@30fps, taken straight off the device.
The front camera on the Sony Xperia S shoots 720p video, so we gave that a shot too. Expectedly, the results are much worse than what the main camera produces and there's a purple tint. They're still more than good enough for video calls though.
Video quality comparison
The Sony Xperia S stacks up quite well against the other 1080p shooters in our Video Quality Comparison tool. It captures a lot of fine detail, but some of it is lost due to compression (the blue wall in the first image). Quality remains good under low lighting, with good detail and an acceptable amount of noise.
Sony Xperia S in Video Compare Tool
Conclusion
With a top-notch camera and excellent screen, standard microHDMI port, very good audio quality and plenty of storage, the Xperia S will readily meet your multimedia needs.
We didn't run into a situation where the available processing power wasn't enough, so for the time being the dual-core vs. quad-core argument seems like a matter of pride rather than performance.
Sony are trying to infuse their phones with the company's innovative spirit and they've done interesting things with the NFC connectivity and the close integration with other multimedia devices in the house. The TV launcher that can be controlled with the TV remote was quite clever we thought, but in typical Sony fashion, you're likely to run into compatibility issues (unless you have a BRAVIA HDTV).
The Sony Xperia S is aggressively priced, and offers a lot of bang for the buck. Still, there are plenty phones that would like to challenge it.