Today we shall be taking a look at the Sony Xperia NEO L, which is also referred to as : Sony MT25i the Chinese market. This Android phone is quite well balanced. It may not be one of the strongest available, but it isn’t one of the weakest either. I guess you could classify as a bridge phone, or a middle one, depending on how you choose to see it. It’s not one of the weakest but not one of the strongest either. If you’re looking to try out the Android experience without paying that much and get a decent phone in the process, this is the choice for you. It even has the latest version of Android on it, if you are curious of trying it and comparing it with other OSes you may know.
Without further ado, let us begin this little review / preview.
GENERAL
This phone works both in 2G and 3G Networks. The 2G networks it supports are : GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900. The supported 3G networks are HSDPA 900 / 2100. The Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i was announced in March 2012, however, being such a fresh announcement, it’s to anyone’s guessing as to when exactly this phone will come out. I suppose it’s safe to assume that we’re looking at a good two to three months of waiting time. So, to sum it up : you should be able to hold this device at around The end of Q2 or the Beginning of Q3.
BODY
The dimensions of this phone aren’t too big. However, I feel as I should specify this. If you have a phobia against buttons and positively hate them on your devices, the Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i isn’t the phone for you. It has no Touch Sensitive Controls, but as far as I can see it, it’s fine. Remember, buttons have been more reliable than touchscreens and the small Click-ing noises are a bit nostalgic. Sorry for getting side-tracked. Now, back to the dimensions. They are exactly : 121 x 61.1 x 12.2 mm and the phone weighs around 131.5 grams.
DISPLAY
The type of screen that the Sony Xperia NEO L has is an LED-Backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen with around 16 million colors. The screen’s resolution reaches 480 x 854 pixels and the screen itself is 4.0 inches big. The pixel density of this screen reaches around 245 ppi, so it’s more than decent for a screen this size. Although certain “experts” would say that the human eye can perceive about 300 ppi, I’d say that to the eye of the regular person there is little difference between 200 and something and 300. But then again, I have been known to make one or two mistakes in my life. Irrelevant anyway, moving on. The Multitouch of this device is exactly what I’ve been talking about. While other phones are released without overly too powerful or extensive multitouch capabilities, this one is capable of running with up to 4 simultaneous fingers running on it. I still wouldn’t see the practical use of 4 fingers running simultaneously on the screen, but the option is something that may help you if you have it. Also, the Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i has the TimeScape UI installed on should you chose t o activate it.
SOUND
Moving on to the sound part of this little review / preview. The Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i is pretty basic on this part, having no form of sound enhancement method whatsoever and everything about the sound of this device is “stock” as you may say. In other words, what this phone is capable of as far as audible capabilities are concerned is the same thing that most standard phones can do. The alert types are : vibration and MP3 ringtones. This device also has Loudspeaker and a 3.5 mm jack. As I already said, it has no form of sound enhancement.
MEMORY
Moving on to the memory part of this little review / preview. As you may be aware, the Sony phones have a bad habit of allocating quite a large amount of the given internal storage space to the system, resulting that only the Nth part is available for users. Such is the case with this phone : out of 1 GB of storage space only 300 MB are user-available. Still, that isn’t actually a problem considering that you can use the MicroSD card slot to extend your internal storage space with up to 32 GB. The Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i also has 512 MB of RAM, which is pretty decent enough. It’s more than enough, in my opinion. But then again, I still consider a good phone any phone which you can use to make calls and doesn’t die out on you when you need it most.
DATA
Moving on to the data connectivity of this device. The Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i has both GPRS and EDGE. The GPRS goes to a speed of up to 80 KB/s and the EDGE goes up to 237 KB/s. The other speeds of this device are : HSDPA at 7.2 MB/s and HSUPA at 5.76 MB/s. The WLAN of this device is a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot. The Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i also has Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and EDR. This phone can also be used as a USB flash storage device or can be connected to the PC through its microUSB v2.0 port.
CAMERA
The main camera of this Android Phone is a 5 MP snapper capable of capturing images at a resolution as big as : 2592 x 1944 pixels. It also has a great deal of features such as : autofocus, LED flash, video calling, touch focus and even geo-tagging. The video recorder is capable of recording at 720p HD with a steady 30 fps and it even has video light. The secondary camera is a VGA camera, which is better than nothing, I guess.
BATTERY
I figured I should start adding this to my little reviews since the battery life is a major issue in most smartphones. No matter what you do the battery consumption is a big deal. It can vary from normal consumption to ultra high Instant Death consumption. That’s something none of us enjoy. Well, without further ado, let’s take a look at the battery of the Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i. We’re looking at a standard Li-Pi 1500 mAh battery. The stand-by time is up to 575 hours in 2G and up to 410 hours in 3G. The talking time is 7 hours and 53 minutes in 2G and 7 hours and 9 minutes in 3G. That being said, the phone is capable of playing music for around 37 hours.
HARDWARE
Let us now take a look at the hardware of the Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i. It’s been some time since I review a phone that has all of the required components : processor, GPU and chipset. Luckily, this one has all three of them. The processor is a 1 GHz Scorpion processor. Since Scorpion processors usually come with Qualcomm chipsets, so is the chipset of this phone : Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon. This phone also has an Adreno 205 GPU. Decent enough hardware configuration, wouldn’t you say ?
SOFTWARE
The Android OS of this device, as I’ve already said, is Android OS v4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich. This is a good choice of phone if you want a decent and modest phone which also has the best version of Android OS on it.
FEATURES
The sensors of the Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i are : accelelrometer, proximity and compass. The messaging on this phone is done via : SMS ( with threaded view ), MMS, E-Mail, IM and Push Mail. The browser of this device supports HTML5 and Adobe Flash. It doesn’t have a radio, but that isn’t a problem since there are so many radio apps and you can listen to any radio broadcast directly from their website. The Sony Xperia NEO L, or Sony MT25i also has a GPS with A-GPS support ant Java through Java MIDP emulation. The colors that this phone will come out are : black and white.
Here is a short list of the things that this phone can do :
- SNS integration
- MP4/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+ player
- TrackID music recognition
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Voice memo/dial/commands
- Predictive text input
This concludes our little review / preview of the Sony Xperia NEO L. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it. If you feel that anything important has been left out feel free to leave your suggestion in the comment section below for things which should be added or even other devices and I shall be sure to take them into consideration when writing my future projects.
