Today we’ll be reviewing the Sony Xperia V. This phone is a pretty good one, same as the Xperia T. In many ways they are similar, but different in certain aspects as well. The Sony Xperia V is one of the phones with a pretty decent hardware, a fairly good looking aspect and probably a modest-to-decent price. Of course, with its hardware specs and features, one would expect it to be more affordable so that anyone would be able to purchase it. However, one can never know.
Perhaps the only thing I do not like about this phone, the only thing I can’t say it was decent and could have been improved is the Sony Xperia V’s aspect. I do not like that Sony has gotten as lazy as Apple and are only employing the same design over and over again. Few differences exist between the recent models from Sony, and those differences can barely be observed as far as aspect goes.
I am sure I’m not the only one feeling this when I say that I’ve grown sick and tired of the same old design that Sony has employed on their device. The same black front and slightly curvy plastic back is starting too seem like such a routine thing right about now. One can hardly call the design revolutionary or groundbreaking or even original.
SUMMARY
As I said I’d do a long time ago but somehow in the future in a galaxy far,far away around over 9000 years ago but most likely a few months ago, I would start my reviews with a brief summary of the good and bad features of the device. I won’t be placing any technical data here, or if possible I will be putting little to none. This part is intended more as a general guideline for the whole review, or as a trailer of sorts, if you prefer that name. If you truly want to know what this device can do, I suggest skipping this part and going to the main review per say.
The Sony Xperia V has a lot of really awesome features. Its hardware configuration could do with a bit of improvement, however, it will still is more than powerful enough to handle any and all phone tasks and a great deal of the Smartphone tasks. While its power isn’t comparable to the devices equipped with Quad-Core processors and Tegra 3 or equivalent motherboards / video cards, the device is still powerful enough to run most games on the market. This is perhaps something that the man with not so many resources should enjoy as it will probably mean that the device won’t even be near the price of the previously mentioned titans of technology.
Since no good thing comes without a price, so to does the Sony Xperia V have its few but notice-able drawbacks. You will come to see them soon enough, however, before actually making up your mind whether or not those disadvantages are truly bad, hear this: all the features of this device are good, even the ones that seem less powerful. In conclusion, the disadvantages of this device are only bad if you choose to consider them as bad. Otherwise, they are only some points that could have received improvement, but other than that, they are still good enough to function and maintain an above average performance.
GENERAL
The Sony Xperia V is a 4G device, so that’s a bonus it has. Up until this year, 4G phones used to be a tad weaker as far as hardware was concerned than the rest of the devices. This one, however, is defying that thing and has a more than powerful enough configuration. The networks of this phone are : 2G ones ( GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 and GSM 1900 ), 3G ones ( HSDPA 850, HSDPA 900, HSDPA 1900 and HSDPA 2100 ) and 4G ones ( LTE 800 and LTE 2600 ). The Sony Xperia V was announced in August 2012 and has yet to receive any sort of detail about when it will be coming out. One would hope that by the end of Q3 of 2012 this device would be available, but we have no command over that to know for sure.
BODY
While the aspect and design of the Sony Xperia V is quite average as far as Sony standards go, the body of the phone is anything but usual. The device has a 4.3 inch screen, so the size is fairly standard. Thus, the size is 129 x 65 x 10.7 mm and the weight revolves around 120 grams. This phone also has Touch Sensitive Controls instead of frontal buttons.
While that seems pretty usual, the Sony Xperia V has its unusual details to it as well and they reside in the protective measures of the body of this device. This phone is IP57 certified Dust and Water resistant. The water proof part can be applied for up to 1 meter or 30 minutes of submersion.
DISPLAY
The screen type of the Sony Xperia V isn’t one of the finest available. Perhaps this is one of its main disadvantages. Even with a TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors, this device still has a ton of features that will make up for it. Many quality enhancements have been installed on this device’s display. However, even with all of these, one cannot help but wonder what would have been would the device have a better screen type.
The screen size of the Sony Xperia V, as I’ve already said, is 4.3 inches. The resolution reached by this screen is 720 x 1280 pixels. With all of these it has a pixel density worth envying. They actually went a bit overboard with it and added so much to the pixel density in a way that nobody can complain about it. The device has around 342 ppi, which is truly a lot considering that the human eye won’t perceive any difference if it exceeds 300.
The device has no screen protection, unfortunately, so you’ll have to be extra careful with its handling. The Sony Xperia V also has a complex sort of Multitouch that can support up to 10 fingers simultaneously on the screen ( the advanced sorts of multitouch are highly popular among Sony products, as far as I’ve seen ). The device also has Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 installed on it. It also has the Timescape UI on it, should you want to use it.
SOUND
The audio of this device is pretty default. The device has no sound enhancements whatsoever on it. The alert types, loudspeaker and 3.5 mm jack are all the default kind you can find on any Android phone.
MEMORY
The internal storage of this device is pretty big ( for me,anyway ) at around 8 GB. If that isn’t enough for you, know that the device also has a Micro SD card slot that can use any card of up to 32 GB. The RAM of the device is also pretty good. Sure, it could have been better, but then the price would have gone up too. The device has 1 GB of RAM, which is sort of good. Sure, the current maximum is 2 GB, however, the transition from 1 to 2 seems to be going pretty slow.
DATA CONNECTION
First of all, before discussing anything important, know that this is a device equipped with NFC. If you don’t know what NFC is, here’s the short version :
Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimetres. Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications such as Wi-Fi. Communication is also possible between an NFC device and an unpowered NFC chip, called a “tag”.
NFC standards cover communications protocols and data exchange formats, and are based on existing radio-frequency identification (RFID) standards including ISO/IEC 14443 and FeliCa. The standards include ISO/IEC 18092 and those defined by the NFC Forum, which was founded in 2004 by Nokia, Philips and Sony, and now has more than 160 members. The Forum also promotes NFC and certifies device compliance.
The connectivity of the Sony Xperia V is pretty awesome. Despite being a 4G phone ( they usually lack these things ), this device has both GPRS and EDGE. While we don’t know what Class they both are, we know their Speed – the Speed of the EDGE, anyway ( 237 KB/ ). The speed per say is as following : HSPA+ ( with a download speed of 42 MB/s and upload of 5.8 MB/s ) and LTE Cat3 ( with a download speed of 100 MB/s and upload speed of 50 MB/s ). The WLAN of this device is a Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n with Dual-Band, Wi-Fi direct, DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot. The Bluetooth of this device is a v4.0 one with A2DP. The USB port of the phone is a Micro USB v2.0 one with MHL, meaning it required no such thing as an HDMI port.
CAMERA
The main camera of this device is a 13 MP one that can photograph at resolutions of around 4128 x 3096 pixels and record video in 1080p full HD at around 30 frames per second. The features of this device are as following : autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection, 3D sweep panorama and image stabilization. The video recorder itself also has a lot of features such as : continuous autofocus, video light and video stabilizer. The secondary camera is a VGA one with no further features of its own to discuss.
BATTERY LIFE
The battery of this device is a standard Li-Ion 1750 mAh one. This battery can survive for up to 400 hours of stand-by time in 2G mode and 300 hours in 3G mode and up to 7 hours of talk-time in 2G mode and the same time of talk-time in 3G mode. I apologize for saying earlier that it lacks any and all sound enhancements. Apparently it does have something to enhance the music quality, else the creator of this phone would not have specified that it is good for up to 18 hours of continuous music play.
HARDWARE
The hardware components of this device, as I’ve already mentioned, aren’t at the same level as any Quad-Core device. Nor should they be compared with those devices. However, the Sony Xperia V will still run smooth with most of the games and apps out there. The hardware of this device consists of the following : Dual-Core 1.5 GHz Krait processor, Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset and Adreno 225 GPU. As you can clearly see for yourself, this hardware configuration is capable of running mostly anything available.
SOFTWARE
While it may come as a disappointment to see that it does not have the latest version of the Android OS installed on it and instead comes with Android OS v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, do not panic. While it may not have the latest version installed on it, it still supports it and there is an update available in order to put Android OS v4.1 Jelly Bean on your device.
FEATURES
This device is positively packed with all sorts of features. The sensors are : Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity and Compass. The messaging on this device can be done via : SMS ( with Threaded View ), MMS, E-Mail, IM and Push E-Mail. The browser of this phone uses HTML5 but has no integrated support for Adobe Flash, fact which is unfortunate and could cause certain problems. The Sony Xperia V also has a Stereo FM Radio with RDS. The GPS of this device has support for both A-GPS and GLONASS. This phone also has Java through a Java MIDP emulator. The available colors for this phone are : Black, White and Pink.
Here is a brief list of what the Sony Xperia V can do :
- TV-out (via MHL A/V link)
- SNS integration
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
- Document viewer
- Photo viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input
This concludes our little review of the Sony Xperia V. Thank you for reading this review. I hope it has been as helpful as possible. If you feel that anything is lacking from this review feel free to leave your suggestions in the comment section below for things which should be added and I will be sure to take them into consideration when writing my future projects. In the meantime, I sincerely hope you had as much fun reading my little review as I had writing it.
