Today we’ll be reviewing the Sony Xperia J. It has been a while since I’ve reviewed a phone, but that’s mstly due to the fact that I’ve been busy with college. However, I won’t bore you with my problems, so let’s get down to business. This device is a pretty good phone. While it doesn’t have much in the way of strength, it does have a very good quality that will interest any person on a budget, including students. That quality is: it’s cheap. Besides looking and functioning very good, you can get the Sony Xperia J for a mere 160 euros. That means that you can get it for under 200 dollars, which is a heck-of-a-bargain for Android phones.
This device is known under a few different names, as many other Xperia phones are. Sony does have a habit of creating multiple names for their devices, and some of them are more popular in certain regions. Those two names are: Sony ST26i and Sony ST26a. I do believe that these phones are somewhat more popular in their origin countries. That could be true since one cannot deny the success of Samsung and Sony in: Korea, Japan, China etc. Basically, they are more famous in Asia than they are in Europe or the States.
While this phone may not be the best, it’s still really good and will function great. Of course, if you have high expectations of it never lagging or something like that, you will be very disappointed. At one point or another, any device starts running a bit slow. In time, this device will be no exception. However, until that time, this remains a very good phone that is going to run great. Also, don’t forget that it looks positively gorgeous and will only set you back about 200 dollars.
SUMMARY
As I said I’d do a very long time ago, at the dawn of the human race when only flying spaghetti monsters walked the earth, but most likely a few months ago, I would start my reviews off with a brief summary of the device. Some people may complain that I call these little articles “reviews” without the phone actually being available at the time the review comes out. Well, it will be available soon, so would you not know what it’s capable of before?
The Sony Xperia J has quite a few good features, but it has its fair share of bad ones as well. However, before actually going all out of your way to complain about them, keep in mind that this device was built with price in mind. This is more of a “bridge” smartphone, to call it that. It is introduced in order to cover the gap between Android users and regular users. While many people will claim that Android phones are expensive and not worth so much money, there are still those willing to beat off that misconception. This device, for instance, is a phone that doesn’t provide much in terms of hardware or features, but at least it has a very good Android OS version installed on it.
The few bad points of this device are placed there strategically. What I mean by that is: were it not for those few “bad points”, this device would have been so much more expensive than it already is. What I noticed about this device is that there is a slight difference in supported networks. The two “other names” I’ve mentioned earlier are actually two different versions. I am sure most the average users won’t even notice the difference as it relies mostly on the area in which the device is available. I can’t actually say too much about the bad points of this device, or the good ones, come to think of it, but you will notice them in due time.
GENERAL
This is not a 4G phone, as I am sure the name and price of the Sony Xperia J already indicate. The networks supported by this device are the standard ones, with the minor difference between networks I’ve already mentioned. Those networks are: 2G ones ( GSM 850, gsm 900, GSM 1800 and GSM 1900 – on both versions ) and 3G ones ( HSDPA 900 and HSDPA 2100 on the ST26i and HSDPA 850, HSDPA 1900 and HSDPA 2100 on the ST26a ). This device was announced in August 2012 and was set to come out somewhere around September 2012. Since it is already past that date and the device isn’t here, one can only assume that it will come out later. Anyhow, I believe it should be in stores by the end of this year.
BODY
The size of this phone is pretty standard. The Sony Xperia J has a 4.0 inch screen, so the size is just enough to fit that. While a 4.0 inch screen is smaller than I would prefer, I do believe it’s still just about the perfect size for a smartphone. The Sony Xperia J is around 124.3 x 61.2 x 9.2 mm big and it weighs somewhere around 124 grams. This device also has Touch-Sensitive Controls instead of frontal buttons. I don’t think how worth while it still is to mention this bit about the Touch-Sensitive Controls since almost every new phone nowadays has that feature. However, I did come across a few devices lately that lacked said feature and had normal buttons.
DISPLAY
The display of this device isn’t the best of quality, however, it’s still more than good enough to make out anything that says on it. The screen of this device is a TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors. While the screen isn’t any of the “advanced” screens like, say, AMOLED or something like that, it’s still more than powerful enough as to show everything clear and without much effort.
The screen, as I’m sure I’ve already mentioned, is a 4.0 inch one that can house a resolution of approximately 480 x 854 pixels. The pixel density of this device is a pretty good one too. The Sony Xperia J has a pixel density of around 245 pixels per inch. Now normally the pixel density influences how good you see the items on the screen. It would be ideal if it exceeds 300 as that is the maximum pixel density the human eye can perceive. However, since this device has a screen that is only 4.0 inches in diagonal, I’d say that 245 is more than sufficient enough. Plus, it takes a really skilled eye to spot the differences between 250 and 300 ppi.
This device also has Multitouch, however, despite being a Sony it does not have the advanced kind that can support more than two simultaneous fingers on it. The screen defense of this device is Corning Gorilla Glass, so it’s pretty good, but I doubt it will hold agains powerful impacts such as falling on a bunch of sharp rocks or throwing it against a wall ( I know people of inferior intellect that have actually tried it in order to “test” ). The device also has Timescape UI installed on it and the Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine. If the UI isn’t to your liking and you want to get rid of it, I think you may have to root your phone ( which comes with advantages and disadvantages, but that is a story for another time ).
SOUND
The audio output of this device is pretty basic. For such a price, to expect high-tech sound enhancements would be something a tad bit foolish. The device has the standard Alert Types of any Android Device, a standard Loudspeaker and a default 3.5 mm jack. The Sony Xperia J lacks any and all sound enhancements, be them software-based or hardware-based.
MEMORY
The memory of this device is pretty good, although it is far from the best. As I already said, this phone was created for those on a budget, so it may not fit the taste of every power-hungry tech-maniac. The storage space of the Sony Xperia J is 4 GB, however, only 2 GB are user-availabe ( more than sufficient enough for me ). The RAM of this device is around 512 MB. It is pretty good, but totally uncomparable to the best out there. However, should you not require a powerful phone for lots of multitasking / gaming and are on a budget, this is definitely a solid choice. If the storage space isn’t sufficient to fit your taste, the device also has a Micro SD card slot that can use any card of up to 32 GB.
DATA CONNECTION
The Sony Xperia J has both GPRS and EDGE installed on it. The GPRS can go up to 86 KB/s and the EDGE can go up to 237 KB/s. The speed of this device per say is as following: 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 Bluetooth of this device is a v2.1 one with A2DP and EDR. The Sony Xperia J also has a Micro USB v2.0 port on it, however, it has no MHL or HDMI port, so you won’t be getting any HDMI with this device.
CAMERA
The camera of this phone is pretty good, especially for such a low price. The Sony Xperia J has a 5 MP camera that can photograph at around 2592 x 1944 pixels and record in VGA quality ( there are many 5 MP cameras that can record in 720p HD, but for such a low price you shouldn’t really expect too much ). The features of this camera are : autofocus, LED flash, image stabilization, geo-tagging and touch focus. The Sony Xperia J also has a secondary frontal camera, but that too is a VGA one with no features to talk about. Still, the mere thing that there is one is pretty good.
BATTERY LIFE
The battery of this device is a fairly strong one. The battery is a standard Li-Ion 1750 mAh battery that can sustain the phone for approximately 607 hours of stand-by in 2G mode or 618 hours of stand-by in 3G mode and up to 5 hours and 36 minutes of talk-time in 2G and 7 hours and 18 minutes of talk-time in 3G mode.
HARDWARE
The hardware of this device is good. If not good, then it falls into the quarters of acceptable. The CPU of this device is a Single-Core 1 GHz Cortex-A5 processor. This processor is accompanied by a Qualcomm MSM7227A Snapdragon chipset and an Adreno 200 GPU. All and all, the hardware is quite decent and should run almost anything without problem. Of course, I believe it’s needless to say that you can’t compare it with a Quad-Core or Dual-Core phone, but it’s still good.
SOFTWARE
The Android OS version of this device is Android OS v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich. Therefore, without wasting too much of your time, the Android OS is more than decent enough. To be frank, I was actually surprised to see that it can run on such a low configuration. This is a good thing, though, since the Android OS v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or 4.1 Jelly Bean are known to actually boost the hardware of the device.
FEATURES
The Sony Xperia J is packed with all sorts of features. The sensors of this device are : Accelerometer, 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 phone uses HTML5 and also has built-in support for Adobe Flash. This phone also has a Stereo FM radio with RDS on it. The GPS of this device has support for A-GPS and this phone also has Java through Java MIDP emulation. The colors in which this phone is available are: Black, White, Gold and Pink.
Here is a list of what the Sony Xperia J can do:
- SNS integration
- 50 GB of Cloud storage (time limited offer)
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
- Document viewer
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input
This concludes our little review of the Sony Xperia J. 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.
