I have been using my Smartphone
"Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo V" since about a year and now I would like
to write a review on it. This review idea was actually provoked by one of my
friend, Karthikeyan S, founder and CEO, JOB SHELLS (http://www.jobshells.com/)
as he would like to buy one despite having a BB. :)
I will not be discussing
about the features and specifications as I'm not the one to change any of
those. This review will be a pure user review, a user who is using the phone
for almost a year. I'll be presenting my views in the "as is" basis
and it might not resemble any of the other "Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo
V". For full features and specifications, please visit
http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/phones/xperia-neo-v
Design
Being a Green heart phone,
the phone body is entirely made of recycled plastics. The phone has a 3.7 inch
scratch-resistant TFT touch screen 16 million colors, 854 x 480 pixels. The neo
V uses the Reality display based on the Sony Bravia Mobile Engine which means
we have a better, brighter and clear display.
Hardware buttons are found in
the bottom end (Home button stands in the center with back and menu keys at the
left and right). Just above the screen we can find earpiece, ambient light
sensor, the secondary VGA camera and a proximity sensor. On the right side you
have the volume controls and two small knobs (the power/lock button and the
camera key). We also have a tiny status LED next to the power/lock key whereas
we don’t have any of the keys at the left.
At the top portion we find
the micro USB and micro HDMI ports on each side of a 3.5mm audio jack. Both the
USB and HDMI ports are covered by small plastic lids. We have the 5MP lens
placed almost in the middle at the back with LED flash near it. This design is
useful as we don’t accidentally place the fingers over the lens when taking
pictures or videos.
If we open the back cover of
the phone, we can find the battery which covers half the portion of the phone.
The memory card can be hot swapped as there is no necessity for the battery to
be removed before removing memory card. The SIM can slot is anyways not hot
swappable and it requires the battery to be removed before removing the SIM
card.
The phone is comfortable to
hold on the palm to text or operate with applications.
Operating system and UI
The box piece of the Neo V at
the time I bought the phone came with Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread). Now I have
upgraded it to Android 4.0.4 (Ice cream Sandwich ).
Sony Ericsson blended the Android to work with its Timescape UI which is good
looking and pretty decent. Cool stuffs like Screen capture, Facebook integration,
Swipe text input, etc., works like a charm.
We can have the five pane
home screen and it also 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 our widgets gather there and we can click the one we want and
go to its screen. We can either go for the automatic options (alphabetical,
most used or recently installed) or we can manually shuffle the icons of the
apps when applications explored. The lock screen is Xperia fare where we get
notifications for Facebook events too. Android ICS has face recognition unlock
and I'm using this as the lock screen but this face unlock needs a bit
improvement in terms of security and Android is working on the same on the
future release Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Also we have pattern unlock and password
unlock which gives us more security for the phone from bad hands.
About the phone system
The phone book that missed
quick dials when on Android Gingerbread (instead it has a search field alone),
now has the quick dial options which is really useful if you have a large
number of contacts. Each contact is presented in side-swipable interface that
holds contact info, recent calls and more info from social networking services
like Facebook. We have a handful of options to sync the contacts with our
accounts, including Exchange and Facebook, and you can selectively show or hide
contacts from some accounts, or set the phonebook to display only contacts with
phone numbers or even to display only the contacts that are saved in SIM card.
The phonebook, call log and dialer are all part of the same application.
The phone comes with the
proximity sensor, where it automatically disables the touch screen when you
hold it next to your ear during a call. The phone conversations (audio) with
the Neo V was good enough when it operated on Gingerbread but the audio during
the call decreased to 70 ~ 80% after upgrade to ICS. I have tested the audio
even at a silent environment where it lacks better audibility.
Messaging is threaded which
looks like an IM chat where the recent message comes in the bottom. We can add
photos, videos, pictures to the messages which automatically convert into MMS.
Gmail app is integrated for the mailing which is good as it can hold multiple
accounts. POP and IMAP both are supported by Gmail. We have Google Talk for
Instant Messaging. Key board is very comfortable, keys are large enough and
well spaced even in the horizontal position and when rotated to landscape mode
we get a more spacious keyboard. I felt a little bit trouble placing the cursor
at the exact position where I need it to be while correcting mistakes in the
vertical position but that can be over come by flipping the phone to horizontal
position. The one which impressed me was the swipe to input mode which can be
activated in settings where the user don’t have to tap the keys instead can
just swipe across to input texts. It comes with T9 prediction and also includes
spaces automatically in between the words which make typing easier.
Music and Videos
Gallery app which contains
all the music files and video files is pretty good with functionality, cool 3D
looks and nice transition effects. Gallery will also contain Facebook albums
which we can distinguish with the Facebook symbol and we can "like"
them with the thumbs up button in the upper right corner when viewing them
individually. ICS contains Xperia Gallery in addition to the Gallery app to
resemble Sony take over of the Ericsson.
While viewing images, we can
use the pinch zoom to zoom in/out which makes viewing easier rather using the
+/- button. Bravia engine really works well when it is on with full brightness
where your videos and photos look more vivid and clear and hence it enhances
the quality.
We have a pathetic video
codec that it can't even play 1080p MP4 videos but played 720P MP4 videos and
the other formats such as DivX, Xvid, Mkv, etc., files are not able to be
played on the device. No worries, we have a lot of video apps in the Google
play which uses Hardware and software decoding techniques which lets us play
any kind of video we through on the app. I'm using BS player Free and you can
too use the app as it gives good output.
While coming to music, we
have xLoud technology to enhance the sound. The differences can be well
distinguished when enable/disable the xLoud option in settings. The Now Playing
screen offers nothing but the standard music controls, shortcuts to the library
and the Infinite key. The Infinite key is very useful to look up a song on
YouTube or browse for the lyrics. I used to click on it very often to get the
lyrics of the song playing to sing along. Like images, we can also "like"
music with the thumbs up button which we are listening to. FM Radio is quite
good with auto search and save according to the region we are in. We can use
the track id app to get information on what we are currently listening to when
on Radio or recording to an external music.
Camera
A 5 megapixel camera with LED
flash. We have short cuts to the settings in the left and thumb nails of recent
photos are shown in the right side of the view finder. The short cuts can be
rearranged or replaced by the settings you would require often. For taking
still photos, we have many settings to get the clearer image such as Focus
mode, exposure value, white metering,
image stabilizer, etc., which can give you best of the 5MP camera. The photos
whiles taken at low light are not as clear as they were clear in the phone
screen but when seen on bigger screens, the images looks a bit blurred and
filled with grains. Mind, this is not a SLR camera and the camera does perfect
what one expects from a phone camera.
The 3D camera is good to produce
3D images but can only be seen 3D with compatible 3D TV's or 3D screens.
The panorama view is really
good if we have a large crowd to shoot or a beautiful view of a beach for
example. The pictures are with good color and contrasts except when the climate
is worse with clouds and low lights.
The presence of front camera
makes us take self shots easier but the problem being the front camera is just
a VGA one, the photos not being so good.
The video camera option on
the right side from the view finder is just a slide down button which flips the
still camera mode to video camera mode but this option is present only after
the upgrade to ICS else we have to choose from the settings. The LED back light
is useful when recording videos at low light. The settings are pretty same as
with the still camera settings and are easy to use. The continuous auto focus
mode is good and it can also be clearly seen when we record videos which will be
recorded in 720p, 30fps (HD) and MP4 format. This can also be adjusted to
reduce the quality according to our needs such as if the video is to be
attached with MMS as a clip. In short, camera is really good for a 5MP group.
Connectivity and others
I would say the connectivity
is covered from all the aspects from quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band HSPA
with download rates of up to 7.2 Mbps and upload at 5.76 Mbps. When testing the
3G connectivity in India
Web browser is excellent and
I prefer to use Opera browser till I upgraded the phone to ICS as Gingerbread
doesn't have Chrome browser as the default browser. Flash 11 is supported to
view flash contents and play flash games.
Organizers such as alarms,
calculator, calendar, etc., looks really good with the UI and everything are
ease of use. The calendar can be synced with all the accounts such as Facebook,
exchange server and Gmail accounts. For document viewing the phone contains
OfficeSuite app and we can download other apps from Google market (Gingerbread)
or Google Play (ICS) for free or as a paid app. Google Play consists millions
of apps for the phone and we can choose automatic update of apps if we have a unlimited
data connection or restrict the update to manual if we have a limited data
connection which makes our life trouble free.
Performance and Battery
life
A 1GHz processor seems really
good for a Smartphone but this when in combination with 512mb RAM gives a bit
of lagging performance especially when multitasking with apps that may require
more space like Facebook and Instagram. This also impacts the gaming experience
when done in parallel with sending texts, etc., I can see a lag when switching
between apps and when I receive calls when working on any app. This problem was
quite high when the phone is operating on Gingerbread and decreased once
updated to ICS. We can still expect performance boost in the future updates.
Finally, The Sony Ericsson
Xperia Neo V is a 1GHz-powered Smartphone with a 3.7" screen, 5MP still
camera and HD video. Plenty of competitions for this rnage of smartphones with
companies like Samsung, Motorola and Nokia. I'm satisfied with the phone till
date and would recommend one if you gotta go for it.
