It's not the top of the Xperia tree, but the Sony Xperia
XP makes a good impression as a more than capable midrange Android
with some nifty features.
As the name suggests, Sony has more or less combined the
best bits of the
Xperia S and the Xperia P to produce the SP (see what
they did there?). The SP comes in below the
Xperia Z in Sony's current canon, with reduced specs in
almost every area, though it makes a pretty good impression with
what it has.
There's no set price for the Xperia SP yet, but estimates are
suggesting it will be around the £330 mark.Design
It certainly looks more like those other midrange phones than the glass symphony of the high-end Z. Its 4.6-inch screen looks considerably smaller than the Z's 5-inch's, and it's also a bit less sharp with a resolution of 1,280x720 pixels rather than the bigger phone's full HD 1,920x1,080 pixels. That amounts to a ppi of 319 -- well short of the Z's 440ppi but more or less the same as the highly regarded Samsung Galaxy S3.
At this level though, the devil's in the detail and while text on web pages may not be quite as sharp at full zoom, and contrast levels may not be quite as distinct, in general use it still looks very good indeed. Movies look smooth and sharp too, thanks in part to Sony's Mobile Bravia 2 engine, but there's no HDMI port to stream movies or pics direct to your TV though.
It has the Z's large circular power button sticking out at the side but unlike its big brother the SP has added a dedicated camera shutter button and the rear casing is textured plastic rather than glass. That might mark it as a bit cheaper, but it feels perfectly fine, if ever so slightly on the chunky side at 10mm thick. The brushed aluminium frame around the edges lends it a touch of class and Sony's see-through plastic bar at the bottom lights up depending on what you're doing -- charging, message alerts and different colours to mirror what's on screen when you're playing music or viewing your photo gallery.
There's no sign of the water resistance we've been seeing on some recent Xperias and which looked like it might become a standard feature. That makes it no different from other smartphones in this category and less likely to distinguish itself.
The SP does without the Z's quad-core processor with 2GB RAM in favour of a dual-core chip with 1GB RAM. However, it claws something back with a higher clock rate -- 1.7GHz instead of 1.5GHz. It makes good use of it too, and nips along very nicely when it's switching between apps, playing HD games or opening web pages. It delivered an AnTuTu performance benchmark score of 16,223, which certainly puts it within spitting distance of the 18,440 we measured on the Z.
Perhaps surprisingly, the operating system on board is the 4.1 version of Android Jelly Bean, rather than the very latest 4.2. They look similar, with much the same features, but you don't get the lockscreen widgets which allow you to go straight to an app of your choice and you miss out on a few extra features on the camera app as well as some minor improvements to security and functionality. But you do get the function shortcuts on the pull-down menu -- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound etc, which comes in handy. The keyboard permits swipe typing so you can complete words without taking your finger off the screen -- very handy once you get used to it. Sony says we can expect an upgrade, but hasn't said exactly when.
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