Sony Xperia M is budget smartphone aimed at mid-high end consumers. The device comes with a price tag of Rs 13,490 for single SIM and Rs 14,490 for Dual SIM version. It does not have a Xperia Z like camera and the giant display, but it offers something worth buying in the budget category. Check out our full review of this smartphone below.
Design and Build
Sony has actually made a lot of advancement in terms of designing its smartphones. The Omnibalance concept is actually turning out to be one of the best design concepts in the market. The Xperia M is also a product of the Omnibalance design and looks very much like the Xperia Z and Z1. This smartphone is very slim and sleek, single hand usage comes as a byproduct with the design it adopts. With this design and elegance we can say that it is one of the gorgeous looking smartphone in the mid range price segment.
Previously we reviewed the Xperia Z1 which was a waterproof and dust proof device, although the Xperia M looks very similar to Z1 in terms of design it does not feature water and dust resistance coating. This smartphone measures 9.3mm thick, which is not the slimmest but certainly not very thick too. It weighs mere 115grams and gives a balanced feel in the hand. The build quality of the phone is decent; the rear panel of the phone is made of polycarbonate and has rubberized finish on it. This smartphone is available in black, white, purple and yellow colors.
Display
The Sony Xperia M comes with a 4-inch Multi-touch capacitive display with a resolution of 480x854 pixels, it does not have Sony Bravia engine or the trilluminos to give you a TV like quality. The display on this device has a pixel density of 245 pixels per inch, the display overall is average. In terms of visibility indoor we were completely satisfied with it, what disappointed us was the outdoor visibility.
Reading texts, watching movies and videos was satisfactory on this device, we did not notice pixels on texts and images, and everything appeared sharp and clear. The display on this device lacks good viewing angles, color don’t look true and natural when viewing from sides. The brightness levels on the display are pretty good and support auto brightness.
There are no complaints and issues in the responsiveness of the display, touches were accurate and typing was very easy on this device. Swiping through apps and home screens are very smooth, thanks to the Dual-Core processor on board.
Software and User Interface
The Xperia M runs Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean out of the box and it is skinned with Xperia UI. The user interface adds pinch to edit home screens and widgets menu. Unlike other 4-inch smartphones this one comes with a better keyboard and enhanced typing features. Sony has included 8 pre-installed themes which the user can change as per his needs.
The device has the power button on the right side, making it easy to reach out at it when needed. The volume keys are placed on the left hand side and the camera shutter key is on the right bottom. The device has three capacitive touch buttons at the bottom of the display accompanied by a beautiful LED indicator. What Sony offer more with this device is NFC and Android Beam, which a lot of budget smartphones don’t offer.
On a broader scale the Xperia M has good software on board and Sony has not gone crazy tweaking it too much. The Xperia UI does take away the stock android feel but that’s for a good reason, the Xperia UI is really fast on this device and it never lagged or stopped in our encounter with the smartphone.
Hardware
As said earlier, the build quality of the phone is excellent and it is very well complimented with quality hardware on board. The device has a 1GHz Dual-Core Snapdragon processor coupled with 1GB RAM. it has a set of Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity sensor and Compass on board. The combination of this hardware makes this device an exceptional device in the budget category.
The main processor on this smartphone is coupled with an Adreno 305 GPU for graphic rendering. This improves the battery life of the smartphone. It comes with a 1,750mAH battery and offers good backup. Sony claims that it offers up to 7hours and 30 minutes of talk time on 3G and gives standby time up to 450hours. We dint get to test it for that long but in our review session we played intense games, used 3G, WiFi and played music. During the 3 hours review session the battery percentage dropped down to 50% from 100%, this is pretty decent for a budget offering.
Camera and Memory
Sony is popular worldwide for making good camera phones, there are companies that buys camera from Sony to put on their smartphones. Having that said, Sony has not included a very high end camera on this device, the camera on this smartphone comes with a resolution of 5MegaPixels along with a 0.3MP front facing camera for video calling.
The rear camera has LED flash and comes with standard features like Geo-tagging, touch focus, smile and face detection. Memory is again something that one cannot talk much about this smartphone. It has a mere 4GB of ROM on board, leaving the user with 1.7GB memory available for media storage. It although supports 32GB micro SD card memory expansion but a lot of other smartphone makers in India offer something better in the same price segment.
Performance
The device’s overall performance is satisfactory and the dual core processor manages to do better gaming than its competitors. The display on this device is not very impressive and disappoints in outdoor visibility.
Call quality on this smartphone is amazing, there were no call drops and Sony’s HD voice does great job in eliminating noise. The loudspeaker could have been better, also the placement of the loudspeaker at the rear bottom affects the sound output when the device is placed on flat surface.
My Verdict
For Rs 13,000 you can certainly get better devices than this one. But this device performs better than those cheap high end smartphones in the market. In spite of having a Dual Core processor it managed to play some HD games without lags and frame drops. Smartphone like Nokia Lumia 520 and 525 are good alternative to this smartphone. The display quality is almost similar but Lumia 520 and 525 comes for a much lesser price yet offering the same performance. And if you are an Android Fan boy and want to buy an Android Device then this one is just right for you.
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