theserpent
Firecracker to the moon
Xperia L REVIEW
Xperia L,is Sony's new midranger announced back in March 2013,It was released in India In may and I guess India Was the first country to get Xperia L
Specs
*i.imgur.com/xlGH842.png
Now to start the review
BUILD Qulity
I must say sony has some impresive designers, Xperia L has a good build quality,the phone is slightly curved in the back sharing the design from it's old brother Sony Erisscon Arc.I am in really love with the design, it's just beautiful.The headphone jack is in the top,with the usb port on the left and the volume rocker,power button and camera shutter on the right,the
volume buttons are a bit hard to press,but that's not a big issue as so.And in the bottom theres the amazing LED Notification light(More on that later).
The back cover is really hard to remove,I felt scared that I might break it.So be carefull while removing the back cover.
*i.imgur.com/U1xoUy8.jpg
What's disappointing is,that there's no hot swappable slot for sd card,you have to remove the back cover and also the battery WTH,just to insert your micro sd card.
Xperia L is available in White,Black and Red color.The phone is very light and weighs 137gms only.
*i.imgur.com/oGE4nZK.jpg
DISPLAY
Xpeira L comes with a 4.3" FWVGA Screen with 854x480 Resolution i.e 228 ppi,The main problem in this budget is that these manufactures some way or the other tend to mess something,here they have messed up with the Screen Resolution,Anyway the screen is good but not the best you can get at this price(Compared to L9) but the screen is good enough for very day use, Unless you plan on watching movies on it(If yes then go for L9),the phone lacks sony's Bravia engine,That could have made the screen much more better,
The color reproduction is good and not over saturated,the look good and the text is crisp.The screen doesn'tfair well outdoors,I found it a bit tough to use it in outdoors and had to crank up the brightness to full to get a better view of the display.
*i.imgur.com/zOhPJKN.jpg
The on screen keyboard is Good,and you can easily type on it with ease thanks to swype.
User Interface,Features and Pre loaded apps
UI and Features
The Phone runs on Android Jelly bean 4.1.Timescape UI,Combined with Project butter make Xperia L very smooth,Still now I haven't faced any lag,thanks to the dual core krait and 1 gb ram.I must say Sony has really optimized the phone really well to give the end user the best experience one can get.
*i.imgur.com/8ArHhkA.png
The Timescape UI is pretty decent and offers few customizations,Long press the Homescreenor pinch out,a small menu comes up under with the options to add Widgets l,Shortcuts to apps,Change your wallpaper and also the Themes(,You can add upto 7 homescreens and make anyone of them the Home.
*i.imgur.com/eMQ1r5T.png
Sony has its own Widgets like walkman,quick tools,weather app,Just click the widgets and they show up in the screen,sadly you can't resize them in the stock launcher.
PS:If you use any other Launchers,walkman widget and few other widgets won't work.
In the wallpaper setting, You can choose from various wallpapers you have along with live wallpapers
Theme menu,gives you other color themes that changes your wallpaper and lock screen wallpaper, and also gives a different color to the LED notification light(Only for calls).
You Have the on screen buttons which eat up around 0.3" screen,and you might sometimes in rare cases hit the google now button while scrolling.
The App Drawer is pretty decent,it allows you to arange the apps in any order you like,Alphabetical,most used and recently Installed.You can also Unistall the apps from the app drawer itself.By long holding a app you can add it to the homescreen.
The task manger is the same ass stock Android,Slide to close.
*i.imgur.com/6bvoJlv.png
*i.imgur.com/GgATITz.png
As you can see now the latest update has included small apps too
In short the interface is very easy to use and you will love it,it's smooth no lag whatsoever
*i.imgur.com/pSs5CyZ.png
Sony recently,Updated the Phone,that has improved the overall performance,And now The notification light works very well, it can now work as you have selected the color via whatsapp,fb and whatso ever ! Kudos TO sony
*i.imgur.com/6kXOqaX.jpg
The LED light changes as you browse photos or flip thru the music according to the "most found color" in the pic or album art.
As its Android 4.1,it also has Google now,just slide up the home button and Google Now pop ups,Google now had no difficulty in Understanding my ascent,It does all basic things really well.
Google Now,Can also call contacts,Send messages-(It can easily find contacts with an American name, had slight difficulty to find Indian names).
To sum it up here,Sony's UI is really smooth offering great customization and tons of features but there some glitches here and there,What I fell in love with was the notification light and the amazing sony UI,Widgets.Sony's UI kills touchwiz and all other crap.You will love it
Rating-4.8/5
Pre Loaded Apps
It comes pre loaded with Google Chrome(deafualt browser),Walkman,Google Music,Sony select,barcode reader,track id,Office suite,Sony music,Sony live,whatsapp,Facebook and Linkedin,in a matter of few hours a few other bloatware should up from nowhere I deleted them all.
Anyway,Compared to Samsung The phone has v.less bloatware
Rating-4.5/5
Music/Video
The Walkman app,that is the default music player is truly a beast,I just loved it.It's the best music player available in Android.The interface is Cool and simple.
As you open the app,you find two tabs,Playing and My music.The My Music, shows you all your songs,Albums,Artists etc divided in thumbnails,There's also a feature called senseme,That filters songs according to moods like,Happy,sad etc.
*i.imgur.com/2qyfjlN.png
The now Playing screen has standard music controls, shortcuts to the library, an Infinity key and the song cover art(The LED light changes according to this). The Infinity key lets you quickly look up a song on YouTube or browse for the lyrics, among others.
*i.imgur.com/7NHFggg.png
In the settings you can either use sony's ClearAudio+ Option,that changes the audio quality.
Now for the Die hard Music fans,you have a Equalizer(Note:You cant Equalize,If you have clearaudio ticked)
In the lockscreen just by sliding the music icon you get controlls.Then there's a track id widget,that you can add to the homescreen,that hears the song and tells it's name.It's nothing but what shazam does.
Sonys Video player is called Movies,it's connected to grace note which gives you some information about the movies/tv shows you have loaded in your phone.
I tried some tv show's I had and they worked very well,they were .avi,.mp4 format.
For playing mkv and few other's you need to install a 3rd part video player like mx Player
RATING-5/5*i.imgur.com/dSrpfG1.png
Camera
Xperia L has a 8 Mp camera that gives farely decent shots.
Sony has done a really great job in the camera UI, and has provided many features like HDR,Face detection and a few more filters that let you select effects.
Now coming to the camera UI.
*i.imgur.com/zUx4vVU.png
The camera produces farily decent images,which are quite good for this budget.Sony Advertised the camera as X.L's main feature but which did turn out quite disappointing for many but what the hell, it does produce much better than all phones in this Budget.
The image quality of Xperia L is GOOD,In some places it performs well,while indoor and low light shoots are a bit noisy.The color and details are really good,So overall I can say this camera is good enough.
The Video camera is capable of recording only 720p video at 30 fps,which is really decent,maybe some custom rom might allow you to shoot in 1080p.You Can shoot the videos in HDR mode too
Ratings-4.2/5
Browsing
Xperia L's default Browser is Google Chrome,The UI Is Minimal,neat and simple and easy to use,loading webpages on 2g will be a real Pain,so I use Opera browser that about twice as faster as chrome in loading pages on 2G.
*i.imgur.com/HCWRU4O.png
Coming to Google chrome now,At the top you have an URL bar with a refresh/stop button next to tabs and settings. You can easily switch between tabs swipe in either direction.
Of course, one of Chrome's strengths is its ability to seamlessly sync with the desktop version, using nothing but your Google account. This allows you to open an article on your PC and finish reading it on your mobile phone. It also syncs your bookmarks and favorite sites.
*i.imgur.com/geT8VQi.png
Google Chrome is generous with the settings as well. You can control almost every aspect of your web browsing from choosing what content you want to allow to load like JavaScript, images, cookies and pop-ups.
But at the end I preffer Opera over Google Chrome.
Reading the webpages in X.L is a good experience and I din't find it a strain at all.
Overall I give this a 4.5/5
GAMING
Xperia L has a 1 gb ram,Dual core krait and an Adreno 305,Which makes Gaming on the device as smooth as butter, I din't find lag in most of the games I tried,Only wish I had during gaming was wish the screen was a bit bigger as I have fat fingers.
Anyway Gaming is wonderfull.
5/5
Battery Life
X.L Has a 1700 mAh Removable battery,which is claimed to last 9 hours by sony.I get around 10-16 hours a day(the huge difference is due to standby, when I'm in college and at home),With very light usage(say <1.5 hours of screen time) the phone easily lasts 20-28 hours.
Browsing,Texting,browsing for 1 hour will bring down the battery by around 20-25%.
Overall I'm not soo satisfied with the battery,I have mixed feelings for it sometimes it's amazing,sometimes some bad app gives it a massive drain.
One thing that I have noticed is when on stand by,Suppose theres a miss call or anything the phone app drains the battery by over 10-15% over 6-7 hours.
Now after the new Update the battery drain has increased by a huge margin,used the phone for less than 1 hour battery down by like 20-30%(comapred to 10-15%) before
So the battery life gets 3.5/5
VERDICT
With so many Indian Brands and samsung releasing their Mediatek or Cortex A5 quad cores every other day,Sony did something different than just releasing a Cortex A5 rip off phone,and came out to release the first Krait phone under 20k, and has done very well in the market.Why should you get this over galaxy grand you ask me?Tell me why not?every other person out there has a galaxy grand or canvas phones in their hands and these phones just offer a namesake "quad core" and a large screen with a really disapointing resolution,X.L offers everything in a smaller packet and Is probably the best VFM phone by Sony for like 16k,So If you have 16k and are planning to buy a phone,What your still reading this? Just go and buy it
PROS
Beautiful Design
Dual core krait
Great VFM
CONS
Medicore Battery Life
Front camera Quality is disapointing
Video recording could have been 1080p
OVERALL RATING-9.2/10
Xperia L,is Sony's new midranger announced back in March 2013,It was released in India In may and I guess India Was the first country to get Xperia L
Specs
*i.imgur.com/xlGH842.png
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual or quad-band HSPA support
- 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
- 4.3" 16M-color TFT capacitive touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) at around 228 ppi
- Android OS v4.1.2 Jelly Bean
- Dual-core 1 GHz Krait CPU, Adreno 305 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8230 Snapdragon chipset
- 1 GB of RAM
- 8 GB of inbuilt storage (5.8 GB user available)
- microSD slot (32GB supported)
- 8 MP autofocus camera, single LED flashlight, geotagging, touch focus, HDR, proper shutter key
- 720p @ 30fps video capture with HDR
- VGA front-facing camera
- Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
- GPS with A-GPS
- NFC
- PlayStation certified
- Accelerometer, ambient light and proximity sensor
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v4.0
- LED strip for breathing light and notifications
- 1750 mAh Li-Ion battery, user-replaceable
Now to start the review
BUILD Qulity
I must say sony has some impresive designers, Xperia L has a good build quality,the phone is slightly curved in the back sharing the design from it's old brother Sony Erisscon Arc.I am in really love with the design, it's just beautiful.The headphone jack is in the top,with the usb port on the left and the volume rocker,power button and camera shutter on the right,the
volume buttons are a bit hard to press,but that's not a big issue as so.And in the bottom theres the amazing LED Notification light(More on that later).
The back cover is really hard to remove,I felt scared that I might break it.So be carefull while removing the back cover.
*i.imgur.com/U1xoUy8.jpg
What's disappointing is,that there's no hot swappable slot for sd card,you have to remove the back cover and also the battery WTH,just to insert your micro sd card.
Xperia L is available in White,Black and Red color.The phone is very light and weighs 137gms only.
*i.imgur.com/oGE4nZK.jpg
DISPLAY
Xpeira L comes with a 4.3" FWVGA Screen with 854x480 Resolution i.e 228 ppi,The main problem in this budget is that these manufactures some way or the other tend to mess something,here they have messed up with the Screen Resolution,Anyway the screen is good but not the best you can get at this price(Compared to L9) but the screen is good enough for very day use, Unless you plan on watching movies on it(If yes then go for L9),the phone lacks sony's Bravia engine,That could have made the screen much more better,
The color reproduction is good and not over saturated,the look good and the text is crisp.The screen doesn'tfair well outdoors,I found it a bit tough to use it in outdoors and had to crank up the brightness to full to get a better view of the display.
*i.imgur.com/zOhPJKN.jpg
The on screen keyboard is Good,and you can easily type on it with ease thanks to swype.
User Interface,Features and Pre loaded apps
UI and Features
The Phone runs on Android Jelly bean 4.1.Timescape UI,Combined with Project butter make Xperia L very smooth,Still now I haven't faced any lag,thanks to the dual core krait and 1 gb ram.I must say Sony has really optimized the phone really well to give the end user the best experience one can get.
*i.imgur.com/8ArHhkA.png
The Timescape UI is pretty decent and offers few customizations,Long press the Homescreenor pinch out,a small menu comes up under with the options to add Widgets l,Shortcuts to apps,Change your wallpaper and also the Themes(,You can add upto 7 homescreens and make anyone of them the Home.
*i.imgur.com/eMQ1r5T.png
Sony has its own Widgets like walkman,quick tools,weather app,Just click the widgets and they show up in the screen,sadly you can't resize them in the stock launcher.
PS:If you use any other Launchers,walkman widget and few other widgets won't work.
In the wallpaper setting, You can choose from various wallpapers you have along with live wallpapers
Theme menu,gives you other color themes that changes your wallpaper and lock screen wallpaper, and also gives a different color to the LED notification light(Only for calls).
You Have the on screen buttons which eat up around 0.3" screen,and you might sometimes in rare cases hit the google now button while scrolling.
The App Drawer is pretty decent,it allows you to arange the apps in any order you like,Alphabetical,most used and recently Installed.You can also Unistall the apps from the app drawer itself.By long holding a app you can add it to the homescreen.
The task manger is the same ass stock Android,Slide to close.
*i.imgur.com/6bvoJlv.png
*i.imgur.com/GgATITz.png
As you can see now the latest update has included small apps too
In short the interface is very easy to use and you will love it,it's smooth no lag whatsoever
*i.imgur.com/pSs5CyZ.png
Sony recently,Updated the Phone,that has improved the overall performance,And now The notification light works very well, it can now work as you have selected the color via whatsapp,fb and whatso ever ! Kudos TO sony
*i.imgur.com/6kXOqaX.jpg
The LED light changes as you browse photos or flip thru the music according to the "most found color" in the pic or album art.
As its Android 4.1,it also has Google now,just slide up the home button and Google Now pop ups,Google now had no difficulty in Understanding my ascent,It does all basic things really well.
Google Now,Can also call contacts,Send messages-(It can easily find contacts with an American name, had slight difficulty to find Indian names).
To sum it up here,Sony's UI is really smooth offering great customization and tons of features but there some glitches here and there,What I fell in love with was the notification light and the amazing sony UI,Widgets.Sony's UI kills touchwiz and all other crap.You will love it
Rating-4.8/5
Pre Loaded Apps
It comes pre loaded with Google Chrome(deafualt browser),Walkman,Google Music,Sony select,barcode reader,track id,Office suite,Sony music,Sony live,whatsapp,Facebook and Linkedin,in a matter of few hours a few other bloatware should up from nowhere I deleted them all.
Anyway,Compared to Samsung The phone has v.less bloatware
Rating-4.5/5
Music/Video
The Walkman app,that is the default music player is truly a beast,I just loved it.It's the best music player available in Android.The interface is Cool and simple.
As you open the app,you find two tabs,Playing and My music.The My Music, shows you all your songs,Albums,Artists etc divided in thumbnails,There's also a feature called senseme,That filters songs according to moods like,Happy,sad etc.
*i.imgur.com/2qyfjlN.png
The now Playing screen has standard music controls, shortcuts to the library, an Infinity key and the song cover art(The LED light changes according to this). The Infinity key lets you quickly look up a song on YouTube or browse for the lyrics, among others.
*i.imgur.com/7NHFggg.png
In the settings you can either use sony's ClearAudio+ Option,that changes the audio quality.
Now for the Die hard Music fans,you have a Equalizer(Note:You cant Equalize,If you have clearaudio ticked)
In the lockscreen just by sliding the music icon you get controlls.Then there's a track id widget,that you can add to the homescreen,that hears the song and tells it's name.It's nothing but what shazam does.
Sonys Video player is called Movies,it's connected to grace note which gives you some information about the movies/tv shows you have loaded in your phone.
I tried some tv show's I had and they worked very well,they were .avi,.mp4 format.
For playing mkv and few other's you need to install a 3rd part video player like mx Player
RATING-5/5*i.imgur.com/dSrpfG1.png
Camera
Xperia L has a 8 Mp camera that gives farely decent shots.
Sony has done a really great job in the camera UI, and has provided many features like HDR,Face detection and a few more filters that let you select effects.
Now coming to the camera UI.
*i.imgur.com/zUx4vVU.png
The camera produces farily decent images,which are quite good for this budget.Sony Advertised the camera as X.L's main feature but which did turn out quite disappointing for many but what the hell, it does produce much better than all phones in this Budget.
The image quality of Xperia L is GOOD,In some places it performs well,while indoor and low light shoots are a bit noisy.The color and details are really good,So overall I can say this camera is good enough.
The Video camera is capable of recording only 720p video at 30 fps,which is really decent,maybe some custom rom might allow you to shoot in 1080p.You Can shoot the videos in HDR mode too
Ratings-4.2/5
Browsing
Xperia L's default Browser is Google Chrome,The UI Is Minimal,neat and simple and easy to use,loading webpages on 2g will be a real Pain,so I use Opera browser that about twice as faster as chrome in loading pages on 2G.
*i.imgur.com/HCWRU4O.png
Coming to Google chrome now,At the top you have an URL bar with a refresh/stop button next to tabs and settings. You can easily switch between tabs swipe in either direction.
Of course, one of Chrome's strengths is its ability to seamlessly sync with the desktop version, using nothing but your Google account. This allows you to open an article on your PC and finish reading it on your mobile phone. It also syncs your bookmarks and favorite sites.
*i.imgur.com/geT8VQi.png
Google Chrome is generous with the settings as well. You can control almost every aspect of your web browsing from choosing what content you want to allow to load like JavaScript, images, cookies and pop-ups.
But at the end I preffer Opera over Google Chrome.
Reading the webpages in X.L is a good experience and I din't find it a strain at all.
Overall I give this a 4.5/5
GAMING
Xperia L has a 1 gb ram,Dual core krait and an Adreno 305,Which makes Gaming on the device as smooth as butter, I din't find lag in most of the games I tried,Only wish I had during gaming was wish the screen was a bit bigger as I have fat fingers.
Anyway Gaming is wonderfull.
5/5
Battery Life
X.L Has a 1700 mAh Removable battery,which is claimed to last 9 hours by sony.I get around 10-16 hours a day(the huge difference is due to standby, when I'm in college and at home),With very light usage(say <1.5 hours of screen time) the phone easily lasts 20-28 hours.
Browsing,Texting,browsing for 1 hour will bring down the battery by around 20-25%.
Overall I'm not soo satisfied with the battery,I have mixed feelings for it sometimes it's amazing,sometimes some bad app gives it a massive drain.
One thing that I have noticed is when on stand by,Suppose theres a miss call or anything the phone app drains the battery by over 10-15% over 6-7 hours.
Now after the new Update the battery drain has increased by a huge margin,used the phone for less than 1 hour battery down by like 20-30%(comapred to 10-15%) before
So the battery life gets 3.5/5
VERDICT
With so many Indian Brands and samsung releasing their Mediatek or Cortex A5 quad cores every other day,Sony did something different than just releasing a Cortex A5 rip off phone,and came out to release the first Krait phone under 20k, and has done very well in the market.Why should you get this over galaxy grand you ask me?Tell me why not?every other person out there has a galaxy grand or canvas phones in their hands and these phones just offer a namesake "quad core" and a large screen with a really disapointing resolution,X.L offers everything in a smaller packet and Is probably the best VFM phone by Sony for like 16k,So If you have 16k and are planning to buy a phone,What your still reading this? Just go and buy it
PROS
Beautiful Design
Dual core krait
Great VFM
CONS
Medicore Battery Life
Front camera Quality is disapointing
Video recording could have been 1080p
OVERALL RATING-9.2/10
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